Vintage Pretties

Gingerbread House

I've always love the idea of making a gingerbread house & decorating it in a candy wonderland, but the reality of baking the gingerbread walls & so on was far too daunting to me. 

But, yay, now they make kits with everything pre-baked & included, so that you can do all of the fun parts without the stress!

Hope stayed home from school with a mild illness on Monday, so we spent the afternoon putting our house together.

With Miracle on 34th Street in the background & covered in icing by the end, we made a grand start on the Christmas festivities.  Our finished product:

This was such a fun project to do with Hope.  I really hope that we are creating wonderful Christmas memories for her.

Christmas Cheer From Cherry

I am so thrilled to finally own one of Cherry Nelson's beautiful creations! I have long admired her wonderful vintage inspired style, but have always been too slow to get the pieces that I fell in love with.  Luckily, I wasn't too slow to get this beautiful Christmas bucket.

The details are so lovely & perfect.

 Along with the bucket came a matching card.

If you haven't been to Cherry's blog, Cherry's Jubilee,  check it out.  Every post is full of inspiration & Cherry is one of the sweetest ladies out there. 

Christmas Pipe Cleaner Craft

Yippeee...it's finally that time again...the official Christmas season!  I have been decorating the house, putting up the tree & generally immersing myself in my FAVORITE time of year. 

I'm so glad that Hope is now old enough to do craft projects.  Over the Thanksgiving weekend, we pulled out Christmas colored pipe cleaners for this oldie but goodie project.

 

I showed Hope how to braid & she went at it intently.  She did a great job.

I thought that the candy canes would look so cute in my Christmas decor:

But, apparently, Hope had other ideas....

About an hour later, I went upstairs & found that she had removed every single pipe cleaner candy cane from all of my little displays & hung them on the knobs of her dresser.  She is too funny.  I had to leave them there!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, dear blogging friends! I hope that you are having a wonderful day.

Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

I'm prepping the house & kitchen for Thanksgiving this week.  I already had my first turkey dinner yesterday, at a friend's annual Thanksgiving potluck.  It's such a wonderful way to start off the holiday season, at an event full of friends & food.

I went on a mammoth grocery shopping trip today & have officially stocked us up for not only Thanksgiving, but for months to come.  I have so many canned goods that I needed to reorganize my storage area :) Gotta take advantage of the deals while they are happening!

The next step was to put out the table setting.  Out came the real silver, the wedding china & the antique etched glasses.  If not now, when?  I started with the wheat stalk centerpiece & arranged gourds & dried corn on either side.

 

The place settings....

I just love my etched glasses, given to me by my Aunt Kay as a graduation gift.  Thank you, Aunt Kay -- they are one of my treasured possessions.  They have a wheat design, which I think looks really nice on the Thanksgiving table.

Each one of us has a place card

Something that I like to do when we are home for Thanksgiving is to place a blank card on each plate, with lines for each person to write what they are thankful for.  I put them in my scrapbook for us to look at in years to come.

I hope that your Thanksgiving preparations are going well.  Are you staying at home or traveling this Thanksgiving?

7 Years

Yesterday was our 7th wedding anniversary.  Not a bit of the seven year itch to be found! Thank you Glenn, for making me so happy.  Love You!

(photo: card that I made for him)

Country Living French Tablecloth

I love the french country look in decorating, but I can't touch the prices on real old french linens.  So, when I saw a faux french country tablecloth project in Country Living, I had to try it.  And, I found out that the project was originally devised by a blogger, Jennifer Rizzo of Sanctuary Arts.  I *knew* that those magazines were looking to us bloggers for inspiration!

I gathered my supplies:

They added up to about $13.  A few words on the supplies that I chose:

-I purchased the dropcloth from Lowes & it has two very obvious seams once the cloth is out of the package.  There was no way of knowing this until I got it out of the package, so I'm letting you know -- buy your dropcloth elsewhere.

