A Youtube Inspired Project

I don't know about you, but most of the time I watch DIY videos and pin all sorts of pictures, but then never actually get around to doing any projects that I felt so inspired by. Well, this time I decided to give a project I saw on youtube by Robeson Designs (you can find the video here). 

I began by selecting one of my old books that I don't really care about (I have never read it and never will, just had it on a shelf because it was old and looked nice with my other old books). Following the instructions from the youtube video I cleaned up all of the binding edges and rolled a lot of paper rolls! I then found a piece of cardboard I didn't need, made the circles (Mine were smaller than the video because I didn't have anything as big as in the video to back the wreath on) and started gluing!! As a finishing touch I glued some cheap ornaments in the very center to minimize having to use my good ornaments, glued the poinsettia in the middle and then started filling in the sides with left over bulbs that I hadn't use elsewhere to decorate for Christmas. All in all, I was really happy with how it turned out. Now I just have to figure out how to store it!!!!

Below are pictures of the final product.... Enjoy! (The last picture is taken with flash on to try to give you a better feel for the color of the poinsettia and bulbs).

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Okay, so I am a little late to the sharing our Christmas decorations... December has been a busy month for us, we were gone for the first week on a mission's trip (which I still need to post pictures of, Sorry!), so we didn't put the tree up until a week after we got back. I'm still in the process of putting together our table for New Years Dinner (that will be when we celebrate Christmas with my parents and some other family), but I thought I would share some of what we had put together. I try to keep everything with a similar look and feel and color scheme because we live in an apartment and everything is so close together, that I don't want it to clash. Anyhoo, here's our home (or at least what I'm going to share with you - there are certain rooms that will not be seen by anybody until I get to cleaning them out....) :)

I still need to take pictures of our tree... as soon as our living room is fit to be seen, I'll do that. :)

Hope you enjoyed a little look into our home. :)

It's December!!!

You know what that means!!! Time to put up the Christmas decoration and Christmas tree!!!
I started switching out all the fall decorations in our apartment (there wasn't much) for Christmas decor on Sunday. We are holding off on the Christmas tree until hubby gets back from the Dominican, but I just couldn't wait to start decorating...  (What can I say... I'm like a raccoon... I'm attracted to shiny things that sparkle....)

I went to the Christmas Tree Store while I was in PA for Thanksgiving with my mom and I scored two lit silver Christmas trees for $1.99 a piece! I was very happy... and I found a container of mini blue Christmas bulbs at Ollie's for 1.49 (or 1.79 - I can't remember) Between that and the few things I found at Hobby Lobby, I only spent less than 10 dollars on adding to our Christmas collection and I love the added extra sparkle they give to our dining room!

I'm not finished with the dining room table yet... There are a can of silver spray paint and some old bronze napkin rings that have my name on them!!! 

Re-purposed Christmas Candles

Good Morning All... This morning I wanted to share some pictures of some Christmas candles that I re-purposed. They used to be regular cream candles and candles that had red and white snowflakes on the outside of them. Well, I don't use red in my Christmas decorations, so I wanted to change them up so they would match the Christmas decorations, and could stay out all winter, matching the decor of my living room. For the base I used an existing candle holder - just storing away the normal candles and rocks for the rest of the Christmas/Winter season.

Supplies:
Paper: Basic card stock, My Minds Eye 6x6 Christmas pack
Embellishments: Shapes cut out with Spellbinders die cuts, foam sparkle snowflake stick-ons, twine, borders cut out with Recollections border punch

And we're almost done....

In our master bedroom, we have a hotel style bathroom attached. (sink in room, toilet and shower in a separate room). Since I'm pretty organized, we keep the things out on the sink to a minimum and are able to use the great storage under the sink and in the medicine cabinet. We also have a HUGE closet, which I'll show you in a separate post. But for the bedroom, the only window is not centered on the wall, but I wanted to put our king sized bed up against the wall with the window to maximize our room in the space, so we hung the rods for the curtains centered in the room as if there were two sets of windows or a huge centered set. Since we keep the curtains closed in the bedroom, you can't even tell. Because doing that eliminated the only natural light in the room, I added two small mirrors behind the bedside lamps to try to reflect as much light as possible back into the room. all of the mirrors in the room came from Kirklands. If you have a store near you and you watch the sales you can snag mirrors for really great prices there (I got both of the small mirrors on each side of the bed for 11.98 total for both. :) ) 

 That is the door to our closet. (I know the mirror isn't centered - the light switch is in a bizzaro spot and we hung it as centered as we could!)

 Since we are renting and I didn't want to put any more holes than necessary in the walls, I just threw up a 3M hook for a hand towel, plus keeping it small, you can't even see the hand towel from the bedroom.

 Under the sink, I organized all like items together. In the small front basket is all of our cold medicines (I know people say you shouldn't store that stuff in the bathroom, but since this isn't in the bathroom with the shower and toilet where most of the moisture, I figured it would be find - plus, the only empty cabinet in the kitchen is filled with our daily meds and vitamins) The back basket is seasonal items/travel items that we don't use very often.

 Since there wasn't quite enough space under the sink, we bought a wrack to put in and give some extra shelving. the bottom holds all of the stomach meds, the middle shelf is all the first aid/bandaids and the top bin holds all of my hair stuff (blow dryer, straightener, hair products, etc) The shelf was only like 5 or 6 bucks at K-Mart,  and the big basket was 5 at Walmart. The Small baskets I grabbed for 10 cents a piece at a yard sale.

