Christmas 2014 Open House Tour

Thank you, Sherry, of the "No Minimalist Here" blog for

 inviting me to join in with other bloggers for a

 Christmas Open House Blog Hop! 

We'll start the tour of my home (well, for this post it is the outside

decorations and the dining room...too many pictures for one post)

in the front yard.

Unsightly spot lights and cords are a necessary evil to light up the front of the house
 at night during Christmas-time.

Last year I made all new decorations for the outside going with

a festive red and bright green color scheme with a candy theme. 

I didn't get all of it back down from the attic this year but 

enough to make the yard and front of the house "merry and bright".

If you want to see a tutorial on how to make the candy decor,

click on the link Make Giant Candy Decorations. 

Last year's deco mesh garland did not make it out of the attic

but I did make some deco mesh and ribbon toppers for the lights.

They are really easy.  Using 21" deco mesh, cut several pieces

10" wide (your pieces will be 10" x 21").  Roll the pieces into

tubes. Pinch the tubes/rolls in the middle and secure them with 

a pipe cleaner. Then make a bow using wired ribbon. 

 Add some other decorative elements if you want to. 

Secure the mesh rolls onto the lantern with the pipe cleaner.

Tie the bow on next.  Add other decorative elements if desired.

I actually ended up using two sets of the deco mesh spiral bundles to make the topper full. 

Because I already had wreaths for each of the six windows 

across the front of the house, I made a burlap door hanging of

a Christmas tree for the front door.

I love making burlap door hangings because it allows you to

choose any object you want, any size you want, any color

you want to paint it. They take a little time, mainly for the 

paint to dry, but they are not hard to do.  Here is a tutorial:

DIY Painted Burlap Christmas Tree Door Hanging .

Each of the windows has a deco mesh wreath.

These are also easy to make and give you a lot of bang for 
your buck.  Here's how they are made: Make A Christmas Wreath.

 Most of the lollipops by the mailbox are made differently 

than the ones by the front door. Although both types use the

 canned spray foam, most of the lollipops by the mailbox 

get their color from paint rather than from wrapping paper. 

All of them are covered with cellophane to mimick a candy

wrapper and to protect them from the weather. 

Here is the mailbox as the sun is setting and the lights are turned

on. The mailbox itself got a new "do" this year. If you want to

 see the tutorial for it, here it is: Deco Mesh Mailbox Topper.

Here is the front of the house at night...

So come on in the front door now.  This are is just an open area

that is a combo foyer and dining room.  When we moved into this

house ten years ago, we sheetrocked over an opening in the wall

behind the buffet.  This gave us a longer wall to put this large

piece of furniture on AND kept folks from seeing directly into 

the kitchen from the front door. 

I enjoy changing out the artwork in this frame seasonally. 

This angel was a very last-minute Christmas decoration a 

couple of years ago and I still love her. Here is her story...

Angels Watching Over Me.

On top of the buffet are candles and bottles brush trees in 

pottery from Hobby Lobby. 

The two candle holders were a splurge for me. I bought them from

a decorator that came to help me with furniture arrangement and

accessorizing. Usually my shopping style is 40-50% off coupons.

The candles in the pottery are LED lights that won't burn the 

bottle brush trees. They also have a great feature of coming on

at the same time everyday for about four hours. Especially in the

winter it is nice to come home in the dark and candles are

"burning in the window" to welcome you home. 

The "snow" in the pottery is actually epsom salt. To keep from 

using so much epsom salt, a piece of cardboard was cut to fit the pottery and placed  on top of several upside-down glasses down

 inside the pottery.  Then the salt was added on top of the board. 

Looking to your right, you will see the dining room table.

Even though we almost never have snow on Christmas in Alabama,

I have been brainwashed by songs, etc. to think that Christmas

is better with snow. The miniature houses and little bottle brush

trees sit on serving plates covered in epsom salt to mimick snow.

The little houses are $1 each from Wal-Mart and Dollar Tree

that have been spray-painted white. Here's how they were made

and used in 2012 ...DIY Mini-Winter Wonderland.

This year I used more ornaments, less bottle brush trees and

less plates in the vignette. 

Glass Cake Stand

Serving Stand with Handle (in middle)

Silver Cake Stand

I lucked up on little cardboard houses WITH trees that have a

little light inside that you can switch off and on. 

Did you know that it is very easy and inexpensive to bleach 

bottle brush trees? Here's how: Bleached Bottle Brush Trees.

If you don't want to bleach your own trees you can find small

ones in stores already done. Hobby Lobby has some in the 

doll house section. These with balls already on them came

from World Market...

...in the scrapbook section of Jo Ann's I found these...

The chalk-painted hutch also in the dining room usually has 

more bottle brush trees displayed but this year it got a

 pared-down look with older silver trees from the attic. 

In the background of the picture below, you can see into the

living room.  If you would like to see the living room and the 
fireplace mantle decorated click on  Open House Tour Part Two.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Be sure and go visit the other blogs that are in the "hop" today!

21 Rosemary Lane reveals her beautiful living room...

A Stroll Thru Life shares Part One of her home tour...

All About Vignettes shares her "other" mantle in her sunroom...

Get More Exposure For Your Projects

Do you have projects or crafts that you have done and want to

share them with the world? A website called 

"Cut Out + Keep" helps you get your creativity out there.

