Candy Trees

This is what happens when I am home more now and a break in traveling for work, I get crafty! I like to look at Better Homes and Garden and Martha Stewart for ideas. BHG has a daily email you can sign up for and receive with ideas, this was one of them!

Here is the link to the project - Peppermint Tree Project

Items used for the project -

Three white foam trees from HL - $12
Candy from walgreens - Get the cheapest generic they have, it was about $10. It took a couple packages of each candy, and the gumdrops I had to go back for a third bags. If you use smaller cones that will cut down on the candy needed.

This took about 30 minutes per tree, but I did it while watching TV so it is not too bad. If you had kids, it would be great to unwrap all the candies, that was the most tedious part! I am not sure how these will keep from year to year, but I will try to put some spray adhesive on them toward the end of the month.

The Better Homes and Gardens pic

My Candy trees

Knock Off Ballard Letter Wreath

I was looking for a wreath to place on the front door of the house that could be attached to the door. The door I have is not a normal square, so the wreath hangers do not work on it.


I was inspired by the letter designs at Ballard, but did not want to pay the price. Enter Hobby Lobby! Here is what I got to make this.


Large Letter - $5 (half off at HL)
Pine Roping Material - $2.50 again half off, could use any type of garland material
Left over gold string and small ornaments from my stash
Glue Gun


Here is the inspriation from Ballard Designs.



Here are the materials I stated with. I just cut strips of the pine roping to fit the letter and used the glue gun to place it. I realized as I was doing it that the letter would stand out more if I added a bright string to it, hence the gold that was added and then the ornaments I had in my xmas leftovers.




Here is the result!





And now Placed on the front door. :)




Submitted to:

I heart Craigslist and my new chairs!

I love finding a deal, especially as I have had to made adjustments this last year. This weekend I had one of those moments. I have been looking, ok stalking, craigslist to find decorations for my home - but I want nice stuff. I drool over Balllard Designs magazine for ideas and try to replicate on my limited budget. This weekend I was looking at craigslist and found chairs from Ballard for sale! My cheapo dining table just was not looking right in my breakfast nook as it was, and I wanted an upgrade. Enter Craigslist! Found these 4 chairs on craigslist that are normally mucho bucks from Ballard.

Here is the before, good but could be better. Too matchy matchy:




And here is the after! Ballard sells chair covers that I will have to eventually replace, I know kids someday will not stand up to the ecru velvet covers on there now! These chairs are super comfy it just screams eat at the table (instead of being lazy and eating at the counter like I usually do!)

My first piece of Furniture - easy console

Now that I am home more I have been working on fixing up my house - but on the cheap. I have got really into decorating blogs, and not too long ago found a blog that has changed how I look at furniture! Ana White has a blog where she posts how to create furniture - that I can actually build! For my first project I choose a console bench on her easy list. Now, I never took woodshop and had barely used any tools when I made this. I just grabbed her plan, walked into Home Depot nervously and in the nicest voice I could asked someone there if they would help me find and then cut the wood needed. Well, the truth is that I went into Lowes first and got too nervous when the guy looked like at me like I was crazy then went to home depot and found someone who thought it was not strange for a girl to ask for those things (note here : been to lowes many times now and confidence has the effect of avoid this now!)

For this project, I just used the wood home depot cut, nails, glue and a hammer. It would have been nice with a real nailer, but for this I did not want to invest. Here is the plan I used for the easy console.

Here are all of my materials layed out.

Starting to come together

All done! Now just to stain it, but could not resist bringing it inside to see how it looked!

Found this on another blog not too long ago and loved it!