Burlap Banner tutorial

I bought a beautiful Valentine's Day banner on etsy.  I loved it and was so sad to take it down.  I looked on etsy for a St. Patrick's Day banner but I hesitated buying it because I knew that I had all of the supplies to make my own. So over the weekend I made one! 

Here is the Valentine's Day one that I bought.  I love it but it was $20 and I thought it would be fun to try my own. 

I looked online for a tutorial and I found this simple one here. 

I printed the word  lucky in 425 pt Georgia font.  I cut out the letters and taped one letter to the back of each of my burlap that I cut into triangles.  I just painted where the letter was.  I didn't take a picture of this but the tutorial that I used has a picture of this :)

I also added polka dots using a circle craft brush.  I hot glued the burlap to jute and added green ribbon that I had. 

I think it's cute!  I do wish my paint was a little brighter.  Maybe next time I'll do two coats of paint instead of one. 

Here is a close up so you can see how I folded the burlap over the jute. 

This project was FREE because I already had everything I needed and it took less than an hour from start to finish!  I love quick and easy projects like these!!

Valentine Craft!

Saturday night Allison, Sabrina and I got together for a craft night. We made heart wreaths like we saw on pinterest. They were free because we only used red burlap and wire. Sabrina had already had both things we needed. I love free crafts! I put mine in an empty frame that was in our dining room. I think they are adorable!

Halloween Hutch

Every season I decorate the hutch in our dining room.  Last weekend I decorated it for Halloween!  I love the turquoise and orange colors that I used to decorate with this Halloween.  Ava painted a turquoise pumpkin on the top shelf.  I kept a lot of my milk glass out too and I love the white pumpkin that I found at a farm stand!

My friend Sabrina made this subway art for the craft show last weekend.  I was excited that it didn't sell because that meant I got to bring it home!

I added halloween pretzels to our candy basket.  I hope this helps us to eat less Halloweeen candy this year!
I got this cute basket at Wal-Mart and added the orange ribbon.

This cute happy Halloween sign is in our living room.  I spray painted the frame orange.  I really like the way it turned out!  I got the Halloween sign from this blog.

I have one last Halloween decoration to show.  I made this adorable rag wreath for the craft show.  I can't believe it didn't sell!  I'm sort of glad it didn't because that means I got to keep it for my house!  I love all the different colors in this wreath!

Happy Tuesday!! 
  

This and That

Last weekend we went to a farm stand and I got some pumpkins and mums for our yard for fall.  I saw some white pumpkins and I thought they were SO adorable so I got two of them for the hutch in our dining room.  I love white pumpkins!

 I am still getting fall stuff out of our attic.  This is a fall centerpiece that I've used for a couple of years on our dining room table.  This year I put it on the coffee table in our sun room.  I love that I can use this from now until Thanksgiving.  I just love fall colors!

Two festive pumpkins in our living room.  I love the turquoise/orange colors together. The candle stick is from Hobby Lobby and the green vase is from Restoration Hardware  I want to do more turquoise/orange decorations this year. 

 This is a little box that I painted with chalkboard paint.  In the background is a picture of my Mom when she was a baby. 

I got these adorable Missoni bowls from Target for my friend as a housewarming gift.  Love them!

 Moving on to running now.  This weekend is the  5k race that Sabrina and I have been training for since March.  In August we joined a running group with about 15 ladies.  I am SO glad we joined this group!  We usually run together on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings at 5:15 (Saturday's we usually do 6).  We call ourselves the Pack and we totally motivate and support each other -which has been a huge blessing for me.  This morning after our run we got the shirts that were going to wear to our race this weekend. I love it!  I can't wait to wear it!

On the back of the shirt we each wrote a reason why we did the race.  Mine is near the bottom and it says "for my mom"  She died of a heart attack last year at age 64.  I still can't believe she's gone.  I love my Mom SO much but I don't want to have a heart attack at an early age. My Dad also had a heart attack at an early age but  thankfully he survived and is doing well!   After my Mom  died I promised myself I would get in shape and eat better.  So training for this race was part of that promise to myself.  I know she would be proud of me!

Snow Day!!

Yesterday we had a snow day!  Sunday night we got over a foot of snow.  It was so bad even the College where I work closed and that hardly ever happens!  Graig went to work and Brock, Ava and I slept in which was SO nice.  When we got up I decided that we needed to clean out our closets.  When we were done our king size bed was FULL of clothes that needed to be donated!  We also filled up one large garbage bag of things to throw away. 

Ava turned her closet into her American Girl Doll Room.  I will have to show you that in another post.  It's really cute.  She put her doll beds in there and made a TV for them out of construction paper. 

In the afternoon we went over to my friend Sabrina's to work on our ribbon wreaths.  I have made two ribbon wreaths this year one for Valentine's Day and one black and white one for our kitchen.   I get all of my ribbon from etsy at this site.  The ribbon to make one wreath costs about $11 so it's not too expensive. 

Here are the two that I have already made.

