Christmas Decorations 2011

I know.

I am finally posting my Christmas decorating ideas online after promising friends months ago that I would do so.

So here it is:

I found this nativity scene at the thrift store a few years ago, and I love it. It was placed on the piano. It was clearly handmade, and looks like it could have been a Boy Scout project or something. Nativity scenes are usually pricey, so looking at thrift stores is a good place to start:

I don't really have a lot of Christmas decorations, so what works for me is to put your basic holly berrys, pinecones, and greenery in every container that I have. I collect vintage Ball jars and cheese dome (to use as cloches), and I am always putting something different in them every holiday season:

Just put pinecones on the candlesticks I already had from the thrift store and add greenery. It was pretty simple to decorate this armoire:

 I have these antique "frogs". They were used to brush horse hair. Many people collect them to display vintage postcards, emphmera, and pictures. I just break out my scrapbook items and look for a word to spell, then put the scrap embelly items away when I am done. For Christmas 2011 I spelled the word Joy:

I love hanging pinecones from my vintage window frame. The star is my old topper for the Christmas tree. I no longer have a tree, and have a "flat" fabric tree that I hung up for the last two years. I move the star around whenever I feel like it:

I love decorating my vintage 1940 Hoosier hutch. I just basically change what I put in the vintage Ball jars or vintage milkglass containers. I shop my house all the time and move things around. This is the first ro. Each Ball jar has  fake snow and silver glittery ornaments:

The second row has jars of candy canes, silver star ornaments hung from old hooks that formerly probably held tea cups. The center holds a vintage cloche that I got for $4 from the thrift store. They sell for $40 at antique stores. I spray painted the base red and put vintage ornaments inside with fake snow on the bottom:

The third row I tried to make like Santa's sweet shop with items I already had. The last and forth row at the time holds my gumball machines that I collected. They are made with real metal and glass. I sometimes put holiday candy inside them:

My favorite decoration is the candy dispenser machine I got a few years ago. It was decorated the same as last year:

I recently found another vintage scale in my favorite colors of red and white. I shopped my house and made this little decorative area for the corner of my kitchen. I added a bunch of glittery red stars around the house, and here is one place I put it:

I made a chalkboard for my preschool class. They used it one time and haven't used it since. Instead of storing it away to collect dust, I turned it into a wonderful decorative idea b¥ putting it on top of the cabinet and for it to be used each month by simply wiping off the chalk and create a new banner or message. This month is Santa's Cafe sign:

I had leftover stuff from a tree I no longer have so I used it to decorate the chandelier:

Here is my favorite that I have been doing the last 18 months: changing the theme of items in the jars. This month is pretty close to last year, Santa's Apothecary:

This bowl decorates the bottom shelf in the front foyer. I just added pine cones and leftover red bead decorations:

This holly berry wreath used to be my chandelier decoration each year. This year it was given new life and placed over a metal decorative element that sits in my foyer:

I have greenery I don't really care for, but instead of tossing it, it went into the vintage wood box that I have by the front door. I hoped to have a real plant on the plant stand, but never got around it it, so I have this old fake tree decoration that was placed on that instead:

Fake greenery in my plant pot by the front door:

 
And finally the Powell family tree, kindly referred as Flat Tree. I was remodeling and painting last year and our old fake tree finally passed away. Instead of buying another tree to get in the way, I made a flat tree. And the kids loved it, and requested it be the holiday tree every year from now on. I moved the Ikea bookcase shelf from this area to the kitchen and placed the tree on this wall. The red ribbon is hot glued on the green burlap tree. The lights is stapled on, and the star is stapled on. The ornaments go through the holes in the burlap. The tree beforehand got rubbed down with cloves spice powder, cinnamon spice powder and pine essential oil to make it smell Christmasy, and the kids enjoyed helping me with that:

I display the Santa bed candy dish every year. My mom had one when I was real little back in I think 1980, it was made by her sister (my aunt) with her ceramic mold, and it was my most favorite Christmas decoration ever as a kid. My aunt kept the mold over the years, and her daughter who is now my SIL made me one for Christmas sometime I think in 1999. I made one new thing for a Christmas decoration: I photoshopped a Santa's List and printed it out and added it to the clipboard I had for years:

Well, that's it. Not too much stuff because I don't want to take 3 months to take all my stuff down.

