2015 Christmas Home Tour

Well, it's about time, right? :) Things have been super busy, so it's taken me a long time to piece together this post, but here it is!

Enjoy!

Foyer table with diy "JOY" frames.

I always tie these wreaths (they're actually candle rings) to the backs of the dining room chairs.

Love using my red dough bowl this time of year!

Every year, my boys insist I set up these lighted houses. :) 

Our nativity set below a trio of prints we bought on a trip to San Francisco.

Love this little button tree!

Our main tree is filled with tons of ornaments our children made through the years. I love all those special memories of them bringing home ornaments they made at school. :) 

I still have lots of wrapping and baking to do. I'm kind of waiting for the boys to get out of school for the holidays to tackle those tasks. I make a lot of my cookies a few days before Christmas and freeze them, then just thaw them out for the big day. 

My favorite part was getting to decorate our diy rolling cart. :)  

The top of the armoire pretty much looks the same as last year. 

Mr. Sparkly reindeer always resides on the front of the armoire. 

This is another favorite spot to decorate. 

At the last minute, I added some festive checked ribbon to my canisters and hung a fabric ornament over my cutting board.

It's funny because when they were little, the boys used to fight over who got to erase/update the "days 'till Christmas" chalkboard. Now I'll look over at it and notice it hasn't been changed since I got it out. :) 

You may notice I only did one tree this year. It's pretty much all I had time for, but if you want to see the other three trees I usually decorate, you can click on last year's Christmas tour HERE. 

I have a feeling I'll be glad I only did one tree when it's time to put everything away. It's a full day's work taking down four trees! 

Hope you all have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!

~Lisa 

Christmas Gift Idea for Pets

I've been trying to get this post together for weeks. Sorry it's taken me so long! I wanted to share this little idea in case any of you are looking for gifts for pet owners. :) 

This is going to kind of spoil the surprise for a couple of family members, but I wanted to post this while the supplies are still in stock. 

Isn't this personalized ornament darling? 

Okay, so at Christmas, we usually exchange little gifts for the pets in the family. This year, I'll get something for my aunt's cat, Chris, and my mom's "twins" Trixie and Cecil. 

While browsing the Dollar Tree website the other day, I spotted these cute cat and dog ornaments. The pic is a little blurry, but hopefully you can get the picture. 

Dollar Tree cat and dog ornaments 

They come in two versions of a cat holding a fish (on the ends) and two versions of a dog holding a bone (in the middle) 

I bought one for each cat, including my own Holly, and I thought it would be cute to personalize them. So using a paint pen for the names, here's what I came up with...

Aren't they cute? I just wrote each of their names on the front of the fish. :) 

Here's the type of paint pen I used. Be sure to let the paint dry for a few minutes before handling them. 

Then you can just package it up along with a bag of kitty treats (or dog bones if you're making it for the canine variety) and you're done! Easy peasy and only a couple of dollars for the ornament and treats. 

Every year, I feel the need to share this cute pic of little Holly climbing the Christmas tree on her first Christmas...


She was such a sweet baby kitten!

Do you buy things for your pets at Christmas? I'd love to hear your ideas! 

Enjoy your day!

~Lisa 

A DIY Mini Wreath For My Kitchen Cabinets

I'm back today to share a really easy and inexpensive way to add those festive wreaths to your kitchen cabinets. Actually, you could use these anywhere around the house. I've seen them used as part of a place setting, hung over mirrors, used as a base to hold a candle, etc. 

Here's my DIY version for about $3!

Some of you may remember my Fixer Upper inspired post I did back in February. That was the first time I attempted to make one of these wreaths. You can see that old post HERE

You'll need one six inch grapevine wreath, a sprig of boxwood, hot glue, and ribbon. 

The wreaths came in a two pack for $1.99 and I had one left, so I used it for this project.

Here's the boxwood. This was also left over from my last project. I got mine at Hobby Lobby for about $2.40 after my coupon. 

I basically cut off little pieces and hot glued them onto the wreath. (if you click on my old fixer upper inspired post HERE you can see pics of this process)

Then I looped the ribbon through the wreath and hot glued it to the back part of the ribbon. You can see in the pic below instead of making one huge loop and bringing the ribbon back up to the top, I just glued the little "tail" of the ribbon to the underside. (It saves a lot of ribbon this way and works well if you're not hanging anything very heavy) 

Then I used a little hot glue to adhere the top of the ribbon to the inside of my cabinet door. Don't worry, the hot glue will pop right off after Christmas. 

And there you have it! 

I've always adored the look of tiny wreaths on cabinets during the holidays!

This project was totally free for me since I already had the leftover wreath, boxwood, and ribbon. Love when that happens!

Y'all have a great day!

~Lisa 

Thanksgiving Wrap Up

Hello there! I've been so busy lately, but wanted to pop in quickly to do a little Thanksgiving wrap up. I know everyone is already in Christmas mode, but I know I'd regret it if I didn't at least add in a few pics of Thanksgiving 2015. :) 

We always begin Thanksgiving morning (and Christmas morning for that matter) with a Sara Lee Butter Streusel Coffee Cake. We enjoy it with our coffee while watching the parade on tv. Since the oven is busy with Mr. Turkey, we just slice this up and microwave individual pieces for about 20 seconds. 

Early that morning, I made up these goodie bags with fudge and cookies for our guests. It was 80 degrees on Thanksgiving day, so I had to keep these in the fridge so they wouldn't melt. That's why you see the condensation on the bag. Lol! 

Now to the best part...the dessert bar! We had pumpkin pie, pecan pie, lofthouse sugar cookies, M&M cookies and orange fudge. Yum!

Here's a tip I've shared before, but tweaked it a bit this year. So everyone can remember which glass is theirs, I tie a ribbon around the glass and write their name on it. The key is to make the ribbon a lot longer than you think you need so you'll have enough to work with. Then triple knot it and cut off the excess. I did double knots one year, and they came undone halfway through the meal. Ha!

I just use scissors to cut the ribbon off and discard it at the end of the day. 

One more thing...many of you asked if I clipped the spent blooms on my mums. I did clip them. The plants were just green for a few weeks while new buds formed, then right before Thanksgiving they started blooming again! I just took this pic this morning. Aren't they pretty?

I'm loving this second round of blooms! It only took about 5 minutes per plant to clip all the spent blooms and it was well worth it for this repeat performance. :) 

Y'all have a great day!

~Lisa