The Rest of My Merry Decor...

I just love snowmen! They used to be the only Christmas decor I put out, but as time goes by I add more Santa's, candy canes, gingerbread and greenery...it seems like this year I am totally nuts about trees of all sizes! I dare not count how may little trees I have tucked here and there! This is my favorite "end table" of course because it is one of my Red Wing crocks. Craig made the wood top for me and it serves double duty as storage for extra throw blankets and stuff...I made the lamp using a giant reproduction mason jar and a lamp adapter kit.
I have my Singer sewing table all decked out, too. Sorry about the tree branches in front of it- the pics of our tree further down will explain it all...LOL. The peg shelf above it I made by myself. I needed a large peg shelf big enough to fill the space on that wall (the shelf is 6 ft long) and it was going to cost me at least $70 to have someone make it for me. I designed it, cut it, painted and distressed it, then waxed it. Considering all the materials, I bet it only cost me $25 to make!
Here's an idea I got from a featured home in Country Sampler last year and it is sooo simple, too. Just take a mini tree, plop it into an old coffee tin (or colander, flour sifter or whatever..), add rusty bells to most of the tips and a rusty star to the top and you have yourself a cute lil tree! I made a fabric candy cane and dusted it with glass glitter and tucked it in, too.
This is my mini kitchen ornie tree...
I've had all these tiny utensil ornies for a few years and thanks to my tree obsession I have a place for them now! I plopped it in a little stoneware bowl and it hangs out on the corner of our table nook. Amazingly (so far...LOL), Chad hasn't stripped all the ornies off and toted them all over the house....This old step-back hutch is still my favorite and very first antique piece of furniture. It was a Christmas/B-Day gift (my b-day is two days after Christmas) from Craig two years ago. I just love it! It even smells old! I think it used to have double doors on the top part where all the china is, but they were long gone when I got it. I tucked a snowman ornie in the gravy boat in the center- my friend Barb made it for an ornie swap we both did last year. This is just a wood dough bowl I filled with wood apples and a twiggy wreath that sits on our table.....
Ok, and finally our tree.... No, it did not look this BIG (or this sparse!) out in the boonies!! LOL. We had to use a ladder and stand on the stairs to decorate it and then we realized we did not have enough ornies! Our fake tree we used for years was only 7 ft and the lack of ornies to put on made our poor tree look even more naked. Well, we didn't have the $$ right before Christmas to run out and buy more ornies and I sure didn't have time to make more, so we "made-did" with what we had. I know he's not the most beautiful, but he is our "little" tree and we love him no matter how he looks! It doesn't help that our little turd of a kitten climbs the tree and knocks ornaments off and rearranges the garland. So thanks to him our tree looks different (and disheveled..) on a daily basis....notice there are no ornies at the very top?? LOL. But I'm sure mine isn't the only cat that climbs the family Christmas tree. Oh well, at least I have a year to make more ornies and garland!

A Birthday Gift Raggedy....

This was the doll I made for my mother in law, Debbie for her birthday. She is from a Sweet Meadows Farm pattern. Deb's birthday is actually tomorrow, but we all threw her a surprise birthday party this last Saturday when she least expected it. She really liked her dolly and that made me so happy!

I had made this one for myself a while ago and she sits in an old child's rocker in my front room. She had commented on it once and said she really liked it, so I knew what she would be getting for her birthday back then. LOL. Both our dolls are wearing antique baby dresses (I think they are actually christening gowns) and old leather baby shoes. The gowns I had bought at an antique store and the shoes I always just happen upon at the thrift shop or yard sales. I think I should make a baby doll to for both dolls to hold, but that will have to wait until after Christmas so I can spend time with my family. :0) I am also making a Cars quilt for Chad. I had intended to get it done for Christmas, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. I have never made a quilt before and I have hit a few snags. LOL. There is definitely a difference between sewing dolls and quilting, I'll tell ya that! LOL. With primitives, any boo-boos can easily be fixed or sometimes add to the look, but it's a different story with a quilt- not much room for error. But heck, even if it takes me forever, I think it will turn out nice and it was a labor of love for my little guy. :0) I'm getting ready to take some more pics and will post more later tonight.

