Our Christmas Tree + DIY Ruffled Tree Skirt

I'll admit, I put up our Christmas decorations in a very sneaky fashion. Josh said I couldn't put up any Christmas related decor until after Thanksgiving (something like "one holiday at a time" or whatever). So, on Wednesday I started messing around with a winter mantle (nothing overtly Christmas-y), then, on Thursday, I put up our stockings. But it wasn't until I had our Christmas tree out of the box that Josh even noticed I was being so sneaky. Yes, I'm good.

I just get so excited about Christmas. Mostly because I bought the majority of our decorations on super sale after last Christmas. I've waited a whole year to put up our new stuff. So, here are some beautiful, glowy pictures of our Christmas Tree!

Another, reason I'm so excited about this year's tree is because our old tree was about 2 feet tall and it held about 5 ornaments before it started looking weird. But we're moving up... to a 4.5 foot tall pre-lit awesome tree. Love!

As far as ornaments go, I've got a pretty nice system going on. Josh and I have a small (but growing) collection of meaningful ornaments, that include an ornament from the first Christmas we were dating (2007), an ornament from our first married Christmas together (2010), and this year I added an adorable and inexpensive Texas cookie-cutter fashioned into a Christmas ornament.



All other ornaments are simple ball ornaments that were left over from our wedding. They are all silver and gold and really let our special ornaments stand out. For garland, I used some leftover fabric strips from our Christmas skirt. Simple and still inexpensive.

Our tree skirt is one of the holiday items I'm most proud of. I found this great tutorial here on Pinterest. In the past, I've always favored bright and colorful Christmas decor, but this year I really got into neutral and metallic decoration, so this tree skirt immediately drew my attention. Plus, it's a no-sew project. Basically, just strips of fabric hot glued to a tree skirt. It took me a few hours to complete and the burned fingers were totally worth it! Take a peek.



So, there you have it. There are a lot more Christmas posts to come including gift wrapping, our winter mantle, and a super easy tutorial on temporarily changing up those cone trees that are so popular now. Stay tuned!

Do you have your Christmas decorations up yet? Or are you waiting for December? Do you go with a theme or color scheme for decor? I'd love to know! And also, I'm on Pinterest!

DIY Holiday Wreath - Inspired by Pinterest

So, I finally joined the Pinterest train, and I am in love! It is so much fun. There is so much inspiration for DIY projects, crafts, parties, and home design. Seriously, it's heaven.

But, like many bloggers, I don't want to pin stuff and never actually create anything. So I set out to create a few of my favorites and first up, I made a holiday wreath. Usually, I'm not really really a fan of traditional fall decor. My home design preferences are usually brighter and color colors like blue and greens and the warm tones of fall doesn't really fit, in my opinion. But these two wreaths below, I love!

From Here

From Here

I love the berries and deep reds of the first wreath and, of course, the flower rosettes of the second. So here's my combination.

I picked up an inexpensive wreath from Wal-Mart and some clearance fabric scraps from Hobby Lobby to make fabric rosettes. A few episodes of "The Office" later, I had enough to cover about half of the wreath and start hot gluing them on. The berries were already owned from last Christmas so I threaded them in. I also used a left over shred to make a rustic bow for the top.

I used some left over cream ribbon to hang the wreath on an upside down 3M hook. Removable and I already had it in the house! (I also learned this trick on Pinterest!)

I think I've found my ideal fall decor. Deep wine reds with neutrals tied in. Gorgeous! And not only does this wreath look great for fall, but it could also easily transition into a Christmas wreath with a few tweaks like more metallic accents and a bunting message like in the second inspiration picture. I love it!

All together, I spent about $8.00 total. Yes! Tutorials for both inspriation pictures can be found in their links. Check back later this week for some more Pinterest inspired craft projects!

Ten Dollars of Goodwill-y Goodness!

A Goodwill trip always starts with the need to make a donation. I pile the stuff into our car, pull into the drive-thru drop off, and make sure to get a receipt for our taxes. Then as I'm rounding the building, I always decide to just stop in and see if there's anything worthwhile. Most of the time... there is. Now that I'm learning more about repurposing and upcycling, I try to see the potential in the items that clutter the shelves. Here's what I got on my last trip:

1. Picture frame/bulletin board combo. It's headed to the kitchen in combination with a new family calendar (that's on its way).*

2. Loofas. Yes, loofas. I bought loofas from Goodwill. Here's how I justified it: they were pre-packaged (not used!) and they were cheaper than those at the grocery store. Why the heck not?