It is an online community designed to help you make and 

share step by step craft tutorials or just feature something

you have made and a description of it. 

The site was begun by Cat Morley as a way to share her own

craft projects easily.  Her boyfriend, Tom, developed a system

where step-by-step craft tutorials could be shared on the

internet in a fast and simple way.  

They realized that the system could also be useful to other

crafters and they launched their site in 2007.  Now the site

hosts over 50,000 amazing projects from all over the world

with over 100,000 members. The site is based in Scotland. 

I was honored when Cat contacted me about being featured 

on her site.  She asked me to submit seven projects to run

over the course of a week.  This is my week!

I hope you will come over to "Cut Out + Keep" to see

the seven tutorials (a new one each day) that I have 

made especially for Cat's site.  They are complete but

concise tutorials of some of my most popular projects. 

The ones that have been on the site so far this week are

Faux Wood Dock Pilings

How To Make a Burlap 

Door Hanging

Make Party Poms For Pennies

Stop back by the rest of the week to see more!

Click on the "Superstar" tab on the header on the 

"Cut Out + Keep" website. There is also a crafty,

 a sewing, a fashion and a cooking superstar this week. 

You don't have to be asked to be on the site! It is free to join.

There are good instructions on how to make your tutorials.

When you are through with composing your tutorial you pub-

lish it on the site. Folks from around the world will see your work.

 This is a good way to share even projects

 you may have done in the past and want to re-introduce

 to a whole new audience. You probably already have the

 photos so it would be easy to write a short tutorial to go 

along with them.  There are also chat boards on the site.

The site is very interesting because it is truly global and there

are a wide variety of projects posted there: art, decorating, beauty,

recipes, home and DIY, jewelry, needlework, paper crafting, 

sewing, yarn crafting and more.  You can find a category to 

fit your specialty! Cut Out + Keep  also is on Pinterest with 24 

different boards of some of their favorite projects. 

Come on over and share your projects in an easy way

with the world!

I'm sharing this post at

Ivy and Elephant's What's It Wednesday

"Hey, Girl" Blog Party

The Bliss Ranch blog is hosting a "Hey, Girl" blog party.

I don't really understand/know about the phenomenon

of adding words on top of photos of Ryan Gosling

so I 'googled' it and found a good article about it.

(Click on highlighted link above if you don't know about the trend either.)

Here's my entry to the "Hey, Girl" party:

The party runs from February 7th through the 14th.

You don't have to use Ryan as your heart throb...you can use

a photo of your REAL heart throb if you want. 

To see other entries in the "Hey Girl" Valentine Party
come over to Bliss Ranch blog.

My Current Favorite Room

I want to join in the "Favorites On The First" blog party over at

Alison's gorgeous blog The Polohouse so here is my party post.

This month's party is themed "Your Favorite Room".

My current favorite room in my house is my dining room.

I have recently done several projects in the dining room which

have lightened it up and cut down on the amount of wood tones.

One of the things that I liked about the dining area when

 we bought this home eight years ago is that is

open...almost like part of the foyer of the house.

That makes it feel bigger than it really is.

Originally there was an opening to the kitchen on the short wall

but we had it closed up.  That provided a solid wall to place this

large piece of furniture against and added kitchen privacy.

(The white door in the above photo goes into the master bedroom. 

 Going on around down the small hallway leads to the kitchen area.)

The dining area is also open to the family room which you

would enter if you walked to the left after coming in the foyer.

The lamps are made from vases that I found at a garden center.

The dining room table is a French reproduction.  It has survived

"the cuts" of combining two households AND downsizing.

Poor pretty thing also has to serve as my crafting table and

has the scars and paint splatters to prove it.

It also serves as a good place to stage seasonal vignettes.

Oh yeah, and sometimes we actually have company and eat here.

My husband got tired of sitting in wobbly antique chairs so we

bought these sturdy but not spectacular chairs from a furniture store. 

 We call them "The Big As# Chairs" because the seats are so wide.  I have plans for them to give them more personality.

So one change I recently made was to add back a chandelier.

When we moved into the house, we took down the very tacky

chandy and just had a ceiling mounted light in the dining area.

That allowed me to have tall elements on the table like

The Roadside Rescue Arrangment...

... and Black Birds of a Feather Flock Together.

I had been saving photos for years of Italian chandeliers in

hopes of making a low budget copy and I finally did.

You can see the process if you would like at the post The Chandy Challenge.

Probably the biggest change I made was to paint the antique

bookcase/chest.  I debated myself for years about this and

finally took the plunge.  Below are some before and after photos.

Two blog posts about that piece are "To Paint Or Not To Paint" and

"A Makeover With Chalk Paint".

Another paint project for the dining area was to paint the

dark green mirrored screen a more fun color.

 You can read more about the screen at the blog post "A Chalk Recipe to Try" .

Something that I would still like to do for the dining area

is to make the wall sconces and the foyer light fixture a

little more like the chandelier.  It don't want matchy-match-y

but some similar elements could be added.

Also I want those "Big As# Chairs" to have some sassy

slipcover skirts added to further decrease the amount of wood

 tones in the room.

  Eventually, they will probably be painted.

Stay tuned to see more changes and vignettes from my dining room! 

 If I get more projects done in other rooms of my house,

they might replace the dining room as the fav.