Oh, Christmas Tree!

One of my very favorite holiday traditions is picking out the Christmas tree. My parents have always done fresh trees (except for the year they got a live in-the-planter tree) and it's a tradition I intend to keep as long as possible. I know they're pricey and messy, but to me, it's just not negotiable. Dan and I have only ever had a small tabletop-sized tree, but now that we're in the house, this was the first year we got to pick out a full size stunner.

On Saturday, we started a fun new tradition. We went out for dinner at PF Chang's with our friend and her two kids and then went to the lot to pick out our trees. It was really fun to make it a special night out. Dan and I just adore the kids, and their mom and I have gotten closer over the last 6 months, so it was really fun to have that time making memories with them. After we picked out our trees - both of which were strapped to the top of her Honda Pilot - we got to work decorating ours (she's waiting until Wednesday when her husband returns from a civilian assignment in Afghanistan to decorate theirs). I hit the jackpot at Kohl's on some very inexpensive ornaments, and used our old red and white balls to make a candy cane inspired tree that matches our mantle and also goes with mine and Dan's stockings.


No tree of mine would be complete without a Pinterest project, so I used the tutorial found here to make a fun linen-white and red ruffled tree skirt. Even though it was super easy (and made with my favorite method of attachment, the glue gun) I almost instantly regretted signing up for this. It didn't take that long, but it was kind of a pain. The cutting and the ruffling and the gluing just took it's toll on my psyche about 90 minutes in. But I just love how it came out. Once again, pardon my crappy photography. Maybe someday I'll use a real camera :)




So, I'm ready! Bring on Christmas!

The One Where I Set Aside the Glue Gun

Helloooo! How are we all on this brisk morning? I love the cold weather. We don't get a lot of it, so when we do, I take full advantage of the ability to wear boots, scarves and sweaters. So I was perusing wintery outfits on Pinterest the other day and came along this little gem:

And I said to myself, "self, that's a really cute scarf. I wonder where I can get one of those for my collection." And I clicked over, expecting to find a link to some retail outlet, and lo and behold! It was a tutorial for how to make one of my very own. And I just happened to have some white felt (she recommends felt or felted wool) left over from another project.

I admit, it was kind of time consuming. But I had the house to myself Sunday afternoon for circle cutting, and I finished the assembly last night. It came out cute, don't you think?

Okay, so I discovered it's kind of hard to get a flattering photo of yourself in a scarf. Or maybe I was too picky. But you get the gist. I think I've got a new Christmas gift idea. At the price per yard of felt, I think it's a pretty good bang for your buck.

Have you done any projects lately?

Take the glue gun away from me

It's not surprising - because I've said it 1,000 times - that I'm a Pinterest fiend. If I'm at home on a Saturday morning while Dan's in bed, I'm pinning away, adding recipes, photos, and decorating ideas to my boards. What IS surprising to everyone including me (or should be) is that I apparently have an obsession with wreaths. Yes, wreaths. The things old people (sorry, wreath lovers) hang on their doors. Not even two years ago, when I told her that Dan and I don't celebrate or decorate for Valentine's Day, my grandmother asked me incredulously, "you don't have a Valentine's Day wreath for your door!?" Psshhh, no. No way in hell. Except that was then, and this is now, and the Brooke of Now has a wreath pinned for just about every season of the year. Trust me, I hang my head in shame almost on the daily.

I present to you, dear readers, my Fall Wreath (picture taken in the dark on my porch):


I found the tutorial here, but I already had a Halloween (she made it for a shower, but it's totally Halloweeny, right?) wreath that I bought with a coupon at Joann Fabrics when I made my candy corn cones. Anyway, I bought a 12" round wreath (you're thinking "duh, wreaths are round," but the one in the tutorial is squared, smarty) and 8 rolls of ribbon, which is only half as many as the tutorial suggested. Because I didn't think to look at the tutorial while I was at the store. Anyway, I picked a variety of solids, patterns, gross grain and satin ribbons in chocolate and ivory. Actually, at first, I was going to go with really traditional fall - almost turkey-ish - and use brown, red, gold and orange. Only I realized I really didn't like the color combo much at all. I was in the ribbon aisle for about 45 minutes trying to decide and Dan even texted to see if I was alive.

