First World (Decorating) Problems

Last week when I was getting my Christmas decorations up, I faced a truly serious (first world) problem. My string of lights was too long for the shelf I was decorating! What was I to do? Double the string? Let them hang off the edge? I didn't want to just waste the lights, so I decided to create a little light jar that could contain some of the lights and give a little extra something to the shelf.

Here's what I used:

- A tall, straight vase (about 20cm tall and 8cm wide)

- A plastic tube that was holding some ornaments (20cm by 5cm)

- A bunch of straight white twigs

- Some little white snowflakes

- Silver/Turquoise ribbon

 I needed the inner tube to keep the lights contained, and the first thing I did was to do a test to make sure my little led lights wouldn't melt the plastic of the tube.

Once I had the inner tube in, I just dropped the white twigs around it, spacing them somewhat evenly. Then I added a few snowflakes here and there, and wrapped my ribbon around the middle. 

When I set it up on the shelf, I put a bunch of lights in the inner tube and topped it off with a pine cone to hide the wires coming out of the top. Now even with the lights off it looks cute. 

There you go! A simple project to deal with those pesky first world decorating problems. :) 

Deck The Halls

Have I mentioned I love decorating? When it comes to Christmas, I'm no different - I love pulling out the garland and the white twinkly lights. Since we've moved around a lot in the past 8 years, I've been able to decorate lots of different homes for Christmas (even my in-laws!) and it's always a lot of fun coming up with new ideas. Even when we spent two Christmases in the same house (only once in the past 8 years!) I decorated differently both years.

So now that we are set up in a new house (hopefully for a few years), I thought I'd share my Christmas decorations. While I love the traditional Christmas colors, this year I thought I'd experiment with blue, silver, white and turquoise. 

I decorated our small table-top tree with white lights, a wide silver/white ribbon, some bell garland, white twigs, blue ribbons, pine cones, and blue, silver and turquoise ornaments. I used a turquoise scarf to cover the table and a fluffy white baby blanket as a tree skirt. 

We don't have a fireplace or traditional "mantle", but I usually clear off any shelves and decorate them with garland and lights. 

We have a nice big wood valance over our living room window and it also got a nice garland with lights, white twigs, a few ornaments and pine cones. In the middle is a star with a few ornaments hung underneath. Almost two years ago, a cousin got married and I was able to keep some of the decorations she used in her January wedding. The little blue, turquoise and white bobbles are making their second annual appearance in my Christmas decorating (Thanks Charissa!)

There's a little peek into our little house. We also have some festive poinsettias in the window and I still have to hang my wreath on the front of our house. When I finished all the decorating and turned only the Christmas lights on and invited the kids to come see the living room they gasped and said, "it's bootiful, momma!" (Still doesn't keep them from taking all the ornaments down though!) 

Wordless Wednesday - New Sofa

If you saw my Friday's Letters last week, you'll know I was extremely excited about receiving the call that my new sofa (ordered, like, for. ever. ago - ok, ok it was only 3 weeks) was to be delivered on Tuesday. Why was I so excited? Well, when we lived in our tiny apartment, we only had room for one little sofa, a very small love seat. With two small kids, it was ok, put a kid on each lap and we were set. Now the kids are getting bigger and we moved to a larger house and our love seat was looking rather small and lost in our huge (to us) living room.

A rare clean house. 

See that little couch just barely sticking out on the right? That was ALL we had for the first few months in this place. We didn't even have the big bean bag for a while. Lots of open space for the kids to run, though, which was nice. However, we knew we'd like/need something bigger for hosting people, as well as for our growing family. After slightly recovering from moving costs, I went on the hunt. 

Here's our living room now (pardon the slightly blurry photo.)

Now the couch that occupied the alcove on the right has been replaced with a lovely corner sofa, upholstered in the same material as our love seat. The love seat is now basically in the middle of the room, creating a division between the living and dining areas. And you can see the kid paraphernalia is starting to multiply there in the left corner. 

Here's a better look at our beauty.

 We are in love. It's comfy, just the right size for our space and being covered in fake leather is super easy to clean. Yes, in just one day we've already had at least one yogurt spill. 

Now, to get a few more throw pillows and get something up on our painfully naked walls.

Isn't settling in fun? Now, if only I had a decorating budget! 

12 Step Sheep - Tutorial

So, last week I shared about the sheep themed baby shower I helped to put on for my sweet sister-in-law. I'm back with the tutorial of the cuddly, cute sheep I made for the table centerpieces and decoration.

Here we go!

