33 Merry Everything

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated sunshine as much as I have the past two days. My friends, the torrential  storm that blindsided Southern California has passed. Everything is starting to dry up and now the clean up begins. We were one of the lucky ones, as others were not as lucky and their homes actually did get flooded out by water or mud. My heart goes out to anyone that was affected by this storm.

I’m playing catch up as we lost a few days earlier this week, and the holiday decorating continues. Let’s be honest, when you’re knee deep wading through mud, the last thing you’re thinking about is decorating your mantel and hanging stockings.

I’d gone to Home Depot last week and found these really darling Italian Stone Pine trees. They’re such tiny things!

Our dining room table is really simple here, and I love it that way. Just fresh greenery amidst a neutral backdrop.

(Note: Our backyard patio does not look like that right now. Thankfully I took these photos days BEFORE the storm hit)…

My favorite wooden bowl. It’s an antique dough bowl from Europe, completely hand hewn from a single piece of wood…

I filled it with fresh tree cuttings, pine cones, and ornaments…

I placed the baby trees in birch containers I bought from Pottery Barn a couple years back, and simply wrapped burlap garland around the tops of the containers.

Fresh cuttings made their way to my BAKERY wall as well, along with a couple of ornaments. The lettered marbles were from a wonderful reader named Judy, the etched glasses are from a local store, and the stamped spoons can be found on my site…

I love finding interest in the simple things, such as these vintage laboratory beakers and candy canes against the light of the sunny bright window…

May your days and nights be merry and bright!

31 Anthropologie Inspired Felt Leaf Garland

I’ve wanted to post about this project for about a week and share the holiday craft love with you. Then this happened and for a brief moment in time my little world crumbled, and I couldn’t wrap my head around making pretty things. But we’ve had a tiny break from the heavy rains today, and so I thought I, and possibly you, could use a little distraction today, courtesy of the creative brains at Anthropologie.

Okay, please tell me I’m not the only one who walks into that store in complete wanderlust over their unique displays. Have you seen what they do with wooden pallets? I sometimes forget they sell clothing. Is it just me? I’ve even trained my husband: every time we go to the mall, we head straight for the elevator, get out, walk straight past all the stores (even Pottery Barn) and beeline straight for Anthropologie. He even has a favorite leather sofa he sits on and reads their artsy coffee table books while I walk around just like Charlie Bucket, the first time he stepped into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Except I haven’t licked the walls. Yet.

At Anthropologie, they did this amazing winter display using felt cut it into the shapes of leaves, and created swags of garlands. They used plaid and red also, but my focus was all over that wonderful wintery green felt, and you regular readers know how much I love that green…

   Since they don’t sell their garland, I decided I could make my own. And I’m going to show you, step by step, exactly how I made mine!

Because I know some of you might feel the urge to scroll down to see how mine turned out first, here’s a peek:

Okay, now I’m going to teach you how to make your own felt holiday garland!

You will need the following:

• 1 yard of each color you want to use for your leaves (I used 3 colors, three shades of green – pine, kelly and lime green)
• thick paper (I used a standard paper folder)
• a pencil and a pen (I found a sharpie pen worked best)
• sharp scissors
• rotary cutter (optional)
• hot glue gun
• red pom poms (optional)
• a companion that you like to craft with (there is a considerable amount of cutting, folks)

Start out by drawing your leaf onto your paper with a pencil. As you can see, my free hand isn’t the best, and that’s perfectly okay…

Fold your paper in half, directly down the center of the leaf. After folding, then cut your leaf out. Folding before cutting allows you to cut just one half of the leaf, ensuring both sides come out even…

Next, cut around your paper leaf, leaving a little space around it. (You can see mine on the right side, below). This is going to be your template for all of your leaf cutting, which is why you want to use a paper that is sturdy.

Take your felt and lay it over a flat open surface. Grab your pen and begin drawing your leaf shapes with your leaf template. I squeezed mine close together to get max mileage out of my felt…

Now you’re going to cut out each of your leaves. This is where having a friendly companion comes in handy. Thankfully I had my friend Laurie join me and the two of us chatted for hours while cutting away…

I couldn’t get the best picture of it, but you want to fold your leaf in half at the top, and carefully cut a very small hole (actually it’s a semi-circle cut, cause your leaf is folded in half)..

Now you’re going to need to cut long strips for your garland. We used a rotary cutter which gave us really straight lines, but you can also just use scissors. As far as the length, that’s totally up to you. We just made random lengths..some were the same length and some were varied…

Now the fun part, stringing your leaves onto your garland strings. If your holes are too small, a little tug on each side of the leaf and the felt will easily give...

Next you’ll want to add your red berries. While theirs didn’t have berries, a friend of mine shared with me that her Anthro store did and I loved the idea. I found this package of tiny 1/4” red pom poms at JoAnn Fabrics, but I’m sure you can find something similar at any craft store..

Simply hot glue the pom poms to the top of your leaf. For each garland, I selected three leaves to embellish, the end ones and the middle..

And here’s the finished product!

Here’s a close up so you can see how I strung it. This is a combination of three separate garlands, and I simply “tucked” the tails behind my chalkboard..

I love how this turned out so much, I have tons of felt left over, so I’m going to make a felt leaf garland for my fireplace mantel next!

I think I’m going to leave this up all winter long. Who says it has to come down the day after xmas : )

I’m already thinking of making one next year for Fall, with brown and gold leaves, and maybe acorns!