The hope chest at the end of my bed was a gift from my parents about 11 years ago. I eventually intend on changing the hope chest at the end of the bed to match the rest of the furniture,  but that is a future project. Right now it houses all of my out of season clothes. (Thankfully, hubby's seasonal and non-seasonal clothes all fit in the closet and the bottom three drawers of our dresser!)

And those are my two buds, Bert and Ernie. (Okay, I don't really call them that, the names just came to me. lol) Our air humidifier and purifier b/c I have horid year long in-door/out-door allergies, these help keep me breathing! There is pretty much no way to hide them right now, so I just satisfied my OCD need for having symmetry and placed one on each side of the dresser!

Eventually that picture will get hung on the wall, but for now it sits on the back of our dresser.

Anyhoo, that's the bedroom!

Laundry, Linens, and Guest Bath

Hello all.... I am back... I did not have access to my blog last week during the day, but I do again, so I thought I would share some more pictures of the apartment with you. I was soooo happy to find that this apartment had a linen closet. It was one of the things that I didn't care for in our last apartment... A lack of proper storage space for towels, spare sheet sets, laundry stuff, TP, etc. PTL, this apartment has a lovely linen closet with the perfect amount of space for storing all of those necessities! We also have a small washer and dryer again, which is a must, because we just don't have the time to go to a laundry met every week!

My apologies in advance, blogger appears to have placed the pictures in whatever order it pleases today!

 I wanted a fast (and cheap) way to give guests something to put their toothbrushes in when using our guest bathroom, so I took a bottle that used to have Bath and Body Works Bubble Bath in it, cleaned it out, got out some patterned cardstock and white cardstock, and then adheared to the bottle with some clear laminate paper (easy find at any Dollar Store).

 Did the same for the labels on these bins. The bins are from Dollar Tree as well (Loooove that store!)

 Our linen closet - the top has our iron and spare filters and such. The next has our laundry supplies, and floor cleaning products, as well as beauty supplies, then we have a shelf for the TP as well as house hold cleaning products corralled in a 5 dollar bin from Walmart. That little blue bin off to the left holds some misc. things that didn't have a home or I didn't have enough of one thing to fill up the entire basket! The next shelf is for towels and washcloths. I have a bin for washcloths and a bin for hand towels and I just roll up the towels and place on either side. The bottom shelf is for sheet sets and the bottom has a portable spa kit, our beach towels and a basket full of things that don't have a home yet. :) (Work in progress peeps!)

 This is our spare (i.e. catch all) room. And that is the door. That is all you shall be seeing of that room right now. :)

 PTL, a washer and dryer!

 Guest bathroom

More guest bathroom

 Cetaphil (for my crazy sensitive skin)... and another jar I recycled to hold Q-tips

 Some beach pictures I cut out of a travel magazine make up the art work for the bathroom....

and a small basket of necessities should any guests find themselves forgetting anything at home!!!

And that is our tour for today!

PS - I finally was issued an office.... PTL!!!!!!

And on to the kitchen, dining room, and entry way.....

While I'm on a roll, I'll share a few more pictures.... of our dining room, kitchen (with a PANTRY - PTL), and our entry way.

 In our old apartment, we had the palm pictures up in our living room, as was the black bookshelf, but they seemed to fit better in the living room and we didn't have room for the bookshelf in the living room, so we moved them into the dining room, I know bookshelves in the dining room isn't the most usual choice, but I like it there. I think it works for the space.

 If you look reaaaaaaaallly closely in the white cake holder, you'll see some ceramic pumpkins I picked up to add a little fallishness to the room. There is also a giant bronze leaf plate on the dining room table.... and the picture doesn't show it but right now we have some great fall flowers on the table as well. I love the fall... :)

And our entry way - right now it is a landing place for my work bag. and our slippers occasionally. The mirror was a great find from Ikea - it was only 9.99. We hope to eventually find a small table to place there where we can put our keys/work badges/etc.

And our kitchen... let me tell you I was a little nervous about moving into this place because the apartment we were shown had ANCIENT and UGLIEST cupboards EVER!!!!!! It was the best place for our needs other than that though, so we took the apartment... Then we get the keys and walk in to our actual apartment and PTL we have new cabinets, new flooring and new counter tops!!!! (The dishwasher and stove are ancient, but those are workable) The Lord is so good to not only provide for our needs, but also the desire of our heart! They also swapped out our ANCIENT and UGLY vanity in our master bathroom that looked like it had been installed about 60 years ago..... It was nasty, but they replaced it without us even having to ask! :) :) :) :)  We were able to fit our daily appliances on the counter tops with just as much if not more space left over for cooking/preparing dinner. And I put our recipes on top of the fridge for easy access.

But, back to the kitchen, not only do we have the kitchen but a pantry as well, where I can store all of our canned/boxed foods and other larger items that don't fit well in the cupboards. We were even able to fit our trash can in! (Score - I don't have to look at it and it isn't in the way! And I asked a friend if she would mind sewing up some grocery bag holders for me out of some of my towels and she graciously obliged and now I have our bags stored out of the way and hung on a nail next to the garbage can.) 

(I labelled all of my canisters really quickly while we were moving so the fam knew what they were as they were helping out for the weekend. I plan on creating cuter ones, but for now they work! I also created a tag for our basket of instant beverages/tea bags. This way, if they are labelled, everyone knows what is in each place without having to hunt through everything. I also did the same thing with baskets in my linen closet (which I will show you later - let me tell you - I looooove having a linen closet, such a blessing!)