So, chocolate and ivory in a variety of sizes, textures, and patterns. I followed the tutorial pretty exactly, except I would do one thing differently. The instructions said to do 5-6" lengths to use for the loops, but I got kind of distracted with wine TV and some of mine are a little long. Of course, the longer loops are the ones I'm not as happy with. So definitely stick to consistency in the loop cutting. I don't know how the Blue Eyed Bride went about placing hers on her wreath, but I started with the thickest grossgrain ribbon that I had the most of, sort of evenly spacing them on my wreath so I wouldn't bunch them all in one area and totally neglect another. Then I moved on to the second kind of ribbon, then the third, and so on and on and on. I did make sure to glue them down in different directions, so that was good. The only other thing I need to figure out the next time I do one is how to keep the the top layers from flattening out loops on bottom layers. I think the wreath looks fine in the picture, but in person, some areas are floofier (technical term). I also think my wreath came out pretty full, so I'm not sure where I would have put another 6-7 rolls of ribbon. Maybe start with 8 but have a couple extra in case you want to add more, but I really don't think you need 14 (at least for a 12" wreath).

So there ya have it, my latest Pinterest project.

Is there rehab for this?

Pinterest struck again, people. I didn't take pictures of the whole project, but it was super easy. I had found a cute photo similar to this a couple weeks ago:


So I headed to Joann armed with a 20% your entire purchase (including sale items!) coupon. I picked up an 18" cone and a 12" cone from the floral department. You know, where they keep the foam wreaths and stuff. Then I went to the yarn section and picked up thick bulky yarn in orange, white, and yellow. I also got a glue gun (for $2.50!) and glue, since I didn't have one.

Before I started, I marked off my color-change points, splitting the cone up into approximate thirds (or so I thought - turns out the white was a little more than a third, but I was consistent with both cones). I started at the top with the white, and glued the whole first wrap-around with it. I wound it consistently around the cone, gluing about 1/2" every couple of rows to keep things anchored. I made sure to switch to orange along the seam in the back so that I would have an obvious front and back. When I switched, I made sure to glue the whole first row of the new color. I also glued the whole last row of yellow at the bottom, and had to overlap a little, since I hadn't wound perfectly straight all the way down. For the top, I made a small coil the size of the top and then hot-glued it right on. Super easy! The yarn in the inspiration photo was apllied a little more haphazardly, with strands overlapping and more like a ball of yarn would look. I prefered a cleaner look, so I wrapped my yarn neatly with one row right under the other.

I think they came out really cute, and put them on the mantle with some pumpkins for a festive touch.


BTW, all the Fall and Halloween decorations are 60% off at Joann right now, and with the 20% off coupon, I saved far more than I spent on some cute decorations for the house.

My Pinteresting weekend

Hey there! It's been a while, huh? Sorry. Not much has been going on, so there hasn't been much to write about, but I finally have a few things. Friday was the Poz and Infekt concert. It was the finals to play Fall Frenzy. We had a nice group going, including our friends' kids who were so excited to be there. We had so much fun with them. The concert was a blast - they pulled out all the stops in terms of making it a fun and interactive show. Unfortunately, they didn't win the finals and won't be playing this Friday. We were so bummed, but I highly doubt this will be the end of these guys.

We were lazy Saturday. Or at least I was. And so were these two:


I was lazy for a reason though - I was glued to Facebook waiting for updates on the birth of my dear friend Kari's daughter. She arrived in the evening after about 12 hours of labor. Her name is Brynn Marie and she is absolutely adorable. You know how some newborns are all "rrrreeeeeeaaaaaaaa" like baby velociraptor with their gangly fingers? (Come on, you know it's true - they can't all be cute.) Not this baby. She's 100% cute. But then, I may be biased since I'm her auntie.

