Thanks.

I feel like I'm breaking some sort of rule.  It's been an entire week since Thanksgiving, and I'm going to bring it up again.  Go ahead.  Feel free to gasp.  Every other person in the universe has charged full steam toward the glittering, pine-scented, stocking-stuffed, hot chocolate-y, Rudolph-infested day we like to call Christmas.  "Infested" makes it sound terrible.  You know what I mean.  I'm in love with Christmas, I'd just like to have at least a week to properly procrastinate on my Thanksgiving musings, without feeling like the lone beacon of Thanksgivingness.  Can a girl catch a break?  I mean, I still have leftovers in my refrigerator!  Granted, they're probably no longer good, but they're there!  This is turning out to be less about Thanksgiving, and more about my motivation problem...

So we had family!  Lots of them.  And instead of cleaning my house in anticipation of their arrival, I whipped out some gold glitter spray paint and created a Thanksgiving wonderland on my mantle.  Behold.

Is "wonderland" too strong? 

Really get in there and soak up some of that glitter.  Don't really.  I'm sure it's hazardous and not intended for soaking.

It's hard to properly portray that extreme glitteriness of this spray paint.  You know what isn't hard to portray?  The price tag on the back of my chipboard letter that I was too lazy to remove.  This "project" took approximately ten minutes.  Plus drying time.  I just sprayed the letters not very carefully, then took some extra linen material, burlap and a ribbon I had on hand, and cut out my flags and letters for the "Give" banner, and hot glued them to the ribbon.  Sooo quick and easy.  

I got my extra fancy (and extra free!) Thanksgiving printable, from here.  Oh, and I stuck a Command strip to the back of that frame and just smooshed it in a approximately the correct place.  Don't tell my husband I didn't use a level...

So where were we.  Ah yes.  Festive mantle, dirty house.  But hey, it wouldn't feel like company if I weren't dashing about mopping or something as they walk in the door.

Is it just me, or do you feel like this post is turning into a gigantic confession?  Lack of motivation, laziness, procrastination...

Well, things got cleaned, and we had a grand time.  Here's a representation of most of the party animals occupying my house.  We're missing Grandma...she came the next day.  We've got Anthony's twin brother, Andrew with his wife Rachel, and their three girls: Alayna, Hannah and June.  That's Anthony's sister Angela in the middle.  Lots o' Johnsons.

Rather than give you a play-by-play of the week (though I'm sure it would be riveting), I'll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures.

And by "favorite pictures", I mean mostly pictures of my adorable nieces.

Hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving!

I Heart Garlands

I will garland something in a hot second.  Yesterday?  Pom-poms.  Today?  Hearts.  Who knows what the future may bring...

It's the day of LOVE, people!  Commercial or not, this is something to be celebrated!  With much gusto!  In preparation for this exciting event, I swung by 2nd and Charles last night to pick up some lovely free book...something that spoke of love and beauty.  Poems, music, sonnets...  As it turns out, it was slim pickings in the "Free Books" bins.  Soooo, we ended up with a dictionary.  And not just any dictionary.

 A Law Dictionary.  Oh yeah.  Can't you feel the beauty and love?

Look closely, and my symbols of love and affection actually talk about "subleases" and "verba accipienda sunt secundu subjectam materiam".  I couldn't make that up.

Not much of a tutorial to give here, folks.  I'm going to assume that the majority of you learned to fold a piece of paper in half and cut out a heart somewhere around the first grade.  Take that knowledge, and use it, my friend.  

I taped up my twine first, then took my trusty glue gun to the hearts I cut out.  Not an ounce of measuring...we're just going for an "eclectic" look.  Some call it lazy...

Mmmmm.  Love me some garland.  If you've got ten minutes and an extra book and construction paper, go garland something!

Christmas Tree Skirt

Oh, Pinterest.  You're dumbing down the crafty American woman.  No need for original ideas, folks...just hop on over to your newest addiction.  Within minutes you will literally have ideas dripping out of your ears.  Which is gross.  And expensive when you find yourself in JoAnn's buying three cart loads of supplies. 

My latest?  A tree skirt, of course!  My plain-o green skirt from Wal-Mart simply won't do (even though it will be completely covered by presents).  Pinterest boasts beautiful, home-made tree skirts around every corner...and I caved. 

