All Lit Up!

For Christmas that is! The Christmas tree is up and all decorations are in place and note to self: Remember to use garden gloves when it comes time to take the tree down! My knuckles are all sliced up from hanging ornaments and having my hands in water cooking this weekend. Ouch.

So what kind of lights did you choose for your tree? Did you use the old, warm, white or colored strands of lights or did you say out with the old and in with the new and shoot for the new LED lights? I personally love the warm feel of the older lights period. My favorite are the old school, screw on bulbs, ya know, the ones Snoopy used to decorate his dog house in Charlie Brown's Christmas cartoon.

Having said that, last year I got rid of the old bulb lights b/c I was worried about how hot they got. This year I picked up a few packages of the new LED lights to try out and though I don't care for the bluish glow of them, they are cool to the touch so they do feel safer on the tree. Below is a picture I took of the tree in night time mode on my camera. It cracked me up how the picture turned out because I had all the lights in the room turned off except for the tree. It's so electric looking!


Speaking of the new LED light bulbs, did you know that they can be hazardous to the environment if broken? I didn't realize it but they can be very harmful if broken because they hold small amounts of mercury, which is harmful to humans and animals. The bulbs are great in conserving energy but use caution when disposing of them!

A couple of months ago, I ordered a pack of 16 free LED light bulbs from our power company. The city/county offers free light bulbs to each household, you just have to call and request them. So when I got them I opened the box just to be sure they were all in one piece as not to cause any problems to the household.

Here are a couple links to some helpful information regarding light bulb disposal and recycling.

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/

http://www.lightbulbrecycling.com/regulations.html#Federal_Regulations

Another Christmas Tree

Similar to the cone Christmas tree of shells, I made another one using glitter ball ornaments. Don't you just love these things? Last week was vacation time at the beach nice! and I was able to play around and make another tree yippee! when I had some down time one afternoon.

Before vacation I painted this cone with a pale green latex paint we had leftover from painting one of the rooms in our house. There are soooo many half full/half empty paint cans out in the garage. Oh what can I find to paint next?!?!? As silly as it may seem, I just don't want to see the white Styrofoam through any of the materials I put on the tree. I'm weird that way, like it's really hiding what is underneath! Anyhow I let the cone dry before packing it for the road trip, of course. Just had to do a little prepping!  : )

Using the glue gun I covered the cone with furry, silver garland. Then I attached silver, glittery, Styrofoam ball ornaments to the cone, scattering them all over it, but not covering the cone completely. The ornaments originally had tiny plastic toppers that looped pieces of thread so the ornaments could be hung. Well those tore off easily and I was able to put a dollop of glue in the same spot on the ornaments to cover where the pieces had been ripped off. Can we hit the EASY BUTTON for that one? After placing the balls where I wanted them to go, I glued green square crafters stones in between the ornament balls and topped the tree with a silver star. Voila!

These trees are so much fun to make!  They make great center pieces for any room in the house and add a little sparkle. Mine is in the dining room sitting tall with another beaded cone tree I purchased a couple of years ago. I think it adds some elegance if I do say so myself! Who doesn't want something elegant every once in a while!



This cost under $7.00 to make!

I have some more of these to make with some different materials to try so I'll post them in the upcoming weeks. Betcha can't wait, hu! I think I'm going to give some out as gifts too but shhhh! Don't tell!

I also have some more fun gift ideas to share sometime soon too, something people of all ages will enjoy!

Lots in the works before Christmas and lots of fun projects after the holidays are over. Yay!

Personalizing Christmas Stockings

I'm excited about the tiny little project I did tonight! It's the little things, it really is! This week my son has shown lots of concern over his "Christmas sock", as he calls it, that we've already hung by the mantel with care! This year he's got a new baby brother and is afraid Santa won't know whose stocking is whose. He just isn't convinced that Santa will know. He asked me to do something so Santa will know who the stockings belong to!

I thought about it and I didn't even consider using glue and glitter like my mom did when we were kids. Not my taste really. It's fine and all and my handwriting is okay but I just didn't want to even attempt it. I'm too much of a neat freak and like organization, and my trying to use glue and glitter on stockings could turn ugly. Plus what if I messed up?

At the craft store I found some white, lightweight wooden letters but there weren't enough in the store to spell all of our names. So much for that! I kept on trucking and finally found some IRON ON Soft Flock Letters in a font I thought would match pretty well. The letters are 3/4" but come in a variety of sizes. The package reads DOT075LWT Dot at AC Moore in case you want to try it yourself. The font is a simple one with the dots on the ends of the letters, kinda cutesy but still nice and simple. You just follow the directions and it only takes about 22 seconds, at most, for each letter. Pretty sweet. I would do a run through on a test fabric first just so you make sure you get the process b/c once the letters are ironed, they are pretty permanent. Oh, and I had to buy two packages of letters so I had enough of the letters needed. A package was about $4.00 but I had a coupon! The stockings were all bought on clearance during after Christmas sales at different times too. Not too shabby!

Wanna see how the stockings turned out?





  

The result is a Pottery Barnish look with nice, clean, consistent letters to personalize each stocking and point Santa the direction he needs to go!!!

Finally A Fun Outlet For Creativity!

I'll figure this whole blog set up thing as soon as I can but for now at least there is a name. That was half the battle! I'm psyched to have at least taken this step of opening an account. I love home interiors/exteriors and enjoy trying to make our house more comfortable. In efforts to get out of a rut with everyday life I thought this would be a fun way to explore and play with decorating and being creative. I'll start posting when I can to share some little home projects that I have been doing. I enjoy reading other people's decor ideas so I think this will be fun!