3. Silver hoops. I've never really been a huge fan of hoop earrings, but I saw these and decided to give them a try. At just $1.99, they were the perfect trial pair.

4. I love this wooden jewelry box. I have a lot of jewelry and no real good storage solution for it. This box is like having 4-in-1. It folds back up into one tower and you can pull out whichever drawer you need. It's in need of a good scrub and I'm thinking about jazzing it up a little, somehow. And at just $2.99, it was a bargain!

5. And lastly, I picked up these fun, jazzy silhouettes. Once they're cleaned up (and maybe painted different colors) they would look so great in the office. The office is a completely different vibe from the rest of the apartment. It's much more relaxed with apple green walls and fun art. It really that room's personality and I only paid $1.75 for the set. Once these go up, I'll be sure to give post a photo tour of our work space.

*And I just noticed they didn't charge me for the frame! It was originally priced at $3.55 but it's not on my receipt. By my calculations, the massive donation clothing and electronics I donated today, should cover the frame.

In total, I was charged $10.05 for everything! What a good deal. I'm excited to get these things cleaned up and in place around the apartment. Updates to come on their landing!

Do you love to recycle and repurpose second hand items? Any good finds lately? Link up and share you projects below!

Room Love: pretty & rustic, DIY dining room

Room Love: I save so many photos from the interwebs of gorgeous houses and rooms and I want to share some of my favorites.

Image from here via Young House Love

There is a lot I love about this space! Of course the openness, which I have been craving lately (as seen here) but also the mixture of finishes and textures. I used to hate mismatched everything; furniture, towels, silverware, you name it. It would bug me that things didn't go together. But, as of late, I have really been getting into mixing styles and finishes. It can look amazing if done right!

Here, you've got refinished chairs, an awesome round seat, and even untreated wood in the light fixture but it gels like the room was made that way. This should be inspiration to get those cool mismatched chairs from the flea market, spruce them up with a new fabric and coat of paint, and use them at the dining table. Mix natural elements like natural fiber baskets, a table runner, or (if you're lucky enough to find one) a round bench to liven up a room with a almost entirely neutral color scheme.

And, of course, the coup de gras, is the killer chandelier. Save those recycled wine bottles and create something totally unique. You can easily find bottle cutters on Amazon. Save the tops for a light fixture and bottoms for storage vessels or vases. I bet pillar candles lit up in the evening would make that light fixture look gorgeous!

What do you think? Do you stick with one finish/texture? Or do you mix it up like above? What DIY projects complete your home? Please share!!

Etsy Adventures!!!

My newest adventure... Etsy. For our wedding, I made my own bouquet and it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

As, I have been feeling super ambitious lately, I felt it was time to open up shop. Are We Wed Yet on Etsy offers silk bouquets for brides and bridesmaids. The great think about silk flowers is that they really do look gorgeous forever. You don't have to worry about them wilting and water from the stems running down your dress on your big day. I do think that "fake" bouquets have been given a really bad name, but I'm here to reclaim it. They can be beautiful! Take a look.

Check it out & spread the word!

The Great Program Debacle*

Programs have been a source of craziness for me. Silly, I know. I wanted to DIY them, of course, but I went back and forth between how to do them, what was going to go in them, and did I really want them anyways???

Well, then I finally calmed the heck down and realized: Yes, I do want them; Yes, they need to be easy as pie, and it had to be at least a little cute. So three designs and a whole lot of indecision later, here's what I finally came up with.

Pretty cute, eh? I'm satisfied. It was super simple. The fonts used are Jane Austen and Hanshand from dafont.com. This whole process has taught me to frikking love that site!

I'm very satisfied with them. Simple, cute, and to the point. That's what I'm all about 16 days until the big day.

*Okay, maybe "debacle" is exaggerating a little

Our DIY Guestbook

We took a neat twist on the traditional guestbook. In ours, guests are invited to write their wish for us on a small card and slip it into an empty envelope. It's a neat way to store sentiments and it gives a special feeling to each note as opposed to just signing your name on lined paper.

