A Simple Mantel

Okay, so I don't actually HAVE a mantel. But last year when we tore down most of the wall that separated our kitchen and living room we were left with a half wall that we made into a long shelf/mantle type thing. I wasn't blogging at the time, that's actually when I found out about blogs in the first place!

Here's just a quick year old before and after shot for you.

BEFORE 

(the blue tape is to mark the pass through we THOUGHT we were going to make!)

AFTER

I don't usually put anything on the half wall, you know, except mail, homework, and any other junk that piles up. But at Christmas it's the perfect spot for my lit garland that looked oh so beautiful on our mantel at our last house.

This year I planned on making a big mercury glass display for the kitchen table, so I bought some glasses from the dollar store and some looking glass spray paint. Well, try number one didn't work out so well, and before I had time to try it again I found a beautiful place for the glasses. I love them just as is!

Here is a close up of one of the dollar store glass candle holders.

I also picked up 4 of these red mercury glass votive holders at Target for $.99 each.

It looks so beautiful at night even without the candles lit. And since I wake up with my husband WELL before the sun comes up I get oodles of time to enjoy it every day!

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Collection Box Advent Calendar

Over the summer my Grandma "Nana Slinkman" gave me her old collection box and all of her little delftware pieces that she kept in it. (I don't know if it's the real stuff or not, but it's from my Nana so it doesn't matter:) FYI Delft is Dutch earthenware decorated by hand in blue on a white background. I looked that up :) I'm 100% dutch, which means my parent's and grandparent's homes are all filled with little blue and white earthenware woodenshoes and paintings of windmills. When we were little we'd sit in our kitchen and try to count all of the windmills.....fun times :)

So anyways! I thought the collection box and collection was beautiful but haven't found the perfect spot for it yet. I right away covered up the 70's style "My Collection" with some scrap fabric and a glue gun. The other day while decorating my living room for Christmas I came across the box again and started counting the cubbies for no particular reason. There were 25. That got me thinking....

I could make this into an advent calendar just for the Christmas season! So I ran to Hobby Lobby for cardstock and number stickers. I made little boxes for each cubbie out of the cardstock and then put a number on the front of each one.

Unfortunately each and every cubbie was a different size. So this part took a lot of measuring and a lot of time. I'll do a separate post soon on how I made the boxes. It was just measuring, folding, and taping. 

I filled each box with 2 treats, one for each cutie, but there was plenty of room for more if ever needed. You know, if we get a dog one day ;) If you're wondering how I know there won't be any fights about who gets what, my big guy is allergic to chocolate. So that solves that! BTW, Party City sells lots of little candies 15 for a dollar.

I'm really excited to show my Nana how I repurposed her collection box. I hope she likes it as much as the kids and I do! We've never even had an Advent calendar before!!

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An Alternative to a Wreath

I love wreaths. Especially when I've made it myself. After adorning the front of my house with three burlap wreaths the other week I put my Christmas berry wreath up on the door. All of the sudden my house looked like it was covered in circles. Is was definitely off. 

Then I remembered a picture I had pinned on Pinterest some time ago.

via

I wasn't a big fan of the color ribbon used, so since it's turning into a burlap Christmas around here I thought I might as well keep going with it! :)

Spoiler Alert:

Here's how mine turned out!

It looks much better and breaks up the other three circles hanging on the house.

So here's what I started with:

Burlap cut into strips

Twine

Cinnamon pinecones from Hobby Lobby

Big jingle bells from Hobby Lobby

Hot glue gun

I thought I'd change mine up even more and add a nice jingle to my door with the bells. But after trying it out they just didn't look right or lay right on the door. Oh well!

I glued the burlap onto the top of each pinecone and laid them out on the floor.

This was before I realized that the bells weren't working:)

Once I had a nice bushel of pinecones going I took them to the door to see if I should use more or less. 11 ended up being the perfect amount.

I laid the burlap strips on top of each other nicely in a pile then took it to the door and cut them to about the length I wanted.

I had a Command hook already on my door that I wanted to reuse so I folded over the burlap strips and just pushed the hook into the gaps in the burlap.

Then I tied some twine around it into a bow!

