A sentimental Christmas tree ornament really is my favorite. Growing up we always had lots of mismatched ornaments and I always thought "when I have my own tree all the ornaments are going to match". And, I did that for hmm, maybe one year. And then I finally realized why my parents kept all those mismatched ornaments around; because they were special and meaningful to them and it's so nice to have a beautiful Christmas tree full of ornaments that make you smile. Anyway, our Christmas tree is also now filled with meaningful ornaments whether they were gifts, hand-me-downs from our family, or we've picked them up along our adventures together; they're special to us and fun to look at every year. I had seen a few wedding related ornaments on Pinterest and decided to make one for myself. A Christmas bulb filled with petals from my wedding bouquet.

To make the ornament, I bought a single somewhat large clear ornament from Hobby Lobby (I think it was $1.00 on sale), some white and silver ribbon, and had my Mom mail me some pieces from my bouquet.

This was literally the easiest project ever, in fact I barely even have any "during" during photos to show you. All I did was remove the top off the ornament and carefully insert the petals from the dried roses and then even more carefully put the dried little purple flowers inside the bulb. Then I just put the top of the ornament back on and tied a little bow to the top.

I also added a ribbon loop to the top so I could hang it on the tree (you could just as easily use a tree hook but we already put ours away).

Then I popped that baby on the tree and stood back to smile. We have lots of beautiful ornaments we received as wedding gifts, but there's something really special about seeing something that was actually part of our wedding on the tree. It makes me feel happy and swoon-y inside.

So that's it, what do you think? I swear our Christmas tree is crooked but I wanted to take a quick picture that showed the new ornament mixed in with our others. Anyone else make any Christmas ornaments this year? Please share in the comments below!

Christmas Card Display

This year I decided that I wanted to create a better system for displaying our Christmas cards. In the past I've just pinned them to a ribbon and that worked fine except I was constantly poking my finger. And it was tricky to look at the cards themselves. I saw a few ideas on Pinterest and decided to make a festive board of some sort. I had read about people using foam board but I was at Hobby Lobby and they had a nice piece of cork board. Here's all the supplies I picked up.

The cork board that I bought was larger than I wanted to use so Loren cut the size down for me. After the board was the size I liked I just had to cover it in fabric. I just lined it up (which is extra simple when there's a grid pattern on the fabric!), held the fabric in place, and started stapling. I started the staples in the middle and just continued until the entire side was held in place. Then repeat on the opposite side.

To complete the remaining two edges, I folded the fabric like I would if I was wrapping a gift. After making sure the corners were straight, I finished up the stapling.

After the fabric was on, I just needed to add a ribbon to use for hanging the board. The ribbon I bought is a shimmery, silver color and is a wired ribbon. Honestly, I just guessed how long I needed the ribbon to be and stapled the two ends just inside the corners.

I made a little bow to put at the top and hung my little board up. I did realize that I am the worst at making bows, but even my pathetic little bow looked better than nothing. 

 I was really excited to add all the cards that we've received so far this year, and I really love the way they look all hung up.

I think the display looks so festive and fun with all the cards attached (though I'm hoping to be able to add a lot more!)! I'm happy to have a place to hang our cards so we can see them everyday. Such a quick and easy little project I'm a little annoyed with myself for not doing it years ago! What do you use to display your holiday cards?

Centerpiece Update

Our dining room table is in need of some pretty serious attention. I have those serious plans working in my head, but until we get around to them I figured maybe a new centerpiece would tide me over. We'd been living with our table looking like this:

Several different ideas all thrown onto the table. The placemats and napkins have been on the table since we got married, the runner I think got introduced sometime last year, and the basket in the middle just landed there after I took it out of the living room. Things were too crazy for me so I decided to take a simpler approach. I purchased a little ceramic tray from Marshalls and finally found a few candles in my price range at HomeGoods. Candles are crazy expensive! What's the deal with that?! Anyway, I plopped the candles on the tray and put the whole thing in the middle of the table.

I filled in the gaps with a stash of wine corks I was saving for reasons unknown at the time. Seems like that mini hoarding issue worked out for the best! I like the corks as a filler and some of them have little memories written on them like one from my brother's wedding last summer and others from vacation memories. It's fun for them to be out on display.

In the end I decided to just keep the table runner and lose the placemats. They were just taking up too much room in my opinion. Oh, and I added some little plastic red leaves to the filler for some Fall sass in the dining room. It's not much but it gave the room a little holiday cheer.

So that's the quick little dining room update. I'm hoping to tackle the bigger project before Christmas but we'll see how that goes. :-)

Pinterest Challenge - Fall Edition!

It's Pinterest Challenge time! Yay! Nothing like a challenge to get your blogging booty in gear. If you haven't heard of the Pinterest Challenge it's a fun little virtual challenge that's the brain child of Katie Bower of Bower Power and Sherri Petersik from Young House Love. Every season they challenge people to stop pinning, and start doing and get a couple other bloggers to participate with them, this time Sarah from Ugly Duckling House and Carmel from Our Fifth House are playing along. It's a fun way to get people moving! And it's lots of fun to see all the projects people share.

I worked on a couple Fall themed projects from Pinterest but really this pumpkin tower is the only one that worked out well enough to be worth talking about. I still struggling with a yarn mess from another project! :) I saw a couple cute pumpkin towers on Pinterest that I liked:

Source: reinventedkb.com via Kristen @ LoveK on Pinterest

Source: www.bhg.com via Kristen @ LoveK on Pinterest

The "welcome" version seemed too big for our porch, as well as being too large to store easily. And I wanted to be able to display the pumpkins for the entire Fall season instead of it being Halloween specific so I decided to modify the smaller of the two towers to meet my needs. I'll be honest, this wasn't the cheapest project ever. I think it was around $50 total but I figure since it's something I can use for years to come it's not so bad. I got the pumpkins and leaves at Michael's and the rest of the supplies from Hobby Lobby.