On Sunday, we worked on a couple projects, one of which was my chalkboard menu for the kitchen. I had purchased the frame with a coupon at Joann Fabrics and was just waiting to find the right piece of wood to paint with my chalkboard paint. It had to be thick enough to fit in the frame and sturdy enough to withstand pressure when being written on. At the same time, it couldn't be too heavy and obviously couldn't be warped. I know what you're thinking: why not just buy a chalkboard? Well, what's the fun in that? So Dan finally found the perfect piece of wood and cut it down to the right size. He was anxious and painted while I napped, along with the inside of one side of our pantry. Kinda cool - now we have a chalkboard right there for jotting down staples we need to add to my shopping list. Not a bad idea, Dan. Finally, it dried enough and we hung it:


It looks a little boring right there all by itself, but I assure you there's other stuff right under it and my baking supply dresser and the turtle tank are right next to it. I couldn't write on it yet when I took this - the paint has to set for 24 hours - but I was just to excited not to take a pic. Isn't it cute? Yay, Pinterest! Stay tuned for my next Pinterest-inspired project.

What did you do this weekend?

If YHL can do it, so can I

This was a weekend of renovation (on the small scale) and organization. We got a lot done. The laundry "room" got a makeover, my baking stuff got moved into the dresser in the kitchen, the green couch is gone (sorry, Paisley) and the sectional has been separated and rearranged to make it feel like less of a monster in our small living room. I also got a start on a couple DIY projects that will be coming soon.

First, the laundry room. Dan had talked about painting it when we first moved in, but hadn't so much as mentioned it since. Well, apparently, Saturday was the day he decided to not only talk about it, but do it. He went to the gym on Saturday morning and came home with some paint swatches.... paint swatches that made me cringe. Most of the colors chosen could best be described as "breastmilk poop yellow." Kinda icky. But he loved them. As we were arguing about discussing the color options, he mentioned that he wanted to put the red chandelier in there. This red chandelier was actually a gold chandelier that hung over the entryway when we bought the house and was replaced and then repainted the day after we moved in. It's not that I don't like it (it IS pretty cool) but not for that space. I had a better idea. So I decided to go for a give-and-take approach. I agreed to let Dan choose the color if I could pick the light fixture.

My grand inspiration?

The clothespin chandelier from Young House Love. Totally brilliant right? And perfectly suited for a laundry room. Upon seeing the tutorial, Dan agreed that it was a pretty cool idea and the red chandelier was nixed. So off we went to Lowe's where we picked up 300 clothespins, wire gardening mesh, and a gallon of Dan's color choice, Valspar Golden Avocado.

It took me roughly an hour to assemble the chandelier, between cutting the gardening mesh (wire cutters are a bitch) and clipping the clothespins. I was a little short on the number - I need to get another bag of 50 to finish off that little bald section as well as another full row to hide the bottom of the wire frame. I'm pretty psyched about the result though. In total, it took us about 3 hours to take our boring laundry closet from white-with-floral-wall-paper blahness to this (it's a closet, so hard to photograph, sorry):




I didn't even realize it at the time, but even the yellowness matches somewhat with YHL's color scheme. I want to get some baskets or something to put the shelf contents in and maybe an art print so the walls aren't so plain, but I think it's already a vast improvement. The chandelier was actually pretty heavy, and I thought hanging it might be a challenge. There was a glass dome light fixture - the kind where screws hold the glass on, ya know? (This is my clueless girl-meets-house lingo, BTW) Dan just made loops out of a heavy wire that he attached to the top of the mesh frame and hung them on the screws. So it hangs a little lower relative to the the bulb in comparison to the YHL version, but because it's a small space and the viewing angle is essentially straight up, you can't really tell.

And even though it won't be finding its home in the laundry room, the red chandelier is still haunting me. Dan is threatening to use the same fire engine red shade to paint our washer and dryer. Why he wants the room to look like ketchup and mustard, I'm not sure. But I have a feeling I may come home one day to find it done, and I'll probably hear "I told you it would look good."