And there you have it! It only took an hour or two. I may have been interrupted a few times by a little boy and little girl though ;)

You'll have to excuse the color of the door. It's actually just primed, we had a new door installed a few weeks ago and we ordered it unfinished to save some cash. Unfortunately it won't be warm enough to paint it until next spring :( But I'm just SUPER happy to have that old green monster from 1950 finally gone. We had no choice but to buy a new one when it stopped closing/locking!! Can you say safety hazard?!

Here it is with some more afters for you!

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Rescued Farmhouse Table

Well, it took me weeks longer than it should have I expected, but the farmhouse table Scott found me is finally done! :)

Here is the before once again:

After lots of cleaning, sanding, staining, painting, distressing, and waxing here is the after!

I went with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in french linen and pure white just as I planned. The top isn't exactly what I was going for, nevertheless I think it turned out beautiful and I am proud of it :)

I started by using some paint removing gel on the table top to remove most of the original stain. Then Scott sanded it down really well for me until it was bare wood. I love when he does the dirty jobs for me :)

Then I felt stuck. I wasn't sure if I should stain the top before whitewashing it. So I tested a spot and here's what it looked like. Not good!

After sanding that area down again I stained it with some Minwax Jacobean stain. Then I felt stuck again! After the hours of work I put in on a piece of furniture I get super scared to do anything else to it, what if I ruin it and have to start over?!?!

Well, after some encouragement from Scott I decided to dry brush the top with pure white so that the stain would show through. Here's how it looked after two coats. 

It was okay, but not everything I'd been dreaming of. So I decided since it probably couldn't get any worse I should try whitewashing over the whole thing. And hallelujah, it worked!! It helped it look less stripy and more like a weathered white table top.

You can see in my pictures that I was impatient and did things out of order. While I was feeling stuck on the table top I went ahead and painted the legs with french linen. This went incredibly fast and I loved them right away. But then while staining and painting and whitewashing the top I of course splattered on the apron a few times and had to touch everything up!! Have patience, have patience, don't be in such a hurry.....

To protect it I used a few coats of clear wax on the table top and I used dark wax on the legs.

I am planning on selling the table. I'm going to try Craigslist and also I'm going to look into Ebay Personals. I just read about it in my MIL's Good Housekeeping mag, have any of you tried it? Wish me luck!!

Here's some more afters for you!

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Outside Wreaths

I tackled the outside lights this weekend. I'm afraid of heights, but having lights on the house is worth the terror ;) It actually went really well this year, I bought some new lights that are heavy duty and wrapped around three sides of the house! My first time doing it I made the mistake of buying inexpensive lights that only connected a few strands at a time and ended up needing to plug them in at two different locations. It was a disaster. Has anyone else been in that situation?!

Well, getting the lights up got me feeling VERY Chirstmasy! I found this little wreath at Target for $4 while picking up the lights.

I got 2 of them for my front windows. First I fluffed them up a little, then I got out my hoard of burlap and cut about an inch thick strip.

I tied a knot in the middle and then tied a bow. I used some embroidery thread to tie it to the wreath. 

I put the thread on a needle and pushed it through the back of the bow.

Then just tied it on!

I hung them on the front windows using some command hooks. They're stuck right to the glass. 

Here they are, and there's me in my pj's and a winter jacket taking pictures in my front yard while the whole neighborhood drives by :)

I love them, and they'll look even nicer when the Christmas tree is right in the middle of that picture window!

I also gave a makeover to a big wreath I already owned. I bought this wreath at Hobby Lobby about 6 years ago and decorated it with the berries and ribbon and bow myself.

Yeah, nothing too special. I realized that in 6 years I had never even fluffed the thing! Look at the difference:

Better already, huh? I stuck with the burlap theme and cut out some more strips, this time a bit thicker. I just weaved the strips through the wreath, made a bow, and attached it the same way as before. It took about 3 strips.

Here it is hanging on the front of the house. 

Hopefully by the weekend I'll have the front stoop ready for a reveal, then I'll show you a whole house view. 

I was very bad last night and plugged in the lights. I couldn't help it, after all that work I HAD to enjoy it!! I made my husband promise to not let me do it again until Friday :)

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