Little Critter Visits my Yard!

Recently I had spilled a lot of rice outside in the backyard. I was so ticked off about having to clean it up as so to not attract a lot of bugs that might eventually decide to move into my house.

Looks like I didn't have to do any cleaning up. These cute little birds are taking care of it for me.

And before you judge me on the fact that birds will explode from eating rice, check this out:

http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/birdrice.asp

Also my backyard has a regular visitor. If you get to see this cute chipmunk, then you are quite lucky. This little critter is spooked very easily and constantly checks its surroundings. All I have to do is very slowly put my hand on the window and it will still run off. Imagine my surprise when I got to open the SGD and take a picture. I think the wind covered up any noise I was making. This chipmunk comes between the hours of noon and 2 pm to eat up the tidbits that my preschoolers have dropped on the ground.

Garden Surprises!

In the month of Sept we had a surprising week of wonderful "rain all day long and everyday" kind of rain. It led to wonderful surprises in my backyard garden.

First off are my pear trees that I planted in August. Most of the leaves fell off due to plant shock. But during the rains it bloomed all of sudden from the bare branches. They didn't last long due to the returning high temperatures the following week.  But it was still a nice surprise:

Then there were mushrooms popping up all over my gardens:

The small mini rosebush that disappeared under the mint plants, I thought it died away due to the scorching summer. The rains brought out new stalks and white roses peeking out above my peppermint plants. What a nice surprise:

The bougainvillea bush I had in the corner was nearly 5 feet high and 4 feet wide. Then the deep freeze in February nearly killed all of my plants in the backyard and killed the large tree in my front yard. The rains brought out tender new shoots from my bougainvillea bush! I left the rootball in the ground in hopes that it would grow and bloom again. It took 8 months for the rootball to heal, but here it is finally growing back:

Funny mushrooms sometimes starting merging together as they grew, into like one fat mushroom:

Also my lemon trees are coming back from the original trunk that was cut to the ground when it died in the February deep freeze. (not pictured) The one you see above is my grapefruit tree that survived.

My kids found a nice surprise hidden under the peppermint plants. They pushed them back and found 4 single mushrooms bigger than their hand! They are still there in the gardens:

My gardens are bringing tons of fat happy lizards everyday to a big feast. I rarely spray pesticides in my gardens so it turned into a major toad and lizard cafe in each raised garden bed. This lizard hitched a ride on my son back into the house:

And finally sometimes if we look beyond our gardens we will find an interesting cloud. This one was on a clear blue cloudless sky, except for this huge cloud merged from smaller clouds. My younger kids thought it was a tornado cloud:

September brought such nice surprises outside despite the lingering heat. What surprises have you found in your garden or backyard?

My Stoopid Hair

This is a story about my stoopid hair.

Yes, I said "stoopid." That's so you can hear me say it as "stoooop-pid."

Somedays I just can't stand it my hair.  Dark thoughts of running clippers through my hair has entered my head too many times to count.

Once upon a time I was born with NO HAIR:

I stayed bald for a very long long time.

Then I had wispy thin fine blonde hair barely past my ears for a long long time. This is me at three years old. My daughter already had hair down to her bottom with at least 4 trims since she was born. I probably had no trimmed hair for a few years:

If my mom got lucky, she squeezed in a few of those tiny plastic purple curlers. I hated them so much because I had to sleep on them at night:

Then one day my hair darkened up and got a little bit thicker. I had my first perm in the 5th grade. It got permed every single year until my senior year. The picture below is from my big hair days in the 7th grade. The curly hair is from the perm, and my bangs were super straight. I used a hot curling iron on my bangs and tons of Aqua Net to get them standing as high as I could:

Then at age 17 I decided I wanted no more bangs and no more perms. I used hot rollers on my hair nearly every day to make soft waves. If I didn't, my hair was super straight on top, and slightly wavy underneath.

