Christmas Mantel DIY

I've written a post before about how much I am obsessed with the company Unfinished Wood Co. They have the cutest monogrammed items that you can customize to match your decor. Now that Christmas is coming up I wanted a Christmas mantel for my living room. I was getting bored of my silver mirror I had up simply because it wasn't a huge eye catcher. I'd been scouring the internet and Pinterest for inspiration. Here are a few of my favorites....

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As you can see I have a slight theme to my obsession with mantles. I really wanted something with a deer head or antlers. I DID not want a real deer head that had been mounted because that's not my style. It seemed like I was having a hard time at all the stores I went to however finding a cute deer head. Then I lucked out on Groopdealz  and found an amazing deal on Unfinished Wood Company's Antler Monogram. 

I feel like this could be used year round if you have a rustic look to your home, but I wanted it specifically for my Christmas mantle. Therefore, as soon as it came in the mail I knew what I wanted to do with it. I ran to Home Depot and got their 12 oz. Gloss Apple Red General Purpose Spray Paint. 

I love Rust-Oleum spray paint! It always looks great on my projects plus it's a great deal since you get paint and primer in one. For my project I also needed red fine glitter. I already had some in my craft supplies so I gathered everything and went out side to get to work. I started by laying out my monogram on plastic sheeting and placed rocks along the edges to hold the plastic down in case a stray wind decided to mess up my project. I then started spraying. I used 2 coats of the Rust-Oleum to cover the whole thing and make sure no excess wood was showing. I don't think I even used half the container so I have extra for my next Unfinished Wood Co. project I'll be starting once my antler ornaments come in. 

As soon as I finished spraying before the paint was dry I got to work shaking glitter all over the piece.  I used the wet stickiness of the spray paint before it dried to stick the glitter to the antler monogram. I then left it sitting outside for 30-60 minutes to allow ample time to dry. 

As you can see there is glitter everywhere. That is exactly why I did it outside and on top of plastic. Once it was dry I gingerly picked it up and let the loose glitter fall off onto the plastic. I contemplated trying to conserve some of the excess glitter, but decided it just wasn't worth my time during the busy Christmas season. I then bundled up the plastic and threw it all in a bag and straight to my dumpster. After that I carried my new Antler Monogram into my living room and hung it on my mantle.

I still have more to do to "complete" my mantle, but I love how the glitter monogram looks with the glitter on the candle centerpiece and the glitter in the Merry Christmas banner. I think it takes time to accumulate all you need to have a full mantle like the ones you see on Pinterest. I think for our first Christmas in this house I'm pretty proud of what we have so far. I especially love our tree!

DIY Tomato Cage Christmas Trees

Now that I have a house it seems like my main obsession is decorating my house. I hate having empty rooms with no character. I want my house to look lived in, but still well organized at the same time. When you have a bare room with no art on the wall, no little cute touches, and not even a specific color on the wall other than the plain color that it was painted by the builders, then it's just a tad bit boring. That is why my main obsession since moving in has been to work on slowly decorating room by room. I get my source of inspiration (like many other people) from Pinterest. Obviously, before I even was in the market for a house I had an entire board dedicated to how my house would be decorated and built. Not unlike the many single people with boards full of baby stuff and wedding inspiration. I mean we all dream of our future, so why not create a Pinterest board for said future? Anyways, now that we are closing in our Christmas I'm searching my boards to decide just how to decorate our new house for our FIRST Christmas as a married couple. My husband and I don't always agree 100% on our vision for the decorations, but we did agree on this front porch.

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My husband and I love this front porch! It's whimsical, but still has all the typical colors of Christmas without being too cutsey. Sometimes when I decorate I like to sway from the traditional, but my husband was determined to go green and red for Christmas. Now it was time to search for the supplies to get our front porch to look exactly how we wanted it. I started off by looking for Topiaries for my front porch. I thought about buying trees to place in my front porch planters or buying a full set that comes in the planters. I wasn't finding a ton of options of trees to place in my planters, but I did find plenty of topiaries with planters. However, the ones I was finding were not at a price I was willing to pay. 

Even checking back today with Black Friday deals, there were still many topiaries coming in at more than $50 per tree. That's just not a price that we can easily afford as a young married couple. Therefore, I decided to make my own. I used: 2 X 3-feet tall tomato cages, 4 X 9-feet Unlit Pine Garlands, 2 X boxes of LED C3 Warm White Lights,  twist ties, heavy items (bricks), and my two planters. My total cost for the 2 topiaries was around $38. After gathering all my items I got to work. My husband being the super sweet guy he is helped me out with this project.

After filling the planters with bricks we gathered the random twist ties we have saved over the years and started tying the tomato cages to the bricks. I contemplated taping the tomato cages to the bricks, but with how cold it has been all of my tape would not stick for very long in the cold. I've noticed especially with masking tape that it starts to peel off as soon as you stick it in cold weather. 

After the cage was all tied down we could get to work twisting the garland around the tomato cage. We used a twist tie at the very bottom to attach the initial strand to the tomato cage. 