What you need: (for one sheep)

Head:
- small styrofoam ball (about 1" diameter) painted light brown. I already had a bunch painted brown from a previous project.
- two short pieces of pink pipe cleaners (about 1.5" long) to make the ears
- small piece of cotton
- two eyes
- permanent marker
- glue gun

1. Fold your pink pipe cleaners into ear shapes and stick them into the head. There is a small seam around the ball and I used that to help get the ears in roughly a straight line.
2. Use your glue gun and stick a small piece of cotton in between the ears.
3. Use your sharpie to make a mouth and to mark where the eyes go.
4. Use your glue gun to stick the eyes on.

And the head is ready to go!

For the body you need: 

- a slightly larger styrofoam ball (about 2" diameter)
- 4 pieces of brown pipe cleaner (each about 2.5-3" in length)
- a toothpick to connect the head and body
- two squares of cotton (about 4"x4" - doesn't have to be perfect - regular cotton balls would work too, just need a little more fiddling to cover the body)
- white glue (Elmers)
- paint brush to apply the glue. (you could also use your glue gun, but I found the white glue easier to work with and just as secure)

 5. Bend your pipe cleaners into legs and stick into the body. Again I used the seam of the ball to help orient the legs. Basically if you were to connect the legs you would make a square with the seam of the ball running through the middle.
6. Get your head, body and toothpick ready
7. Stick the toothpick at least halfway into the body, at about a 45 degree angle.
8. Attach head.

 9. Get your cotton and glue ready, and glue around the neck of the sheep.
10. Wrap your first square around the neck like a cape.
11. Then glue down the back of the cape.
12. Glue the second piece of cotton starting from the bottom and wrapping it around the legs and gluing upward. There's quite a bit of give to the cotton so it stretches quite easily. If you think about the square you created with the legs, the second piece of cotton gets attached like a diamond, with each corner going through one side of the square.

There you go. A sheep in 12 easy steps!

At the shower I attached the sheep to a small box to place on the tables. You could also make a really charming mobile with these. Everyone commented on how cute they were, and by the end I didn't have any to bring home with me.

Linking up with: Tutorial Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, TOO Cute Tuesday, Terrific Tuesdays, Handmade Tuesdays, Crafty Tuesday and Take-A-Look Tuesday

Another Pompom Party

I was absolutely delighted when my sister-in-law's sister asked me to decorate for my sister-in-law's Baby Shower. It was planned for three weeks after Elena's party and my new-found love of pompoms meant they were sure to make another appearance. I was even able to re-use some of the pompoms from Elena's party (score!)

We were going for a sheep theme for the party. Here in Brazil it is very common to find out the gender of your baby almost as early as possible and come right out with the name as well. So we were planning a Sheep Shower for little Lara - due in November. A little over two years ago I did another shower for Lara's older sister, Sophia, a bear-themed shower with pink and brown as the main colors. So this time I stuck with pink, grey, white and silver. Seemed to also fit better with the sheep theme. 

The shower was held in their church's foyer/meeting room. I knew we would have a lot of tables and chairs and began to think about center pieces. A crazy idea came to me as I was cleaning up some other decorating stuff. I started dreaming about sheep made from styrofoam balls, cotton and pipe cleaners. 

But let's see how the prep and party went down.

Here are my sheep center pieces for all the tables - yup, I made almost 20 little sheep. I'm always looking for ways to reduce stress by prepping ahead of time, so it was fun to make these little guys without feeling rushed. At the party the sheep sat on little boxes with Lara's name on them (good thing it's only a four-letter name), on top of a pink heart-patterned square (actually cellophane gift bags that I cut into squares). The tables themselves were covered in a sheet of silver paper. 

The day before the shower I headed down to our local farmer's market and picked up some beautiful pink and white flowers. I made three arrangements and packed them up ready to go. Another simple prep idea for color, class and charm. I also made about 60 favors for the guests. On the left a simple envelope filled with marshmallows, wrapped in silver ribbon and secured with a hand-cut label. The label says, "We thank you for your presence here - Baby Shower for Lara" and the date. Yes, hand-cut labels - my hands were definitely sore after cutting out 60 tiny little labels. On the right I made little bags, tied them up with ribbon and added the label to the front. 

At the church we set up a crib to collect all the presents. I used four of the center pieces to spell out Lara's name on the edge, and used some pompoms to decorate. I made tons of big white pompoms and several smaller pink and silver ones. Notice how the big ones have rounded edges while the smaller ones have pointed edges. I think it's a nice contrast. 

Of course the main attraction is the cake/sweets table. I set up a few room dividers, covered them in a white tablecloth and attached a pompom arrangement. 

Some close-ups of the table. We served the main cake, a pineapple cake and cupcakes. Along with some little sweets (you can see in the top right corner arranged under the cake).

I did also have some large white pompoms hanging up with pink and grey ribbons underneath, but somehow forgot to get a picture of it. Every time, I take tons of photos, sure that I've got a shot of everything, and always feel like I should have taken more.  

Hope you enjoyed a little peek into the party. Come back next week for the full tutorial on those cute little sheep!