This is me at 19:

I kept using hot rollers on my hair if I wanted any kind of body or waves to my hair. I had soft wavy SMOOTH shiny hair, running my fingers through it kind of hair. This is me at 20:

Then got married.

Then I had kids. Beautiful hair days are OVER.

Then I had my CRAZY MOM DAYS hair. I got sick of my long blonde hair getting covered in spit up, throw up, and all manner of nasty ups you can think of. And I had no time to make my hair beautiful. So I chopped off my hair. And my husband mourned its death for months:

Thankfully I did grow it out, much to my husband's relief.

Then after my 4th pregnancy my hair got thicker, darker, and started getting curly out of the blue. I had no idea how I was going to control my crazy hair. Most days in the early 2000 years I kept it simple with a bit of cream gel and a shorter bob:

It's now 2011. I swear someone stole my hair and I am wearing a permanent wig. I have to keep it super short.  I don't know where all this increased super duper stoopid curls are coming from. It's driving ME INSANE! Every night I wash my hair with SLS free and organic products. I needed something to control the frizz and curls: I got the frizz down for the most part.

But I have to wet down my hair by sticking it briefly in the shower EVERY.SINGLE.MORNING.

If I don't wet my hair in the morning, it stays up and high like a curly lion's mane sticking every which way. Don't even think of coming near me with a brush. No woman wants to walk around with a dark blonde afro.

Then I have to use about 2 TBS of castor oil hair cream every day to keep my curls together, relaxed somewhat to my head and defined. Or else I have crazy big hair sticking up in all directions.

So here it is, such stoopid STOOPID hair before wetting it:

So very stoopid and I hate it most days:

It's a major rat nest sometimes:

I can pull off the swanky preppy 80's male model look, but no woman wants to look like that:

Big Hair Days are SO over, it's never coming back. Except for me unfortunately:

I think I am related to Cousin It. I think he stole my soft long blonde locks and gave me his crazy curly hair:

Hair. It's like dead skin, right? I should just get rid of it.

Or get a wig.

Or steal yours.

Hmm..I should like a certain shiny redhead's hair that I see at church from time to time. I am stealing hers.

Heather Crafts: Blue Bell Jars

So I totally spazzed and flipped out on this craft blog link and then came up with my own ideas for a beach sign and decoration:

http://www.thesinglenester.com/2011/07/handmade-blue-ball-jars-and-floral.html

I am always saving spaghetti and candle glass jars because I know I will always find something different and fun to do with them. Vintage Blue Bell jars are very hard to find, and usually are pricey at about 10 dollars a jar. Then ones I have now: I got lucky and scored 6 of them for 3 dollars each at a flea market last year and 1 at Goodwill for 99 cents.

I made 3 of my own "blue" jars to make a grouping of three jars with my beach sign.

Then I found an old beat up square of wood at about 10 by 10 in my garage already painted cream and chippy from last year from a project that I didn't finish. I thinly added some of the leftover bluish glue mixture to tint it.

Then I dug up a seashell from the family beach trip last year. I hot glued on the seashell on the wood sign on the side purposely hanging off a bit, and a clip I had around the house in the middle.

Then I added a beach picture to the clip from my stash of beach pictures.

Then I digi created this photo from digi scraps and elements from my photoshop files into this:

I glued the beach picture I made onto the wood sign and sealed it with clear matte spray paint.

Then I tore a strip of white cotton from an old shirt in my fabric stash and tie it around the center of the frame.

So this is my total result, a fun beach memory in the foyer:

So what do ya think? What Blue Bell or vintage Bell jar projects do you have around your house?