Category Archives: Decorations
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12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: Recap
I have enjoyed this last year of monthly holiday decor so much. I love thinking up and searching for inspiration, making plans and then seeing those plans come to fruition. Decorations adds so much to the feel of each holiday, and I do love holidays so much. So after completing my goal to change it each month, I thought I would share a little recap of all them together. It is so fun to see them all in one place. Thanks for following along. And although I have really enjoyed it, I am also very much looking forward to focusing on some other projects now. 🙂 Plus I still have a few projects I didn’t get around to each month (especially the pillows, I only got to 1/3 of them).
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: December
Yay, it’s December! Christmas is my favorite holiday and I have been so excited for the Christmas decorations! I actually made most of them last year, I was really busy and productive last November. But I love the changes that I made this year even more. Also, be warned, there are lots of pictures.
I love boxwood and wanted to use it around the mantle, but I haven’t ever seen any boxwood garlands. So I bought a wreath from Trader Joe’s and then took it apart. My friend Wendy also let me get some free holly clippings from her dad’s property, which was so nice. I love the holly and boxwood together. (When I told Vu we were going to get the holly he said “What is that?” seriously? How do you not know what holly is?)
This Olive wood nativity is from Jerusalem. It was my first nativity. It was a gift Vu gave me long before we were married. He went to a lot of work to get it for me. The wood comes from 1 of 4 olive groves that could be the garden of Gethsemane. Of the 4 groves there are 2 that have a much higher likelihood of being the actual grove. And then of those 2 one is a little more likely than the other. This wood comes from that 1, the one believed to be the most likely to be the garden of Gethsemane. As I understand it, it takes years and lots and lots of work to get wood from this grove. Vu knew someone who managed to get one, and was making it into a piano. Vu asked him if could buy the cut off pieces. And then found a carver in Jerusalem that could then turn them into this nativity. And each step required some intense kind of documentation to make sure it is still the same wood from that original olive tree from that one grove. To me, it is kind of like the ultimate nativity. It is very special to me, not just for it’s individual value, but also because of the effort and thought Vu put into it, and the representation of how much he loves me. And because Christmas is my favorite. After this, I decided to start collecting nativities from around the world, to represent my love of travel and my love of Christmas.
12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: November
I can’t believe it is already November. October went by so fast. I had most of the November decorations done last year, and a lot of them I have had for years. I didn’t end up putting them out very early though, because I was in Boston visiting my sister until the end of October, and I wanted to enjoy the October decorations for a little while longer since I was gone for so much of the month. And then I got sick when I was planning on changing them.
I only had 3 things that I actually made this month, the Thankful sign, the Thanksgiving banner and the ornament pumpkin. I also bought a few things, like the wreath (from Home Goods) and the table runner (from a party store). It was a good thing I didn’t have too much to do since I was gone for half of October. I never would have gotten it done.
The Thankful sign was actually a project that I started a year and a half ago and it was supposed to be for the master bedroom. I cut, nailed together and white washed the sign, and was all ready to paint the quote on. But the problem was I couldn’t decide what quote to use. (I wanted something from Pride and Prejudice and Vu wanted Star Wars) So it sat in our garage for a year and a half, waiting for me to decide. Then this year as I have been planning out the decorations for each month I knew that for the Thanksgiving decorations I wanted to use this quote. I love it so much, and I think there is so much truth in this statement. Plus it has been especially poignant for me this past year. I have been thinking a lot about how there seems to always be something in life that is difficult. I think there is only one time in my life where I felt like every single aspect of my life was exactly how I wanted it to be (what a great year that was!). So this past year I have been thinking about life’s difficulties a lot and how most likely there will always be something that can be a source of unhappiness. But that doesn’t mean I have to always be unhappy. Happiness is something that comes from focusing on the things in life that I do have, that I do love, and being grateful for those. Because I am a firm believer that there is always something beautiful if life, if you just learn to always look for it. I just want to remember that more often. I have also been reading this talk a lot this year, which I love and has been a great reminder as well.
12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: October
The October/Halloween decorations is the one month out of the whole year that I have been looking forward to the most, and I am so excited that it is finally here.
I have always enjoyed crafting and creating, and all growing up I did small random projects. However I didn’t really get into it “full time” or to the extent that it is today until the fall of 2009. I was just made the co-leader for our church activity’s committee and we were in charge of an appreciation dinner for the women in our ward and I was tasked with the responsibility of coming up with centerpieces for 8 or 9 tables. That was really the catalyst for a chain reaction that made me realize how much I loved decorating. Even though now I cringe a little bit when I see pictures of those centerpieces, at the time I was really happy with what I came up with and still love a few of those items. The next year I made my first full on DIY project and it was this orange wreath. I am pretty sure that when I finished it I sent a picture of it to everyone I knew, I was so proud of myself. And I still love it so much.
Then last year when I pulled out the Halloween decorations I realized that I HATED how the whole thing looked together. It didn’t feel at all cohesive to me, and it didn’t fit in the space we had at all. So throughout the whole month of October I worked on many projects, and by the end of the month it was at a place that I was ok with (you can see it in this post), but I still had a lot of things I wanted to do that I just didn’t have time to get to. I didn’t hate it any more, but I still had so much I wanted to add and change. So even though October was counted as “done” for my monthly goal last year, I still had a ton of things I was working on this year. And I now love it, and it makes me so happy. Along with the fact that I can see an orange/red tree from every single window on the main floor. I love the street we live, we have the best trees all along it. I mean this time of year, it is seriously the best!
I wanted a Harry Potter spell book, so I found a black hard cover book at Goodwill, and made 2 potion pages in Illustrator and printed and cut them out on cardstock that matched the color of the pages and glued the edges into the middle of the book. I used this site for the potion “recipes” and then changed and added things a little bit.
12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: September
For September I decided I wanted the theme to be apples/orchard. It is a beginning of fall-ish theme, and in Washington school always starts in September so if I decide I want to do a school theme when we have kids, then apples go along great with that.
The first thing I decided to make was what I like to call a puzzle tree. I had the idea for the master bedroom and wanted to make a tiny one for the shadowbox over the bookcases, but I still haven’t gotten around to it. I wanted to take multiple pieces of wood and cut just a couple of big branches out of each one, so when you put them all together they make the whole tree with a little bit of 3D added in.
Becky Jael 