Christmas Extravaganza!

Hi Folks,

Christmas will soon be upon us and I for one have several projects to finish.  Not only do I love decorating the house for the winter holidays, but making those decorations is even more fun.

Below are a list of projects I have in the works that I'll share, as I complete them I'll post them up on the blog:

Christmas Tree Odds and Ends:
- make new ornaments out of colored chandelier pieces from antique store
- make new ruffle tree skirt
- (hopefully) make new tree topper
- increase collection of blue and aqua Shiny Brights
- make handmade reflectors to enhance lights and colored ornaments

Stockings:
- finish tropical themed stockings for my parents' house (6)
- make quilted off-white stockings for our house (5)
- create some sort of hanging system for stockings for our mantle-less fireplace

Table Top Decorations:
- recycle and refinish cake stands from our wedding for holiday party
- convert some barely used glassware for entertaining

Decorations:
- make collection of Christmas Tree Cones
- make or obtain paper star lamps for windows
- refinish brass ornament trees to silver
- make smaller ornaments for said ornament trees (likely also chandelier pieces)

I will be trying to finish some, if not all, of these projects over the next month or so, in time for our annual Festivus Party (more on that in another post).

Can't wait to share these projects with you!

Nightmare Before Christmas Pumpkin

Long time, no blog!  Hope everyone is having fun gearing up for Halloween this week.  Though Halloween isn't my all-time favorite of all the holidays, there are still some fun traditions that I like to keep up as an adult.  One of those is pumpkin carving!  Below is my version of recreating Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas, one of my favorite movies.

All you need is a nice more round pumpkin, some white paint, carving knife, electric tea lights and you're all set.

First you have to do the dirty work of scraping out the pumpkin.  After cutting the top off, I still use the same method that my mother used when we used to carve pumpkins as kids. If you have one, it works wonders but this old school plastic spoon that she gave me, still does the trick.  It's great for scraping along the sides and with the long hand, you don't have to get too messy!  

Once the pumpkin is hollowed out, I draw my design on with a pen, then color in with marker where I need to cut out.  Remember that even though small intricate cuts are nice to look at, try to be realistic depending on what tools you have to work with! There are many nice stencils available online if you just want to search for them on Google.

Once the design is carved, you can paint the pumpkin with white paint.  I used a mixture of white interior paint with white grout to make some chalk paint but you can use whatever you have handy.

Let your pumpkin dry and then you're ready to put him outside!

Also check out this awesome Joker pumpkin design my husband chose.  He just printed out the template, cut out the shaded areas with an X-acto knife, traced the edges and carved it out!

                                     Happy Halloween!

Fall/Winter Capsule Wardrobe!

Hi Everyone!

Took a little break from posting since work was sooo busy but I wanted to offer some suggestions for a neutral fall/winter capsule wardrobe. 

Below are the pieces I have included in mine and so far they are working out very nicely.  What's nice about this selection is that it can be mixed and matched with some other pieces from the spring/summer wardrobe I put together at the end of the summer.  All the blouses are mostly short sleeve so I can throw a sweater over them or use them in the spring/summer when some of the navy tops have to go to the dry cleaner.  All that is missing from the set up below are:

Two pair of dress pants (Express, one grey, one black)
Calvin Klein grey peplum dress
Big chunky wrap cardigan sweater (TBD)
Two dressier skirts for holiday parties (one Calvin Klein sequin skirt and one black Ann Kline faux alligator skirt)! 
Sturdy dress heels (not stilettos, just get wedges)  I have the ones below in black
Black riding boots (Born)
Warm wool coat, with scarves and gloves. 
Black tights

Having paired down to minimal clothes, the closet is looking pretty good.  No longer are my clothes shmooshed and cramped but the closet looks neat and tidy. 

Hope this gives you some ideas for expanding and integrating capsule wardrobes!