First thing, was painting the terracotta pot that I used as the base of the tower. I just used a high gloss black spray paint. It took several coats to completely cover the orange but that's no biggy.  I used the styrofoam pieces to create a base for the pumpkins to stick to.I just hot glued the pieces together. I decided not to glue the foam to the pot, no real reason I just decided against it. I did shove some plastic bags around the base just to keep the foam stable in the pot. I don't have a picture because it was impossible to see anything other than the top layer of styrofoam.

 The hot gluing continued with the pumpkins. I cut the stems off the bottom two pumpkins and just hot glued them on top of each other.

Then I just put lots and lots of hot glue on the bottom of the pumpkins and stuck the whole thing to the styrofoam.

 After the pumpkins were glued into place, it was time to add some leaves around the base. This is a random note, but these leaves I bought from Michael's smell horrible. I can't even describe the smell but gosh, they were gross. Anyway, I snipped the leaves off into smaller little pieces and just hot glued them around the base of the pumpkins. They covered up the styrofoam that was showing and added a little fluff to the tower.

I placed the tower out on our front porch in place of the plant that was dying, and I think it looks really cute out there!

I love that the porch is decorated for Fall but I won't have to do any decoration switching when Halloween was over. These decorations can take us through Thanksgiving! That's a win in my book! :) Overall this was an easy project to complete. I hope you like it! Make sure you check out the other Pinterest Challenge projects that are linked up on Bower Power, Young House Love, The Ugly Duckling House, and Our Fifth House. 

Pinterest Challenge - Summertime!

It's time for another round of Pinterest Challenge! The Pinterest Challenge is a fun idea created by Katie Bower over at Bower Power and Sherri Petersik at Young House Love to prompt us all to get our booties in gear and start making some of those awesome projects that we "pin" on Pinterest. When the Summer challenge was announced I knew just what I wanted to make...a light for the patio umbrella.

Source: plus.google.com via Kristen @ LoveK on Pinterest

I started the project by spray painting my hula-hoop. I picked up the hula-hoop at Target and used a white spray paint that I already had on hand.

The painting didn't take too long and it helped that it was a nice sunny day so the hoop was quick to dry. I let it dry all day in the sun and then moved it into the garage over night.

The inspiration picture on Pinterest used icicle lights but I knew I wanted to just use a regular strand. I'm a pretty awkward person so I figured if there were lights dangling around over the table I'd find someway to get my hair tangled up in them or something equally lame. No icicles seemed like a safe bet. I picked up this simple strand of lights from Target and wrapped it around the painted hula-hoop. I used a white zip-tie to keep the lights on the hoop (that'll make Loren happy, he LOVES zip-ties).

After the lights were on the only thing left to do was hang it up. These are the supplies that I planned to use:

But it didn't work out as planned. I had planned to use fishing line to create a loop and then hang the hoop from the magnetic hooks, but the magnets just weren't strong enough to hold the weight. I ended up using...more ZIP-TIES! I have to admit, Loren's love of zip-ties is wearing off on me. They're super useful. The zip-ties worked like a charm. My light was in place!

I really can't tell you how much I love this simple little project. It was quick and cheap (that's what she said!), seriously I only spent about $20 bucks. And it looks so sweet at night. We don't really spend a ton of time out on our patio but this light makes me want to. I'm a sucker for some twinkle lights so I'm ready to grab a glass of wine and head on out back! Visitors welcome...byow. :)

So that's my Pinterest Challenge project for this season. Anyone else been inspired by Pinterest lately? It's amazing all the ideas over there!

Valentine Wreath

I saw a really cute argyle inspired wreath on Pinterest and knew I had to try to make one myself. I feel like the wreaths I've made in the past are all sort of similar so I was excited to try something new. Here's the Pinterest inspiration:

Source: etsy.com via Kristen @ LoveK on Pinterest

Sweet huh? I picked up my supplies from Michael's, a foam circle, a big pound of cream colored yarn, and some pink and red felt. The red felt is sparkly! I love it!

The first thing to do is cover the foam in yarn. I just tired the yarn in a knot to start and then kept wrapping it around the foam circle. For some reason I thought this would take 10 minutes. It took me about two hours. Now, I was distracted by the most excellent movie of all time Cowboys vs. Aliens (joke - the movie was horrid) but it still took a lot longer than I anticipated. Maybe I'm just not a good yard wrapper. Also, little foam bits sort of got everywhere so just be prepared if you decide to make this too.

Next, I needed to cut out my little felt hearts. I found a heart shaped object in our house to use as a stencil because I didn't trust myself to make a well proportioned heart but this wasn't rocket science. Trace and cut.

Once I was done cutting I decided to hot glue the hearts to the wreath. It might not be necessary since you cross yarn over the top but I felt like it was nice to make sure they stayed put. Plus it's fun to burn your fingertips. :)

Now it was time to argyle this sucker. I wrapped the yarn diagonally across each heart once then went back and did the same thing in the opposite direction to create the X shape across each heart.

Basically the wreath is finished now but I decided to add a loop to the back to use as a hanger. It's as fancy as it sounds - I took some yarn, made a loop, and hot glued it to the back of the wreath.

Done! I'm really happy with it. I think it's a cute little Valentine wreath. It's cozy and lovey all at the same time, just like Valentine's should be!

What do you think? Anyone else a super slow yarn wrapper? Or been making an Valentine's Day craft projects?