This was an almost free project for me since I already had aforementioned tree skirt and some fabric - a brand new white curtain from Ikea that my dog mangled before I could ever hang it up.  I just cut around the less than desireable parts and had more than enough fabric for my newest time-wasting, but holiday-cheer-inducing project.  (Do you like the way I just glossed right over the dog mangling part?  It's like I didn't even get furious and cry and beat my head against the coffee table wondering why we ever got a dog...why our dog would purposefully ruin my life...)

Here's what we started out with.

Looks like it's seen better days.  And I'm pretty sure it started out ugly, but I know for a fact it was cheeeeap.

Next step, have your friend cut out lots of three inch strips of fabric.  If you don't have a friend willing to do this....I'm sorry.  You can't have mine.  Then who would cut my fabric?  Jamie is amazing.  And she made a tree skirt as well...check it out.  

If you don't happen to have a pair of dog-eaten white curtains handy, you'll need about four yards of fabric.  The lighter-weight the fabric, the easier it is to glue.  I suppose you could make the strips wider and do fewer of them, but I did three inch strips...the longer the better (for less starting and stopping during the glueing process).

Next, start glueing!  I started about an inch from the edge of my tree skirt, buuut I later decided to add some tan-ish muslin fabric to my skirt, so I made another layer about a quarter of an inch from the edge.  Anyhoo, just lay down a line of glue, and start pinching the fabric together to make a ruffle.  The bigger your ruffles, the longer it will take and the more fabric you will use. 

Apparently I could not be bothered to brush off my filthy tree skirt....

At the ends, just wrap your fabric around the back and glue.

Once you're made it all the way around (which will seem like forever), start on your next row...you'll get faster!

I kept all my rows about an inch apart. 

About half way through I stopped.  Bad idea.  It took me a full week to get back into it.  I moved it to the table...which proved to be much easier on the ol' back, and kept plugging away.  I ended up adding that first row of muslin (I figured it would hide dirt a little better) then I added a row of muslin after every fourth row of white.  Kinda randomly chose than number, but it ended up working perfectly.

When I finally finished it, I flipped it over and glued three sets of 12" ribbon on to the back to close it.

Flipped it back over, and shazaam!  Done! 

You can see it in her eyes...I ordered her to lay down in front of the tree and be cute.

So what do you think?  Had any Pinterest-inspired projects lately?  Or perhaps I should ask...any projects that you actually came up with your own brain power?  Kudos to you.  I think a brain surgeon would find a big ol' red and white "P" in my noggin these days.

Christmas Garland

I can see you.  Sitting there.  Twiddling your thumbs.  Wondering why I'm doing another pom-pom craft.  Wondering if pom-pom is spelled correctly (I googled it.  Martha Stewart spells it pom-pom...as opposed to pom pom, pom-pon, or pompom, sooooo we're going with that one).  Wondering if pom-poms are for everyone.

Well I'll tell you!  There are!  Go make one (or eighty).  You'll thank me. 

Christmas garland is on the agenda today.  Apparently (according to Pinterest) garland is the thing to do these days.  I thought about pinecones and felt balls and ornaments, then of course, I came back to my favorite...little fluffy pom-poms (plus I already had yarn).  Now if you recall, I went through this process with my pom-pom flowers, but I'm going to share again.  Just because it's that much fun.  Here we go.
 
Start by wrapping yarn around your fingers.  I was going for pretty small pom-poms for this project, so I used two fingers and only wrapped them twenty-five times.



Slide your little yarn conglomeration of your fingers, and cut a threeish inch length of yarn to tie around the middle.

Like the way I switched up the colors on ya there?  Ok. Now cut the loops.

It's gonna look a little wonky at first.

Just fluff 'er up and trim the long strings until you have a roundish shape.  Some of mine are more "ish" than round, but that's something we can all buck up and get past, I believe.

Next up, make them into a garland!  I would think there are myriads of different ways to accomplish this, but I decided to use twine and a big fat needle.  I found these at JoAnn's.

It's pretty important that you get the "European Quality".  Nobody wants to get stuck with "Midwestern American Quality" or "Tanzanian Quality". 

Here's my twine.  No it's not your eyes.  It's a blurry picture.  The extreme fanciness of my camera overwhelms me at times.

You guessed it.  Time to spear some pom-poms.

Final step:  Start pom-pom-ing your abode!

 

I did have that garland on the fireplace swagged (surely I didn't use that correctly...) in the middle, but apparently I need to find a better swagger than scotch tape...

So how 'bout it?  Have I won over any pom-pom skeptics?  Also, yes.  Those flowers on my coffee table are absolutely dead.