After finishing twisting all the 18ft of garland onto the tomato cages I went back and twist tied more sections to the tomato cage. I used mostly darker colored twist ties so that it wouldn't be visible while standing in front of it.

Based on how cold it was outside I decided to bring my work inside as I was finishing up winding the garland around and adding the lights. I figured this would also allow me to work on cooking dinner for my husband and I as we worked. Once we had all the garland on all that was left to do was to add the lights and place everything outside. I'm very happy with how it ended up!

We got our lighted gifts from Kirklands when they had a 20% off sale and we found the wreath at Michaels for $19. Now my husband and I are working on decorating our large outside tree and the inside tree. So far we have the lights on the outside tree. Now we just need to find affordable giant ornaments.

I just love decorating for Christmas. I'm curious to see how other people are decorating for the upcoming holidays.

DIY Halloween Wreath

Happy Almost Halloween everybody! I found that cute little metal pumpkin basket at my local Marshall's. I think it would be super cute to hold candy, but you might need big pieces of candy so that it doesn't fall through the holes. I love decorating for the holidays. This is my first year as a homeowner so I have to basically start from scratch. For now I'm doing my best to DIY what I can to also not go bankrupt decorating my house. My first DIY of course was to create a Halloween wreath for my front door. As you can probably tell I'm sort of obsessed with having wreaths for every season/holiday. This year I found the perfect time to get the supplies for my wreath while Michael's was having a sale for 40% off your entire purchase, including sale items. That allowed me to get all my supplies for under $20!!! That's a great deal, especially since many wreaths are close to $100 on Etsy!

I used: 

Celebrate It Glitter Tulle 8 yards x 3 

1 bag of Glitter Colored Balls and Purple Glitter Spiders

Ashland Wire Wreath Frame

I started by weaving the glitter tulle through the many rims of the wire frame. I weaved and weaved and weaved. I made sure to pull a thick enough bunch through each row many times to make it look fluffy. I would also periodically stop to fluff the poofs. As you can tell from the picture probably using glitter tulle is pretty messy. By the end my feet, my pants, my table, and my floor were all covered in black glitter. It took many days of vacuuming to clean up after this DIY project.

 

After I was finished weaving I then used my hot glue gun to glue on the different colored balls and purple spiders. My husband said I can make the inside of the house as cutsey and homey as I want, but the outside has to be creepy. I did my best to make my wreath "creepy".  While gluing on the spiders I allowed the little string that comes off the glue when using the hot glue gun to spread across the wreath at parts. I figured that would make it a little more "realistic" so that it would look like it had parts of a web. I went for mostly a spider theme this year for our outside. I will also be buying some of the fake "webs" they have at Target to put on my bushes out front.

Here's my end product...

I did however splurge and buy this amazing cat...

I love this thing! The head turns periodically so sometimes when it's just right it'll turn as your driving around the curve to get to my house. It's creepy and awesome! I have multiple families that have come to our house to check out the kitty cat with their kids. I actually got the chance to meet one of my neighbors because of the conversation piece this cat is.

<3 Kelly Jean

DIY Door Decor

For years now I've had one of those typical boring green wreaths on my door. I was too lazy to take it down once the Christmas season ended, so I left it up on my door. Finally, after seeing so many beautiful inspirations of wreaths on Pinterest I decided my door needed a little decor of its own. This lead to one of my many enjoyable experiences craft shopping at Hobby Lobby for any supplies I needed. 

My supplies included: 

• 8" Grapevine Wreath
• Burlap chevron ribbon
• Wooden letter B
• Mint blue acrylic paint
• White hydrangea flowers
• Blue rose
• Glue gun with glue sticks
• Paint brushes

I started out by painting my letter B. While this dried, I cut the stems off of my flowers and searched for a great tutorial on making bows. I found super easy to follow directions at this site www.onsuttonplace.com. Once all of that was completed I assembled my wreath. 

Ta da!

I love it! Now I'm on the search for the perfect doormat to match my wreath.

<3 Kelly Jean

DIY Earring Holder

Like many people I have become obsessed with Pinterest. This love affair has given me many ideas for crafts to help organize my home just a little bit better. My latest craft was to make an earring holder. I must admit that I also have a love affair with burlap, which you may notice soon once I do a few more blog posts.

Here are the materials I used to make mine:

• Frame (you can use any frame you like)
• A piece of burlap just larger than the frame
• Hot glue gun
• Fabric flowers

Step 1: I chose a two pane picture frame to hold more earrings, but that will still allow this to fit on my tiny bathroom counter. You want to start out by removing the picture, the glass, and the backing piece from the frame.

Step 2: I cut the burlap into small rectangles that were a little bit bigger than the size of the frame. I then chose flowers to match the colors in my bathroom. If you can see by the picture they have no stem attached.

Step 3: Place your pre-cut piece of burlap onto the picture frame and hot glue it all around the outer edges coating the whole frame. (Allow to dry)

I let one side dry while I started on the other.

Step 4: As soon as the burlap pieces were glued in and dried, I flipped the frame over to glue on the flowers. As soon as that dried I was done.

It was as easy as that! Now you have a beautiful and easy to use earring holder to store your earrings.

<3 Kelly Jean