Have yourself a very Pinterest Christmas

 Pinterest has affected many aspects of my life. It has really affected my decor, especially at Christmas time.

This is my mantle in its entirety.

If you follow my Christmas board on Pinterest, some of these things may look familiar.

I have played with this idea for some time but seeing someone do it on Pinterest just confirms it can be a good look.  We don't drink in our house, so these wine glasses stay hidden in a cupboard.  When I pulled them out of cupboard, I was astonished how dusty they were.  It didn't take long to restore them to their natural beauty.  

Here is the link to the original. 

Then I also liked the idea of hanging ornaments from a rod and hanging the rod from stocking holders.  Since we are doing  "Grinch Christmas" theme and Whoville sits inside a snowflake, I bought these beautiful holders at Hobby Lobby.

Now my rod is not purdy but I will buy a nicer one when I see it on sale.  I have until next Christmas.  Here is the original pin.

I love the bling on the rod.  But I am determined to do this on a tight budget so a nice one will have to wait.  Here is the original one. 

But I am most proud of the wreath. I saw this on Pinterest and fell in love. Sadly, the original post does not have instructions so I had to wing it.  I have taken pictures to write a tutorial but I haven't had the time to do it.  

I used:

8 inch wide tulle

Embroidery circle thingy

2 boxes of dollar store ornaments, about half of each...so a dollar worths of ornaments.

time...since I was starting from scratch...time

Here is the original pin

I then moved into my dining room and started to decorate the table.  Let me just say that my dining room is a work in progress. Well lets face it, my whole house is a work in progress.  But oringally I wanted a Tuscan look but now I am looking for a more tradtional look.  I am saying all this because it is this funky mustard yellow and I wish it was more of a blue/green  like Hazel by Sherwin Williams. Now that I have explained the horrid color, here is the light fixture.

Here is the original pin.

So much nicer than mine but I didn't quite understand the tutorial.  I even had my husband look at it and he didn't either.  So I winged it.  I don't like it just yet but I needed to move on.  Once I get it right, I'll try to explain. I actually have more balls but it just looked wonky.  Here is the original pin.

The next is not Pinterest related.  I bought all this hot pin deco mesh at Hobby Lobby.  Confession, it was the only color left so I bought it.  I also bought some thinner green and patterned ribbon to tone it down.  With so much ribbon, I decided to wrap some columns.  The trees I bought last year at a Michaels after Christmas sale.  I think I paid a little more than a dollar for each and used dollar store decor.

And for the first year, I bought a flocked tree.  I love FLOCKED!!!!  There is a funny story behind getting it home but that is a separate post...let me show a picture of what happened

We were on the top of the Kemah Bridge when this happened.  Nuf said.

But when we got it inside and decorated, we decided it was well worth it.

Again our budget has been used for this Christmas so I used some fluffy stuff I bought last year and it covers the bag and I am going to interpret it as snow. Yeah that is it.  It is a part of my Whoville theme.  

From inside the tree, it is suppose to have the feeling of Whoville.  The flocked limbs are a part of a snow flake.  I can almost see the Grinch, CindyLou and heck, I can even imagine Horton holding it.  Hee Hee

Somewhere I have a picture of my wreath but alas it is lost in folderville...somewhere.  I'll find it and load it when I can.  OH and all the small trees have battery powered lights.  I bought the lights on clearance at  Office Depot. They are poster lights, intended to be used on Science Fair posters.  After science fair, they go on clearance for .84 each.  They normally sell for 7 dollars.  Pretty good, eh?

Now off to look for more projects on Pinterest.  A Pinteresting we go, A Pinteresting we go.  Hi Ho the daireo, the Pinteresting I'll go!

 

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Day 6

  I don't know if it was my lack of cooking skills that scared the children away from baking cookies tonight or if it was the homework. In either case, all the kids, including my daughter, did not want to participate in baking cookies.  Bummer, because they really are the best cookies.  I made them last year and my family talked about them for days.

So I thought I would share one of my Christmas projects.  We are changing our Christmas theme this year  We usually do the traditional colors.  My daughter has asked for a Cindy Lou Who Christmas for years.  So this year we were taking the plunge on a budget.

My first project was the mantle.  I wanted to take a quote from The Grinch and have it across the mantle in Grinch green.  So I bought some paint...kidding.  Years ago, while window shopping at Home Depot (it must have been date night), I saw these vinyl wall pops on clearance.  They were on clearance for $2.00 each. So I bought some in each color.  I knew they would come in handy some day...even if that day was 700 days later.

This isn't all of it but you get the idea.  It came in squares and rolls.  I wish I could say I pulled out my Silhouette, found a Grinch font and cut it on my Silhouette.  But I don't have one.  So I pulled out Cricut Expression and my Gypsy and started to design.  I decided one of the fonts on Lyrical Letters would look the closest to a Grinch style font.  If you have never cut vinyl on a Cricut, I find it is best to change the pressure to 3 and let the Gypsy choose the speed.  This will cut the vinyl but not the backing.  Once you cut the letters, pull off the extra vinyl on your mat, so that all that is left are your letters and/or words.  They place your transfer paper over the words.

Trust me, it is worth getting transfer paper to transfer items from the mat to the mantle. I gently rub the paper over my words.  Because my quote was longer than my mat, I cut the transfer paper into word size strips.  Then when I got to the mantle I gently pressed the paper against the mantle until I had all the pieces lined up.  Once they were lined up I pressed the letters onto the mantle.

If I had this to do again, I would have chosen to make the font larger. I think this one is less than 3 inches tall.  It kind of gets lost in the final look...to come later.

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