Valentine Garland

Well, after several weeks of withdrawals, I caved to the cravings of the drug known as Pinterest and now I'm totally hooked again. Since Christmas is over, it is time to peruse Pinterest and glean ideas for the next holiday.... Valentine's Day! Since most of the winter days in Seattle are rather dreary, I like to have lights up after Christmas is over, so I hang up red and pink lights and some valentine garland, and voila! Valentine's Day decorations! I saw an idea on Pinterest for a very cute heart garland that I thought I'd try using just felt, embellishments, and thread. I had to try it.

First, cut two rectangles of felt-- I chose red for my hearts.

I cut mine with pinking shears since I think it adds a little pizazz. :) 

Then, sew the two rectangles together down one of the long sides.

That seam will be the top indentation of your heart. Fold the unsewn sides back over the seam and sew.

Can you tell that we have a chihuahua? Besides the hair on the heart, the chewed up pencil might be a clue also! ;)

Now you will have a heart tube that looks like this:

Cut your heart tube into strips. Again, I used pinking shears for the zig zag edge.

And the last step... use a needle and thread to string your hearts. Feel free to add embellishments like pom-poms and bows.

Ta-da! A heart garland to hang for Valentine's Day.

Christmas Crafts

Thanks to the emergence of Pinterest in this past year, I have become a bit obsessed with crafts. Especially Christmas crafts. I think it was sometime in July that I started a board for holidays, and it is filled with crafts for Christmas. I used to think of crafts as things like those wooden bead necklaces that your elementary school teachers wore, but I've come to realize that crafts can be modern, bright, and much more inexpensive than buying something at the designer stores. 

I have always liked ornament wreaths-- so bright and shiny and pretty. I saw one a few weeks back at Target for about $25, but I knew that I could make one for less than that. I had a foam wreath form from a rummage sale waiting to be used, so I gathered all of my unused ornaments and my glue gun. I also found a little wooden sign at the dollar store that I added to the top. I began by gluing on the largest ornaments and I just kept adding the smaller ones around and on top of the bigger ones until it looked complete.

There are still some areas of foam wreath peeking through, but I'll just head back to the dollar store and pick up a few extra ornaments.

I also had foam trees from the same rummage sale, so I decided to make ribbon trees. Michaels had lots of wired ribbon on sale on Black Friday, so each tree cost about $2.50 to make-- 50 cents for each tree form and about $2 of ribbon on each tree. I simply cut pieces of ribbon in approximately 5 inch lengths, and then I folded them in half and glued them around the tree from bottom to top.

These crafts were lots of fun and took the span of a Christmas movie to complete. Plus, the kids (well, Harper anyway) loved helping. Harper cut the ribbon for the trees while I glued it on.

Now, back to Pinterest for more craft inspiration!

Thrifty Easter Finds

I LOVE decorating for Easter. Perhaps not as much as Christmas, but it's a close second. The cheerful  colors and bunnies and chicks brighten the dreary Seattle spring days. And if you haven't noticed yet, sometimes (ok, a lot of times) I like what others may consider tacky. "Tacky" makes me smile and makes me proud that not many others--who may have better taste-- have it! Since my youngest, Georgia, was born around Easter, it's even more reason to love the season and DECORATE!

I thought I'd share my Easter decoration finds with you... all come from Value Village or Goodwill, of course.

Any my favorite tacky Easter decoration.... wait for it.... a glowing fiberoptic Easter bunny head wreath!

I love these vases from my Grandma...

And even though they are unrelated to Easter, my new (to me) leopard couches from the Salvation Army!

And finally, here is a birthday banner I made for Georgia using Barbie fabric scraps, felt, and bias tape:

Happy Easter Season... here's to fun decorating!!

It's So Much Fun to Accessorize

A few fun crafts I finally completed...

Why didn't I think of this a long time ago? I saw this project while exploring bunches of craft and sewing blogs-- what a great, inexpensive idea-- especially when JoAnn has buttons on sale for buy one get one free!

1--Find a few cute button pairs.

2--Clip the shank off the back of the buttons and add earring posts.

3--Voila! Super-cute new earrings!

I also made this necklace with some chain and findings I had on hand-- the charms are from one of my favorite online stores-- Antica Treasures. "Oiseaux" means "birds" in French.

Easy. Inexpensive. Fun. Three necessary components for a fun crafting experience!