Today Sabrina and I worked on our spring ribbon wreaths.  Mine is light pink, dark pink, lime and lilac (the colors in Ava's room :)  I'm going to use it in her room until I want to decorate for spring) and Sabrina's colors were called tutti-fruti she used yellow, green, turquoise, pink, orange, etc.  Her colors were really cute. 

Ava and Eliza eating a little lunch while Sabrina  and I were making our wreaths. 

The ribbon comes packaged like this from etsy.

To make the wreath you need to cut your ribbon into 2-3 inch pieces once you have them all cut out you fold them in half and hot glue them.

Here are a few of my loops.  Once we got them all glued.  We glued them on the wreath form which we got from the Dollar Tree. 

3 hours later here are our finished projects! 

I think they turned out really cute!  (Don't worry Sara and Allison we are still going to work on yours soon!) 

It was a fun afternoon and Ava and I were glad to get out of our house for a few hours to work on these. Even though it feels NOTHING like spring here I am really excited to start decorating for Easter and spring.  I think this wreath will be a fun addition to our decorations. 

Quick Christmas Gifts

This year I ordered some vinyl letters and dots on etsy to make Christmas ornaments for some of our friends.  I really like quick craft projects like this!  I got them here.  I got my ornaments at Wal-Mart and just put the vinyl on.


Here is ours hanging on our tree

Here is one all wrapped up ready to be given away!

I made them all up and wrapped them and put them in a basket under our tree.  I think they look so festive!  I always need quick little presents for our neighbors, and for hostess gifts so I thought these would be perfect for that!



A yarn ball wreath

A few weeks ago Tater Tots and Jello posted a tutorial on how to make a beautiful yarn ball wreath.  I thought is was adorable and I immediately thought it would be great for a craft night project.  I was wrong!   I made one as a sample to get ready for craft night and it took forever!  I would say this project took about 5 hours total and a ton of hot glue.  I am really happy with the way it turned out it just took forever!  I prefer craft projects that take less than an hour-ha ha!  I used red, green, lime and silver in my wreath but there are lots of beautiful color combos out in blog land.  I think this idea could also be used for a Valentine's Day wreath or a Spring Wreath.  I bought all of my supplies (except for the yarn which I got at Wal-Mart) at the Dollar Tree. 

  I also had some yarn balls left over so I put some in a bowl in our living room.  I think it looks very festive!

Yesterday Ava had her Cookie Party which was a lot of fun!  You can read about last year's cookie party here. She had 12 friends over so things were a little crazy.  I am SO thankful my friend Allison came over to help me.  We split the girls into 2 groups and she did the craft group and I did the cookie group.  I couldn't have done the party without her help.  Thanks Allison!!  I did take pictures and I will do a post about the party. 

I hope you had a good weekend!

Halloween Decorating!

This past weekend I did a little decorating for Halloween!  It might still be a little early but I love getting my halloween decorations out every fall.  

Here is a pillow that I got years ago at Kohl's.  I still love it!  I put it on a chair in our living room.

I added this little trick or treat wooden sign to a wreath that I already had hanging up in our living room. 

I printed out this pumpkin picture from The Graphics Fairy.  I like it because it's "fallish" and not "halloweenish" so I can keep it up until Thanksgiving!

 This is another picture I got from the graphics fairy.  I added the squares of scrapbook paper because the picture wasn't big enough.  I LOVE the colors in this picture.  This is another thing that I am going to keep up until Thanksgiving!

 I went to my favorite fall craft store on Saturday and bought these cute little pumpkins for my glass jar in our kitchen.  I also got my first ever CLOCHE!  I am SO excited.  I am in the process of painting a table baclk in my living room because I think it will my cloche will look better on a black table-ha ha!

I also put out a few other things that I will show later on this week.  Happy Monday!!

Fall subway art project!

 I got this idea from my friend Janna from high school. She is SO talented and comes up with the best crafts!

I really liked her idea for subway art so I decided to try one of my own.  This was a fun project to make.  I just painted a canvas and then added different scrapbook letters.  When I was done I modge podged the whole thing.  I put it in our kitchen.  I really like the way it turned out!

Fall Decorating!

Over the weekend I did some fall decorating to get our house ready for the fall.  Fall is my favorite season of the year to decorate for and I have two huge bins of stuff!  I didn't get it all out yet but I did do a little decorating inside.  I still have to get some mums and pumpkins for outside.  It is beginning to feel like fall here and I like when it get's a little cooler and the leaves start changing colors.

The centerpiece in our dining room table. I got this a few years ago and I still love it!

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A pumpkin on a pedastal in our living room

A bowl full of pumpkins on our living room table

A pumpkin candle and candleholder on our side table. 

A fall arrangement in our sun room

A green pumpkin and a little fall sign. 

Fall in our kitchen!  I love white pumpkins.

A star pumpkin in our living room.  I love this pumpkin!

A candle holder that I made with fall leaves. 

Happy Fall!