Organizing, Shopping, Crafting Oh My!

For those that don't know, I LOVE projects! Any kind of project is enough to get me going in the morning, and keep me moving well past hunger and exhaustion! I love organizing projects, cleaning things out projects, scrapbooking projects, sewing projects, decorating projects, crafty projects, and shopping projects (when I only have a set amount to spend and a list of things to get and trying to find the best way to get the most for the $).

So, here I am a few days after Christmas and I have lots of projects! The first one I tackled was getting my house back to normal after Christmas. Taking down decorations and cleaning and repacking and putting stuff back up which usually looks a bit different cause I got some new items. Then, the shopping project. I got some $ as a gift and also had to take something back and there were some crafty things on my list. So I spent a couple of days (not the whole day) trying to find the best prices and somethimes going to some stores several times! Ok, so I don't care for that part but I like the challenge of trying to find a particular item.

For Christmas the thing I wanted most was a new sewing machine. And thankfully my mom bestowed this much wanted gift on me! I have grand plans of sewing some pillows/covers and then whatever strikes my fancy! I know, really ambitious. I bought some fabric and I have the pillow form and just need to sit down and play with my new machine. I also really want to learn to knit so I have my stuff ready and waiting for me to learn. I also got for Christmas the new Project Life kit and I'm waiting on it to come in so I can get started on that as well. AND, I have a little craft project for Trey's room that I'll share later.

It's a long list of new fun creative projects and I can't wait to get at them. You'll be hearing more about this for a while as this what's going on in my life right now.
Wish me luck!

Knitting, a new project

So, Sunday afternoon we're just hanging out at home not doing much when I start to feel yuck. My head had the pressure and a runny/stuffy nose and the glands on my neck start swelling and hurting. Yep, I had a cold. On Monday, we had plans with our besties to celebrate Christmas together (like we do every year) and I did ok considering. Yesterday I was useless. Thankfully David is home on vacation so he was able to take care of me and Trey. He had a great time playing mom, he even did the laundry! But by last night I was determined to be better today. I can only lay around one day then I need to get up and do something! So this morning even though I wasn't 100% I felt good enough to get out of the house and go to Hobby Lobby.

I'm going to learn how to knit. I got a book that shows you how and has lots of cute patterns. I got some needles and accessories from my bf on Monday. So today I went in search of some yarn. I'd never looked at yarn before, I mean other than glancing at it and going on my way. I wasn't that excited about HL's selection but I think for right now in learning I got some I'm happy with. I'm excited to start this new creative outlet. I don't know where it'll take me but I'm very excited about it. So, I'm going to spend the rest of the day/evening trying to learn how to make washcloths and hopefully start feeling better!

Christmas Traditions

I'm a guest poster on I Believe in Christmas, and I wrote about Christmas traditions and I would love it if you'd head over there and check it out!
Can you believe that Christmas is only 8 days away! We start our Christmas celebrations tonight with some out of town family. It will be so fun with Trey this year, he understands what presents are this year.
Merry Christmas!

More on Christmas Decorating

It seems this year some of my Christmas decor is an ever changing thing. So, I'm going to share some more pics of some of my decorations. Please excuse some of the blurry pics, I was in a hurry to take them and didn't want to get out the tripod.

This is the left side of our piano. The "joy" canvas is one I painted myself with the only nativity scene I left out this year.



Here's a view of the whole piano area. I put fake greenery from Hobby Lobby over the pics on the wall. The glass hurricane holds some green balls with some pine cones from my inlaws yard and my red candle holders.



Our tree. David and Trey decorated it by themselves this year and they did a great job. My tree skirt is just some red fabric with a snowflake sheer fabric. The sheer is just laid on top of the red and just tucked around the tree. I didn't sew this at all. And I love the way it looks!

It's hard to see in the pic but the candle is on a beautiful red plate I found at Ross for about $3, love it! Just some pine cones from the yard and an extra ornament.

This is one of the shelves on our bookcases. I love this look, it's got a clean but rustic feel. I don't have a clue where we got the sign, but the glass hurricane is from Ross for about $6 and more pine cones from the yard. The green snowflakes were from Target for $1 and our Yankee Candle.

