12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: April

Posted in Decorations, DIY, Easter by beckyjael

I shared a little glimpse of the April décor last year at the end of this post. It was the first month last year that I really got around to holiday decorating, despite my goal to do it monthly (technically I decorated for March last year, but it was very poorly represented, there really wasn’t much). Which meant that it was the first month this year that I didn’t have tons of projects I was working on the month before. Which was nice because I used a lot of March to do some much needed organizing. This month is going to be a bit tricky in the coming years because I wanted it to be Easter, but since Easter is sometimes in March, that won’t work out very well for the April décor. Like next year for example, when Easter is March 27th. I will have to figure out something else for next year. Maybe the May stuff will be up for April and May. And because Easter is so early in April this year, the Easter decorations are going to stay up a quite a while after Easter. Oh well.

So for April I decided that I wanted to use purple as the primary color for the month, to represent Christ because it is the color of Royalty. And because purple is a spring color. I had this ribbon garland that I used for a birthday party for me and Rachel a few years ago, so I started with that and hung it over the top of the mirror.

I made 3 of the rhinestone eggs last year. I used a tutorial I found on Martha Stewart, but I can not find the post anywhere now. Here is the picture from my Pinterest board. I basically just glued the rhinestones onto a wooden egg. I made three more this year too. Last year I also painted 3 of the same wooden eggs in ombre purple. I was trying to decide what to do with them and Vu suggested the ombre paint. There is his contribution to the décor. 🙂 He was/is very proud of himself for that one.

The “Christ the Lord is Risen!” sign I made at a church craft activity this past October. I cut 3 pieces of cedar board 13″ long and then glued them together onto a couple of thin boards. Then I white washed it and the words are vinyl that were ordered for me for the activity. I used my wooden trough box and flipped it upside down to add some height. Continue reading →

19Mar2015

So I Married A… Zombocaphobiac

Posted in Life by beckyjael

(…wait, a what?)

Zombocaphobiac [Zom-bak-uh-foh-bee-ack] n. 1. an individual with a persistent, irrational fear of an end of the world scenario involving mobile brain consuming undead hordes.

When Vu and I were single and going to social activities, meeting new people and making new friends, Vu loved to learn about the professions and skills of our new acquaintances. He would often exclaim in the middle of a conversation “You can be on my Zombocalypse survival team”. For Vu that was a term of high praise. In his eyes, you had made it. In fact, he would even seek out certain positions for this hypothetical team. He never did find a doctor (In case you were wondering my contribution to the team is pretty much nil so I am getting a free ride). What most of our friends don’t realize, is that he was completely serious.

After we were married, I was working at the hospital and for one of our first weekly family nights, we “created” emergency routes that I would use to walk from the hospital to our apartment. And when I say we “created” them, I mean we printed off 3 different maps of the whole area from hospital to apartment and highlighted which roads I would walk home on in case of an emergency, including second and third alternate routes, just in case there was a “herd” that created a zombie roadblock on the first route. And the second. Then we made copies of each map and kept one set in my car, one in Vu’s car, and one at home. This way if Vu came looking for me when the world was ending, he would know which route I would be taking. We also packed a hiking backpack full of necessities, such as water bottles, rain ponchos, flashlight and batteries, thermal blankets, non perishable food, and an extra pair of clothing. He even did a bunch of research looking for good quality water proof rain/snow boots for me and after we bought them, he wanted me to wear them at work at the hospital to break them in (I refused this one). These all went into my car. Now before you start thinking that he is just a few essentials short upstairs (or maybe it is too late), let me explain.

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4Mar2015

12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: March

Posted in Decorations, DIY by beckyjael

I think this is my favorite month yet, from both last year and this year. I love how it all came together. I love the color mint and last year I decided I wanted to use mint for the St Patrick’s decor, but I didn’t get very far. I found the glass ornaments for 80% off after Christmas last year and used them as a starting point. I tied on some fishing line and then hung them across the top of the mantle and mirror. I recently discovered Jadeite and immediately fell in love with it, and it fit perfectly with the mint theme I was looking for.

I saw this shelf/hutch thing, whatever you want to call it, on Pinterest and loved it; I knew I wanted to make one for myself. I went to the salvage yard looking for a cool window to use, but they were all broken and dirty and moldy, so I decided to just try and make up one myself. I have realized I have a hard time with some repurposing, I have a strong aversion to cleaning up certain things and often prefer to buy the raw materials for what I want and to make it look “rustic”. I know, I know, it is funny to some people (and by some people I pretty much just mean men) to take something new and make it look old, but what can I say, I like the look but I like clean things. I ended up using some trim and sort of created a window look. I assumed it wasn’t going to be easy to create the whole thing from scratch, but it was difficult in different ways than I expected. I made a set of shelves and then nailed the bead board and trim onto it. Then I stained it, applied some Vaseline in certain spots then painted it all in white. Once the paint was dry I scraped off the paint in the areas where the Vaseline was, to get the aged look. I am really happy with how it turned out.

I have been collecting the jadeite and other mint and green items since the beginning of January from various stores and websites, and I already had a couple of items. I especially love the Jadeite cake plates and teacup. I made the 17 block (for St. Patrick’s day being on the 17th of March) with some metal house numbers from Home Depot that I spray painted gold and attached to a block of wood that I painted white.

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