Loving YHL

I couldn't wait for Santa to bring me the YHL book, so I ordered it from Amazon about a month ago(I'm glad I did - its been back ordered for the last couple of weeks!).

It's basically an extension of their blog with lots of easy (and cheap!) decorating ideas.

A great place to turn if you need a little kick start in the inspiration department (sounds painful!!), plus it gives you a realistic time scale of how long projects are going to take and cost.

 

Young House Love

 

I've got a couple of their tutorials picked out, so watch out for how they turn out.

 

Kate

xxx

Stalking David

This weekend I will (weather permitting) be at Mall of America.  Not doing any last minute shopping, but stalking David Bromstad.  By complete coincidence, HGTV have a special Holiday House set up at the mall with special guests throughout December.

I get the feeling there will be a lot of queuing involved!

 

HGTV.com

 

Even his signature is creative!!  I'm currently rummaging around the house trying to find something cool for him to autograph.  Can he really not have a book (I checked Amazon, and nothing!!).

 

 

Kate

xxx

Tacky Tinsel

For my sweet friends at work, I wanted to get creative.  I had amazing plans of wrapping their paper mache initial with red and white yarn and adding some kind of christmassy accent flower.

This kind of idea.  I wanted rustic-crafty-Christmas.

 

Pinterest.com

 

I got half way up an L and quickly realised this was not going to look good.  I ended up with rubbish-crappy-shitmas!!

 

Back to the drawing board.

 

I started with a basic paper mache letter from Hobby Lobby:

 

 

 

I added the magic ingredient (hot glue!!) and a lot of tinsel.  It was amazingly quick and easy to manipulate round the letters.  I also picked up some cute little owl decorations from World Market that I hot glued into place.

 

 

Here they are all together (J, G, H and L):

 

 

How cute are these little guys, and the handy hook on the top means you can hang them too:

 

 

 

 

 

It would be so easy to spell out a word for your mantle (Joy, Merry, Noel).  I love that they are bright and fun and maybe just a little bit tacky :-)

 

Kate

xxx

 

Linking back to Nifty Thrifty Things

Origami - am I late to the party again?

I feel like I might be a bit late in jumping on the origami band wagon, but I'm on it now and I'm driving that sucker!!

This trio of amazingness is currently winging it's way to me (hopefully - USPS?):

 

For less than $3 each and free shipping, you can't beat www.cb2.com

 

CB2 also have these 2 scowling owls:

 

 

www.cb2.com

 

Target, not to be outdone in the origami stakes, have this sweet little fox

 

 

www.target.com

 

And this trio of birds is from Amazon:

 

Amazon.com

 

 

Kate

xxx

Party Poinsettia

Somehow I ended up making the centerpieces for my work Christmas Party.  I'm not entirely sure how it all happened.  I vaguely remember a conversation about the restaurant charging us $50 PER TABLE for their flowers.  I think by now you know I don't like to overpay for anything, so coughing up $300 for one night of festive revelry was clearly not an option.

"I'll make them" I heard myself saying.  Three days, six centerpieces, zero experience, how hard can it be??!!

There was only one place to turn, Pinterest!

Luckily, there were a variety of tall plain glass vases left at work from various valentines and birthday flower deliveries.

I also had a stacked apothecary jar, similar to this one, that I thought I could somehow incorporate.

 

westelm.com

 

And this was the end result:

 

 

I added burlap to line the tall vases (to look nice and hide the stems), around the rim of the circular vase, and to make the bow on the small vase.  The flowers and berries were all from either Michaels or Dollar Tree, and I mixed in some greenery from our front hedge.    The small vases were also from Dollar Tree and I filled them with mints.  All in all, it probably cost about $50 to do all six tables.  Ha ha, Kate 1, overpriced restaurant nil :-)

 

 

 

Kate

xxx

Christmas mantle, O Christmas mantle! (it sounded good in my head!)

Moving from a small apartment, we don't have too many Christmas decorations (yet - watch out Target sale, I'm coming for you!).  For the mantle I tried to use some of the items we already had around the house or that I could buy relatively cheaply.

 

The owl we relocated from another shelf, the MERRY was $1 from Michaels, the red flowers were two $1 bunches also from Michaels, the upside down square vase we already had tucked away, and the little red bird was from our trip home.

 

On the other side of the mantle:

 

 

The little red boot and Noel we already had.  I'm always on the lookout for Christmas ornaments that will also look good off the tree and if you're lucky year round (we have 4 little glass pears in our dining room that were Target Christmas ornaments).  The reindeer was a whopping $4 from Michaels (originally $10 marked at half price, and then I had a 20% off coupon), and the round vase was left over from one of the table decorations I made for our work Christmas party (more on that in a later post).

 

It fits perfectly with our red/white/silver/green theme we have going on in the living room.  Cheap, cheerful and festive.  Perfect!

 

Kate

xxx

 

Christmas tree, O Christmas tree!

We dusted off the 6 footer and spread out his sparse little branches.  He really is a sad sight without any decorations or lights.

 

Tinsel is always a good filler, so I layered the lights first, then tinsel, then plain ornaments, then the slightly nicer ones (by slightly nicer, I mean not from the Dollar Tree!). 

 

And here he is (yes, that is a London bus - surely everyone knows it's not Christmas without a London bus!):

 

 

And a close up of some of our ornaments (thanks mum for the robin):

 

 

Kate

xxx

 

 

Linking back to Thrifty Decor Chic Christmas Tree Party