July and the first third of August seem to have just flown by.  Same thing happened last year.  Don’t know what it is about this time of year.  Anyway, so I was at girls camp for my church the last week of July, and I changed out the décor after I got home, but then Vu was off of work all last week and I always seem to get so much less done when Vu is at home… so I never got around to posting it.

I have had the theme for the August decorations planned pretty much since the end of last August.  And I have explained this chosen theme to Vu numerous times since then.  But each time I bring it up again he asks every single time “now what do peacocks have to do with August?”  And the answer.  Absolutely nothing.  So how did I land on it?  Last year when I made the Magnetic holiday board I was faced with the question of what to use to represent August.  When I thought about it, to me August meant the peak of summer, the heat, the vacations, beaches, pools, blue skies and bright sun, and barbecues.  Then in my mind the color that represented these things was turquoise.  So I painted the wooden magnets turquoise.

Well from there I decided I wanted to add gold because I had recently started to love gold, when up to this point I have pretty much hated gold my whole life, and it added to the whole sun and sand idea.  So I had a color scheme.  Turquoise and gold.  I also happened to have a few random décor items (like this wood herringbone board) that were turquoise and I wanted to incorporate them into one month somewhere and August felt like the best month for it.  This is pretty much the extent of the association.  Because from there I started to see peacock stuff everywhere and started to love the idea and since the colors I often saw with it were gold and turquoise, and since I don’t really have an everyday décor theme going on, for which I could use peacock, August then became turquoise and gold with hints of peacock.  And there you have it.  You can think of it as my non holiday décor, it just happens to only stay out for one month.  Along the way as I started to collect and make things for it, I also decided to add in some geometric items as well, because they are everywhere and often in gold, and I really like it too.

I found these metal tear drop gold jewelry things in the clearance section at Hobby Lobby and since I have often seen the peacock feather made in this shape, I sort of settled on using the tear drop a lot to represent them.

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A few people have asked me about the month’s that have no holiday, what do I do?  June is one of those.  And this one was hard for me, as I mentioned in January.  Early on I decided that I wanted to use yellow and green, because those are the colors that come to mind when I think of the beginning of summer, the sun shinning, the grass being mown.  And then…?  I struggled.  I finally came to the decision that I wanted to capture the essence of Hobbiton.  Nerdy I know.  But Hobbiton feels like perpetual summer to me.  So with that in mind I decided on a sort of rustic farmhouse style.  Maybe a little bit of French farmhouse thrown in there.  Because you know, France.  It’s my obsession.  I must admit though that I am terrible about classifying styles.  So maybe I missed the mark on that, I can’t tell.  But either way the June décor feels like summer to me, soooo I am happy.

After I had everything out, minus the fresh flowers, succulents (pictured below) and the paper flowers for the chicken wire wreath, I took a step back and looked at everything.  And was a bit disappointed.  I didn’t love it.  I stared at it for a good 5 minutes trying to figure out why I didn’t love it.  And then I realized.  The way I had it all placed it was all perfectly symmetrical.  So I removed some things, moved others around and it made the hugest difference.  Even Vu could see how much better it looked.  And he does love his symmetry.  Also goes to show how much fresh flowers add to a space.

The day that I changed out everything was a really warm sunny day, the first one in this string of warm sunny days we had (which ended today).  So all the neighborhood kids were out riding their bikes and having water fights in their kiddie pools, the crew of guys that mows a bunch of the neighborhood’s lawns was out that day mowing everyone’s lawn, and all the neighbors were out chatting.  The only thing it was missing was an ice cream truck driving around and someone grilling up some meat.  So it really felt like the beginning of summer.  Bring on the frozen lemonade’s!

I know flowers in pitcher’s say farmhouse style, Pinterest says so!

The very first thing I decided I wanted was a window picture frame with pictures of yellow flowers in it.  When I went to the salvage yard looking for a window for the shelves for March, I also was looking for one for June.  But like I mentioned, they were all moldy and gross.  Shortly after that I was in Michael’s and happened to see this one, and I had a 50% off coupon.  Which made this frame only $5 more than the dirty gross ones from the salvage yard.  For $5 more I didn’t have to do a single thing to it, and since it is actually meant to be a picture frame instead of you know, a window…, each section is double paned and has little holders in the back to make inserting and removing pictures super easy.  I say that is a win, win for me.

Milk crate and milk can(?) from Hobby Lobby.  Note the metal pail on the left with the French writing… Continue reading →

May was really easy because I had it pretty much all done last year for the House Tour.  However, I still wanted to try and change it up, so I mixed a few things around.  I kept trying to think of other things that I could add, but kept coming up blank.  I did add a couple of new things, but that was all I could get.  I do love the new additions though.  For the mantle I changed it up by grouping the bottles and vases together with some candles, instead of having them separated by color and kept them all together on one side instead of one color on each side, and I didn’t put the flowers inside them either.

Just a recap from last year, the bottles I painted with enamel paint, the picture frame has a floral illustrator graphic I created, the branches have bead and ribbon blossoms I made from pulling apart a beaded garland, I wrapped some ribbon around a twig wreath and made a couple of small triangle fabric banners. Continue reading →

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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I’ve mentioned before that I love changing out decorations for holidays.  Well when we moved into the house a year ago (can’t believe it has been a year) I was thinking about what to do on the mantle for January and decided that I wanted to have something different for each month of the year.  I didn’t get a very good start and didn’t really get anything specific up for January or February (I was still trying to get everything unpacked and organized), but I started in March.  I had some things for the month’s with the bigger holidays, but not much for every other month.  I ended up getting 7 out of 12 (but let’s be honest March was not up to standard…I also don’t love the current set up for November) and many of my completed 53 projects in 2014 were Holiday and home décor.

So this year I really wanted to get every month. I already have a pretty good start, so hopefully it will be manageable.  I noticed last year that what I did have before for our apartment didn’t go far in the new house, which is partially why I only got 7.  I found that I have this problem.  I see something in the store and like it except for maybe it isn’t the color I want, or it’s a good idea but cheap materials, or I want it a little bit bigger, or smaller, or I wish it didn’t have that one thing on it, or…  So I think, “I can make that” and then it will be exactly how I want it.  Which I usually can do.  But that takes time.  And let’s not even get into all of the good ideas found on Pinterest.  And for some reason Vu thinks that he likes it when I make dinner, clean the house and do laundry.  And here we are at 7 for 12.  On to 2015.  The main goal is the mantle and something on the dining room table, with anything extra I can get around to on the coffee and end tables, cabinets on either side of the mantle and the piano. We will see how it goes.  I have many plans in place.  (But not for June.  I am currently stumped for June…the only thoughts I have so far are green and yellow…we shall see.)

So after the busy-ness of Christmas died down (and I got my energy back after having the flu/pneumonia, which I didn’t give to any of our house guests we had the whole time I was sick thank you very much), I started to think about January.  I was discussing it with my sister Rachel, and decided I wanted to do a Winter theme.  I already had some items from a blue and silver mantle I made a few years ago, and I think blue and silver are nice winter colors so I decided to start with that and then just add in some snowflakes to make it more “winter”.

I had some pine cones I didn’t end up using for Christmas, so I spray painted them mostly white.  I took a walk along the path through the greenbelt down the street from our house and picked up some branches off of the ground and also spray painted them white.  They even had some cute tiny pine cones hanging off their branches.  Then I made some beaded snowflake ornaments (thanks Pinterest) to hang from the branches.

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