-I did not end up using the caulking tape.  The edges aren't perfectly straight & its really difficult to work with (STICKY!).  I used blue painter's tape instead.

-I chose "Country Apple" color paint & I might choose more of a cranberry red, should I do it over.

I washed the cloth twice, dried it & ironed it, just to get out the major wrinkles.

I taped up my stripes (measuring carefully!):

And painted, using a stencil brush in a tapping fashion:

The stripes that I went easy on the paint turned out much more nicely than the ones on which I was more generous.  Those seeped through a bit.

And, again, the finished product:

I think that it's pretty cute.  It wasn't a hard project, though it did take a few hours to complete.  Let me know if you try it out.  I'd love to see your results!

New Goodies!

I've posted more goodies in my Etsy store!

There are more Christmas ornaments:

As well as other vintage finds including this great carpenter's ruler:

And a collection of the most adorable half-pint cream bottles:

Front of bottle:

Back of bottle:

Available individually or the entire set.

Wooden spools, so great for your vignettes!

And, in case you missed them previously, I have two FABULOUS Christmas tablecloths as well:

 

I have several items that I haven't posted yet, but I'm going to take the weekend off.  I've spent hours getting everything just the way that I want it to be in the Etsy store, tweaking here & there, so I'm going to give myself the weekend!

For any of you who may have visited the store previously, you may notice that my shipping rates went up slightly (about $1 an item).  After shipping out a few items, I realised that I wasn't covering my shipping costs, so I had to make an adjustment.  But, I think that you will still find them to be reasonable.  And, I'm always willing to combine shipping if possible.  Just drop me a note & I'm happy to give you the rates.

I'm going to be working today on a project that I saw in Country Living last month, the canvas red-striped tablecloth.  I'll post pictures of my progress -- wish me luck!

Answered Prayers

So, I've been debating over whether to write this post for a week now, because it's pretty far off what I normally share.  But, it's such a huge thing in my life, I'm going to put it out there.

I've been praying to God for two things over the past few months & I got very clear answers to my prayers last week.  One prayer was for test results to come back normal for one of the dearest & most important people in my life.  And, THANK YOU GOD, they came back normal!

The other prayer was for guidance on the direction of my life.  Help in finding a way to spend more time with my family, find a means to help support our family that is also personally fulfilling.  Spend less time on my commute.  Do more of the important stuff, less of the filler. Should I stay at my job? Should I look for something else? If something else, what? 

Last Thursday, God sent me a clear message.  I lost my job.  Should I stay at my job?  God answered that pretty clearly!  But, now I'm trying to figure out what to do with what God has given me -- an opportunity. I'm at a crossroads, but what do I do with this gift? What will work best for me & my family?  I'm a big believer that what you want & need is obtainable if you are creative enough.  Dear God, if you are a blog reader, please send me some extra guidance :)

Thank you, my dear blogging friends, for reading this & always being so supportive.  Next post, back to the normally scheduled blogging :)

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

I have been a very good girl this year, so I thought that I'd send you my list early, so that you can get a head start.

This makeup organizer from Pottery Barn is just the thing to get all of my cosmetics in order. 

I NEED this 3 tiered basket from Stonewall Kitchen.  Wouldn't it be perfect in my craft room? Or my family room? Or kitchen?

I just love this Jessie Steele apron! It even comes with the towel attached.

Santa, I know that this out of print Sara Bareilles CD is super hard to find, but you can make miracles happen, right Santa?

I've taken this fabulous book out of the library so often and have learned so much from it, that I should really just have a copy of my own.  And let some other library patrons take it out once in awhile. 

 

Love this clock from Sundance.

Another item that would be just perfect in my craft room.

One of these would be fabulous...you know how I love my peppermint mochas! 

Lastly, a little pampering from one of my favorite spas would be absolutely divine.

Love,

Kim

*****

How about you, blogging friends, what do you hope will be in your stocking this year?