I used fabric and paper left over from making our invitations, so everything ties in together. The little envelopes were purchased at Hobby Lobby.

The greatest thing about this guest book is that it's made from a regular scrapbook. I plan to make it into a "guest book/scrapbook/photo album" of sorts for our wedding. Ideally, it will include as many photos as possible, our invitation, programs, etc. A nice way to have everything in one spot.

New Use for Christmas Ornaments

One of the goals for my wedding is to have as few flowers as possible. Seeing as my budget is $5000.00, lots of fresh blooms are not an option. It might seem crazy, but I really don't see the point. Yes, they are gorgeous... but they die. Quickly. So, for all intents and purposes, you spent how much for decor that only lasts a few days?!? No thank you.

I've seen a few pictures of wedding receptions that have gorgeous ceiling drapes and paper lanterns lit up for a 'glowy', starlit effect. It's beautiful! Though they are less expensive, the cost of paper lanterns can add up! So, I though it would be really neat to use Christmas ornaments (the spherical kind) to hang . Last year, after the holidays, I hit up the sales at Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby, and Target to get some gorgeous ornaments in my colors. These will be used outside on the deck of our venue as well as inside to add a little extra detail.

Cost:

• Gold, 40 ct: $7.50
• Blue, : $22.50

Creative Ideas for Covering Hideous Walls

Making the effort to keep our wedding costs down and the reception close to the adorable historic church we're getting married in, I would definitely say we settled when it came to the reception site. And by settled, I really mean we said we would deal with the hideousness that is this site.

Allow me to paint the picture for you. First of all, it's kind of a "U" shaped building which isn't very conducive to big gatherings of people. Secondly, there are wetland murals painted on the windows... and doors... each and every frikking piece of glass has something atrocious on it.

Proof:

To put it nicely, it ain't pretty. So while I've done my fair share of bitching and moaning over the site, I'm starting to see it as a challenge. Yes, a month and a half away and I'm just now starting to see this. Awesome, huh? I have literally spent the last 2 hours brainstorming ways to make this pretty. Not glamorous or amazing, just pretty. Another thing you should note, is that we are getting married in a small town, with about 2 wedding resources. So that means no Pipe & Drape, no fake wall to be put up, nothing. Oh, bring it on.

We do have some advantages.

1. The reception will be in the evening, so there won't be much sunlight to shine through the animal infested windows.
2. The site actually has good lighting. It can be dimmed to achieve our desired look. No harsh fluorescent lights.
3. I know my way around the creative blog-o-sphere.

Okay, it's about to get crazy but stay with me. I'm thinking tulle and flower strands.

Tulle is the lightest fabric I can think of which means it can be hung easily and it doesn't have to be hemmed. While it won't completely mask the zoo on the windows, combined with the dimmed lighting it will provide a lot of coverage.

Then I thought that alternating strands of silk flowers (on fishing line so it looks like their floating) would be a great way to get more coverage and make a statement. Here are some inspiration pictures. It's a little tough because there's no common color scheme but it's something.

Do you get it? Does it make any sense? Am I crazy? Maybe... Probably.

Our New Custom Curtains

Okay, maybe "custom" makes them sound a little bit more flashy than necessary, but they are indeed custom, because I made them.

Yup, I made them with our new bedroom specifically in mind. And the best part? It. Was. Simple.

I saw this exact tutorial on Young House Love (which is a flipping awesome blog and the couple who writes it (and their new baby) are so cute! You can find their DIY No-Sew curtain tutorial here.

Here are the pictures of our new curtains.

Before:

After:

Mostly the bedroom contains solid colors. Obviously the walls, but the bed spread and sheets are all solids as well. The curtains add a fun pattern that also provides a general theme for the room. I'll be adding some nice prints that I picked up at Hobby Lobby for 50% off and a huge frame that was marked down from $50 to $10 over the bed to continue the leafy pattern.

Oh and I hung up the curtain rod all by myself! That was a pretty proud moment. The bedroom is shaping up nicely. Lots of more DIY posts and my first "rescued" furniture piece are coming this week!!!

Our DIY Invitations

A more detailed look at our wedding invitations.