Lots and lots to share!

First off, I owe a long overdue thank you to Pea for this lovely award. I have only just recently 'met' Pea and she is truly one of the nicest and friendliest people one can meet! Be sure to check out her blog! She awarded me last week and I had intended to post earlier in the week and, well, as you can see life happened and here I am on Friday already! LOL. Boy, it has been one busy week for us. We left over the weekend and got our (enormous) Christmas tree, then Sage came down sick again on Tuesday and missed some preschool this week. She was pretty wiped out and I was ready to take her to the ped's today, but she is acting a whole lot better, so now we are on the mend and hopefully Chad doesn't catch any of it....boy, when she coughed, she sounded like a barking seal which made me think of croup. (Been there, done that with Chad as an infant) When Craig's sister was little she would get sick and have the same cough. They kept diagnosing it as croup, but later found out she actually had asthma, so that is always in the back of our minds. Luckily (knock on wood) Sage has never had any breathing problems, thus far....
We had an ornie exchange in PLOA and lookie what I got!! They were from Colleen of Colleenscraftshed. The angel ornie on top was for me and she was such a dear to think of my kids and also sent the two snowman "pops" for Sage and Chad! They were so excited to see that they also got something in the box- she also send some little chocolates and that was a big hit, too. Thanks Colleen!

And lookie at my loot from our PFATT ornie swap! We each made four ornies to exchange and that meant we each got four ornies back! Woohoo! Going clockwise from the top: the gingerbread is from Robin of Outside the Box Primitives, the prim hangtag, mini chenille canes and raggedy head ornie are from Arlene- Sweet Things by Arlene, the frog-cicle is from P.K. Gracia of Soft in the Head, and the wool bird and the beautiful cone ornie are from Jo Ellen of Lacey Jane Primitives. The beautiful Santa card in the center reads "PFATT Ornie swap 2008" and was made by Lori of Vintage Palette as a thank you for all of us that participated. We are actually the ones that should be thanking her- she offered to host the swap this year and if it weren't for her, it wouldn't have been possible- thank you Nana for all that you do for us!!

I was also going to share some more Christmas decor pics, but I feel like I have been long winded enough for one post, so maybe I can save those for later. Anyhow, with all that has been going on, we only just decorated our tree the other day and we still have a few things to do to it still.

A little Holiday decorating to share...

Well, I finally got to start putting some of my Christmas decor out the other day! Yipee! I usually do it the weekend after Thanksgiving, but we were getting ready to replace our carpet with laminate in the front room and we had to take everything out of the room to get the job done, so it was easier just to wait. Plus, we had to wait until Craig had a regularly scheduled weekend off to do it. I also wanted to share the pics of the new flooring. This is the view from the top of the stairs looking down...

You'll have to excuse the hole in the drywall above the fireplace (the dark area in front of the coffee table in case it's hard to make out in the pic)- when we moved in a few years ago, there was a fake roof with wood shingles built into the wall above a fireplace insert- last year we replaced the fireplace with our coal stove and next week that bare spot will have a nice new piece of drywall over it. I was worried about the flooring at first because it looked pretty light in the package, but now that its in, I love it! I think it's perfect! I still have a few more Christmas things to put out and since we are cutting our own tree, we are waiting until this weekend to get one so it doesn't dry out too much before Christmas.

That's also the reason why we put the flooring in now because I've vacuumed pine needles out of my carpet before and it sucks! LOL. Especially when they get stuck between the carpet and the baseboard trim. Speaking of baseboard trim, as you can see we are waiting on that until after Christmas. The reason being that I am going to do a faux finish on the upper half of the walls (yes, I'm crazy because we have vaulted ceilings and it will probably be a major pain in the #@!, but I think I will really like it when it's done) and wainscoting on the bottom, so it will be a lot easier to do the trim after all that is done.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Well, thats pretty much what I've been up to lately. I have a few dolls I'm working on for 12 Days this week and will try to share pics of them if I get a chance before we leave this weekend. I'll hopefully also have more pics to share after our tree is up. Until next time.... :0)