Before I sign-off to go check our trenches and make sure they’re holding up before tonight's big storm promises to come in, I wanted to thank each and every one of you. Your emails and comments warmed our wet little hearts. I really appreciate you guys, more than you’ll ever know.

12/22/10 Edited to add:  I’ve received a few emails about the Medic Cross Stocking seen hanging next to my chalkboard. If you want to purchase one, just click here. If you order today, you might be able to get it before Christmas.

 

61 Rainy Days and Mondays

This evening’s post has nothing to do with pretty pictures, holiday decorating, or cookie baking. I’m going to keep it very real here tonight. Here in Southern California we’ve been hit hard by an intense, record breaking storm for the past several days, and we’re preparing to get hit even harder tomorrow night with a second storm, and it’s going to continue to pound us through Thursday. 

We were so not prepared for this. We’ve been saving up all our pennies for a new roof, but we didn’t even think about having our storm drain checked out, and we have no rain gutters. It also doesn’t help that the land around our house slopes towards our foundation.

We were so close to our house flooding this weekend. Gulp. I’ve never had such fear of losing our house.

Our next door neighbors were our saving grace. They gave us their shovels for digging trenches and yard waste cans to help collect the streams of rain water pouring down from our roof into our patio. They even let us borrow their sub pump to exhume the gallons of water we were wading through.

Adam and I worked day and night for two physically exhausting days. We pulled our strengths together and we dug a 60 foot trench throughout our backyard to create a pathway for the water to flow, away from our house and out to the street. We bailed what seemed like enough water to fill a small swimming pool. We lined up sand bags from the local fire station around the perimeter of our back door.

At the risk of sounding corny, it’s times like this that you appreciate your spouse. I watched Adam breaking his back plowing and trodding back and forth through knee deep mud along side me. I felt this special bond between us. We worked as a team and we refused to give up and just take it, regardless of Mother Nature’s agenda.

Tonight’s plans include warm blankets and hot tea. Popcorn and a good movie. We are going to need lots of rest for round 2 tomorrow night.

62 Cottage8: Burlap Tree and Stockings Holiday Bedroom

We decided early on we were going to simplify for the holidays this year. Last year we hosted a big holiday party with friends and family, we went festive in every room in the house, and looking back, boy was our house different back then. It is amazing how much my look has changed in just one year.

Since we weren’t doing a huge tree in the Living Room this year, I opted instead for a little tree in the Master Bedroom. We went with a charming 4 foot tree, artificial, and propped it up on top of the nightstand….

I enlisted the help of my good friend Laurie, and she worked her magic…whirling twigs and branches, burlap and clock faces…we giggled and chatted and listed to Christmas music…

A trio of old hand written documents, rolled and embellished with burlap and fresh tree cuttings…

Faux cotton branches, purchased at an antique store, reminiscent of billowy white snow…

A delicate birds nest, filled with a couple eggs…

Whimsical old clock face…

At the very top of the tree, I placed a glittered tree topper I just found last week at a flea market…

It adds a little extra height to this little 4 foot tree!

        And at the base, a gathered burlap sack…  

My friend Laurie is not only a stylist, she has a wonderful etsy shop where she sells her burlap creations…many of which I proudly own and display in my home.

We used my bedroom as a staging backdrop for her Christmas stocking line…

We make a great team she and I…she styled while I photographed…    

It was my birthday that day, and I didn’t tell her until the end of our photoshoot. I didn’t want to make her feel obligated to do anything special for me. I told her she was my gift..the gift of her wonderful friendship…

More fresh green cuttings, these ones courtesy of some beautiful trees at the local park…

  And in case you’re wondering, the mirror and stockings, and all greenery were removed before we went to bed that night!

Linking to Sarah’s holiday party.

If you want to find out more about our Master Bedroom, click here. And to check out more of our home, click here. Have a great week friends!

17 Gingerbread Cookie Tree Ornaments

I don’t get to spend as much time baking in the kitchen as I’d like, but I did manage to set aside a little time this afternoon to bake you some yummy Gingerbread Tree Ornaments. And when I bake anything in my kitchen, I always pull out my favorite old ironstone pudding bowl. I started with a gingerbread mix, added honey and butter….

Mixed until gooey and soft…

Sprinkled lots of flour before rolling it out, cause this dough gets really sticky…

My favorite part, cutting out my tree shapes with my cookie cutter…

If I had more dough (cookie dough, not $$ dough), I would roll and shape all afternoon long…

Fresh out of the oven.  Directions said 9 – 12 minutes, and these only went in for 6. I pulled them out just in time…

Next up, buttercream frosting in my other favorite old ironstone bowl. My mixer was on the fritz, so I had to improvise and whisk by hand…

Once cooled, my trees got a healthy coat of frosting and were then sandwiched together…

And some of the “tops” have holes in them to allow the frosting to squeeze through to look like ornaments…

I decided to create a Cookie Tree in my kitchen, on my bakery wall of course…

Sparkly ornaments and fresh tree cuttings add to this simplistic, pretty vignette…

  When I bought this Manzanita tree at a flea market several years ago, I never realized how many times it would come in handy…

I forgot to mention, to make the holes in my trees, I used a glass drinking straw. It makes the most perfect holes!

Then I simply used green floral wire to hang the cookies…

I made enough to hang on my tree, with plenty left over to share at family gatherings…

So what’s your favorite thing to bake for the holidays?

Blogged for Centsational Girl’s Craft Link Party