4 in 14 January

So I had this great idea to set goals for myself. I was going to call it "4 in 14" as in, 4 planned activities every month in 2014. So far I am off to a less than stellar start. Weekend one of each month is supposed to be seasonal decor for my home. Now, since I am new to this I was trying to start small so as not to get overwhelmed and give up. I have seen so many neat ideas on Pinterest I decided to dedicate one shelf in my living room built-in to be my makeshift "mantle" and I refer to it as my "pretty shelf".
Sadly, this past weekend I was not able to update the pretty shelf. I was hoping to have it done this week, but that doesn't look like reality either. You see, I decided it would be fun to repaint the living room, which has involved removing our outdated popcorn ceiling.
We have made great progress but this project has taken significantly longer than expected. So, today the pretty shelf looks like this:

New Grey Paint

Just so that I am not at a total loss, I should point out that I gave the pretty shelf an update for Christmas so before the paint mess it looked like this:

Dec 13 Pretty Shelf

I wish I could tell you I know where I got each of these items, but that would not be true. But since this year the Christmas tree was family themed, we busted out the "whimsy" decor. Christmas 2014 will be "Department Store". Stay tuned!!

Wreath gone wrong

I wanted to make my own wreath using ribbon I found. It was a nice wide wire rim ribbon. I see tons of them on Pinterest. I never actually read the directions.

Folding

I started by folding the ribbon back and forth in equal lengths. Then I decided I wanted a less uniform look so I started over making the lengths a little uneven. I then took floral wire and wove it through the sections.

wiring 

Since I wanted good support, I actually ran two pieces of wire through. In this photo you can see the bottom wire already woven as I am running the top wire through. My theory was that at the end I would form the two wires in to loop that met each other, thus making the wreath shape.

Flat

After I wove all the ribbon and pulled the wire tight, I realized I had grossly underestimated how much ribbon this project would take. I ended up with a flat wreath that looked nothing like a wreath at all. At this point I decided I needed a plan "B".

Hanging Loop

I decided to fluff up all the loops I had made and see what happened. I kept fluffing and reworking, again and again until I was reasonably happy with the result.

"wreath" bow

In the end I had made what my supportive family referred to as the "world's prettiest bow". I am not convinced. And I still don't have my wreath. On the bright side, I didn't use my favorite of the ribbons I bought. And I did go back and read the directions on Pinterest, so perhaps this next time I will get it right. Stay tuned.

Employee Gifts

Every year I make a little something to give to my husband's employees as a "Thank You" at Christmas time for all their hard work. I try to change it up and make something different each year.

Spices

This year I decided to do little spice jars. Here is a collection of the spices I collected. I worked from a recipe that my mom gave me a couple of years ago. We refer to it as "Bam Bam" as it is an all purpose spice recipe from Emeril Lagasse that she found online somewhere. My copy of the recipe is on a little scrap of paper in faded pencil from my mom. It took me three batches of the recipe to fill 18 jars.

Here they are all lined up on the counter. They are actually from the wedding favor department at Michael's and were on sale. They worked out to be $0.70 per jar before filling. 

Not sure why this rotated?

Here are all the jars with their tags on them. I cut out the tags on my Cricut machine and then embossed them with red embossing powder and my heat gun to make them nice and sparkly. On the back of the tags I added a printed note saying that it was Bam-Bam and an all purpose seasoning. Everyone loved them. I didn't think to calculate the total cost once the spices were mixed, but I do have quite a bit of left over spices. 

Christmas Blocks

I saw these for sale online, but I didn't want to pay the prices the website wanted. So, I thought...I can do that. I do love the lumber department at my local Home Depot.

Cut & Painted

I went with the traditional red and green, adding a generic white, from my paint collection. Then came the fun part. Once again, using my overly out of control scrapbook paper collection I pulled out some fun prints. Deciding on which words to use was a joint effort - I got the kiddo to help. We used my Cricut machine to cut out all the letters. 

To adhere the letters we used our trusty Modge Podge. I do love that stuff and it is so easy to use. The best part is that it only takes a few minutes to use and apply. Once that step was done, I used an outdoor spray sealant over the whole thing to make sure it was relatively weather proof. I live in the desert, so no snow....but we do get the occasional rain. 

All done.