Another pic of the mantle. The glass candle holders are from Hobby Lobby $5 for the pair (on sale). The big one was a HL buy from years ago. The red garland in it was from Target for about $3. The silver vase was from Ross a few bucks, all the greenery is from HL on sale, as well as the green balls. The apothicary jars are also from Ross, about $10 ea and I LOVE them!

Ok, so that's about it in my living room. I've really started to realized that I like a more natural look for Christmas decorating, ie the pine cones and greenery. Not as much of the usual Christmas decorations. I like the rustic with the pretty.

I would love to hear what style you prefer in your decorating, please share!

I'm writing this post as part of the Christmas 2010 Tour of Homes put on by the Nester.



New kind of Scrapbooking

Most of my albums, wow I have a lot!

I've been a scrapbooker for almost 12years. I had a friend that sold Creative Memories back then and I fell in love! I was recently married and had wedding pics I wanted to do something with. I'd always loved creating with my hands and my mom instilled in me the importance of keeping family memories/records. So I quickly jumped right in. After a couple of years I was getting bored with the selection of products that CM offered and found some SB stores and fell in love all over again! So many new things to play with! So I started changing the way I was SBing. I loved the hobby and I loved knowing I was giving my family a physical record of our life.

Trey's baby book

Fast forward to a few months ago. I had some pages waiting to get started and I had no motivation to get them done. Not always a surprise with me, I sometimes go in spurts with my creativity. I get very motivated and do a ton then go a couple of months before I'm ready to go again. But this time I just haven't felt like it. I think I've finally realized that maybe I need to change the way I SB.

I found that Becky Higgins (the SB queen) had created some kits that help you SB but not the traditional whole page kind of way. It's called Project Life and encourages you to record your everyday life not just the big events. This appealed to me cause I had no problem with the big events but struggled with the everyday stuff. It was also super simple and so it didn't take up a lot of time. So, I'm really hoping I can snag myself one of these kits soon (they aren't out yet but should be soon).

In November I found this app for my iPhone that's called Project 365 (I think it was free or really cheap). It reminds me daily to take a pic and then in the app it shows me my pics in a monthly view and also has a spot to write what was going on if you want. I've loved this! I really like looking back over the last month and seeing what we've done and all the cute things I've managed to photograph Trey doing!

This is a pic of what my November looked like.

So, I think I'm definitely changing the way I'm going to be SBing in the future. I might still do the occasional whole page but I think for most stuff I'll try to do a much quicker version.

I'd love to hear about how you record your family's memories or if you do!

Christmas Decorating

This year I changed the way I decorated for Christmas. In past years I’ve tried to fill every area of at least my living room with Christmas décor, and most of the time hitting the dinning room and kitchen as well. The tree would be loaded with ornaments and we were running out of room on it. Then last year we had a beautifully curious 18mo old. I had to seriously reconsider what was put out and on the tree. Our tree looked pitiful last year as only the top half had ornaments.



I’d grown tired of too much décor and the feeling of the room closing in. I also noticed that over the years we’d collected quite a range of different Christmas items. We had nutcrackers, snowmen, snowflake stuff, Santa stuff, nativity sets (several), plus tons of random items. In years past I’d have areas where all the nativity sets would go, all the nutcrackers and so on. But over the last 2 years some of my furniture has changed and it meant less surface area for stuff.


So this year I started to reevaluate what I wanted the house to look like and feel like. As I started unpacking Christmas decorations I quickly realized that most of it went right back in the box. I found myself only wanting to put up greenery, candles, and ornaments/beads/bells/pinecones in glass bowls, vases and apothecary jars. David and Trey decorated the tree and they only put up the favorite ornaments, leaving a lot in the box.

My mantle.
Please excuse the blurry pic, my living room is very low light, I have the hardest time taking good pics in there. And please don't look at the ugly rock that is my fireplace surround. But the actual mantle I'm pleased with.

I love it! It feels like the season of Christmas without the overpowering items all vying for my attention. I wanted our home to feel warm and festive and as usual comfortable and a place that David wants to come home to. I think that when I pack everything up again, I’ll reconsider keeping some of the things I didn’t put up. I don’t like storing things that I’m not using or going to use.

Are you being intentional about the way you decorate for Christmas or is it the same old same old?