I knew that I wanted to make them right away and I was confident that I would be able to do it. The biggest problem was making sure that they didn't come across as super homemade (aka: I just printed this off of microsoft word and shoved it in an envelope). After we decided on colors, I made thirty-two a few trips to our local Hobby Lobby to look at paper options. There weren't a whole bunch of patterend papers in our colors so I decided solids were the best way to go.

Inspiration:

When I ran across this diy escort card display, I decided I wanted to incorporate this idea into our invitations to make them special.

Martha Stewart Weddings

I had a much easier time finding fabrics in our colors than I did with patterend paper. So I bought 1/2 yard of 3 different fabrics ($6.80) and a 1.75 inch circle whole punch ($9.99) from HL. I also purchased a corner rounder to mimi the shape of the escort cards in the photo ($6.99).

Fonts:

I looked for font solutions right away because everyone has seen the "fancy" fonts offered by Microsoft Word. No thanks. I found dafont.com and it was awesome. You can search by the type of font your looking for and they are free to download. I ended up using Jellyka, Saint-Andrew's Queen for our names and envelope labels and Hanshand for the other wording on the invitations.

Extras:

I found the love bird stamp (so cute!) at HL on sale for $2.75 and picked up the inkpad for $2.99. I knew immediately that it would be used for the outside of the envelopes. Speaking of, we picked up plain, white greeting card envelopes (50) for $4.95 at Wal-Mart.

The Finished Product:

Total Spent on Invitations:
Stamp: $2.75
Ink Pad: $2.99
Pack of White Card Stock: $4.99
Yellow Paper: $7.93
Blue Paper: $12.39
Fabric: $6.80
Evelopes: $4.95
Hole Punch: $9.99
Corner Rounder: $6.99
Total: $59.78

**Note: The whole punch and corner rounder did push the invitation total over what I had expected to pay but I consider these two items investments for my future crafting!**

Flowers on a Budget

So, you probably got, from my centerpiece tutorial that real flowers will not be making an appearance at our wedding in 4 months. So I set out on yet another to Hobby Lobby to figure out how to make my own bouquets and boutonnieres. Here are the results:

A "W" charm for my future last name.
The boutonnieres:

These pictures really don't do the boutonnieres justice. They are so cute in person! The blue is for Josh (to match my bouquet), and his best man and the Dad's will wear the yellow. My Maid of Honor and our two adorable little flower girls will have yellow flowers as well.

So all of these flowers were put together with absolutely no prior experience, just some research on YouTube. Pretty good, eh? And the best part? They are done already and we still have four months to go! Just one more thing I won't have to worry about in August!

I bought all of the flowers and supplies for my bouquet for just under $40.00 and used the left overs to whip up the boutonnieres. Definitely under budget!

Our DIY Centerpieces - Tutorial

That's right, I'm doing our centerpieces and they are way more simple to assemble than those pesky invitations. Since we're not having a sit down dinner, we're having about 6-8 tabels inside that seat 6 people each. This way people don't have to stand and eat but they can just sit and get up as they please. No assigned seating. There are also picnic tables out on the deck so people can take a break from dancing but I'm pretty sure that there won't be any of these centerpieces on the outdoor tables. I defnitely wanted to keep them simple, classic, and close to the table. So here it goes.

I started out with a round, flat vase that I found at the Dollar Tree for (you guessed it) $1.00 each:

I went to Hobby Lobby and found bunches of tulips that were fifty percent off. I bought about six bunches (3 yellow and 3 white) for $3.50/ea. Before I started, I cut the wire stems to about 2 inches in length and removed the plastic tubing around them to make it easier to stick them in the foam.

You'll also need, a green foam block to keep them in place (I cut the one I bought in half with a knife because it was taller than the vase), double sided tape, and I used 2.25in Christmas ribbon that was the perfect width for the vase (bought after Christmas: 60 ft. for $2.50).

1. Wrap the ribbon once around the vase and secure it with the double-sided tape. Then place the green foam square inside.

2. Now begin assembling flowers.

3. Once I arranged all of the flowers, I sort of "fluffed" them up to fill all of the space. And "TADA", they are done.

Here's a picture of the yellow and white:

Total cost for all centerpiece material:

Flowers (6 bushels): $21.00

Vases (8): $8.00

Foam Blocks (4): $5.00

Ribbon (alot): $2.50

GRAND TOTAL: $36.50

(Pretty good, huh?)