I need a Pinterest project intervention

One of the things that we noticed instantly when we shopped for our house was that the bathrooms had shower doors. Meh. Dan said immediately that we'd get rid of them, but they didn't bother me so much. That is, until I had to try to give the dogs a bath and couldn't lean in very far to wash them and even then I was leaning on the metal door tracking. Not good at all. For Dan, it's even worse that he has to kind of scrounch down to enter the shower.

So it should have been no surprise to me to come home on Friday and find that his shower door had been evicted, and that mine was up next. I got way more excited than I should have because it meant I got to pick out shower curtains. Because we'd been talking about taking the doors out at some point I'd been surfing the net looking for a design I liked. I even pinned a few on Pinterest.

Unfortunately, all my pins were from online dealers, and since we were about to be completely without shower water barriers, they didn't do me much good. Off to Bed Bath and Beyond I went with my coupon to find a substitute. I was pretty excited, y'all. Shower curtains are kind of one of my "things." I love picking out a cool one and planning the rest of the bathroom around it. This time, since we already have all the towels we need and color schemes in place, I needed to work in reverse and find something that would go with our "milk chocolate" walls and the green and purple accents in each of our respective bathrooms (yes, we have our own bathrooms). I was pretty disappointed that I couldn't find anything with a chocolate or brown pattern with pops of accent colors. The only awesome think I found with purple was sold out and very hard to keep in stock apparently, according to the manager at BB&B. I went from BB&B to Target (which sucked even more) and then back and finally settled on these:

Not what I was expecting, but I found that I loved how they were both modern and organic. And even though the shower doors had been frosted glass, the white lightened up the room. Dan bought curved rods, which makes the tub space feel even bigger, which is very nice. Not to mention, he was able to hang them at a nice and comfy 6'7" off the ground, so he can step into it without any crouching, scrunching, or otherwise shortening himself.

Dan also took the icky old security door that was on the little shed out back, cleaned it, and sprayed it with new metallic paint to go on the door leading from the garage out to the patio. He was a very busy guy on Friday afternoon.

We have another big improvement coming to the house this coming Saturday, too.... a new couch! A sectional to be exact. Our living room is kind of odd with it's shape and multiple focal points. Even more annoying about it is the lack of seating with just the couch and our Cracker Barrel (thanks, Dad) rocking chair. When we have two other people over, we're one seat short. So we decided to fix one of those issues and ordered this lovely thing:

It's the perfect shade of lightish brown and it's nice and comfy. It's also not as deep as the current couch, so the part of it that will be where our couch currently sits won't seem as big and bulky and eyesore-ish (which crazy emotional me has been crying about for like 3 weeks, but that's another story for another day). However, it's huge lengthwise... 12x8'. So that chaise part will likely be parked in our bedroom, meaning I'm getting one of those fancy seating areas in my master bedroom to read in like you see in Better Homes & Gardens. Awesome. Living the high life, people.

My next project:

A chalkboard menu! See, isn't Pinterest fun? I need to find the right frame, and I fully intend to paint wood with chalkboard paint (even though Dan insists you can buy chalkboards, pshaw) and hang it on a blank kitchen wall. I also want to make a cute monogrammed something or other to hang my aprons in the kitchen. Dan wants to paint the tiny wall behind our built in shelf the same dark blueish grey as the hallway and then set some of our own original artwork on an easel up there. Lastly, we want to fix up the dinky fireplace. I'd like to have it done in time for Christmas, but it just remains to be seen whether or not that happens. Dan's plan is to replace the blechy tile around it and build a new solid wood mantle. The one there now is literally a piece of flimsy wood and I have to be very careful with putting anything heavy on it. We want something more substantial and grand looking. See? We have all sorts of things going on, and hopefully the weather will start to cool down and we'll feel less blech (how many times have I said 'blech' in this post?) and get to work on them.

What projects are you working on? Have you discovered Pinterest? Do you need an intervention, too?