Decorating-Photo Boxes & Card Swaps

These are photo boxes. I have seen these at Hobby Lobby for something like $2 each on sale. These are great ways to organize and decorate...they are also great gift boxes, just add a bow and they get some functional packaging they can use later.

I actually do use one for photos, fancy that! The other one I use for cards, I have homemade cards that I keep in here and when I need a card for a birthday or birth or whatever...I go right to this box and sort through them.

I will even admit that I did not make all the homemade cards in my box...just because they are homemade doesn't mean they were made in my home! :) Card swaps are a good way to get a variety of cards. The conditions vary depending on how your group does it but you basically have 8 people and you get together once a month and you all make 8 of the same card. You can have a theme, like weddings, birthday, or Summer fun, or whatever and you get there and then everyone gets one of each of the cards. So, you come away from there with 8 different cards for an occasion. There are usually refreshments and lots of chatting and fun, you might even make one card while you are there that would highlight the next month's theme. Anyway...its fun and its also productive!

Decorating--Welcome Autumn!

Hello All--

Sorry to be MIA..its been a busy week...well, really 3 weeks and I am ready for September to be OVER! This month has been quite a doozy! Things are now getting back to normal post Hurricane Ike...most of the evacuees have gone home or at least are heading in that general direction. There are still some cities without electricity and Galveston is possibly still months away from getting their full utilities back. Because of this, our university campus in Galveston has shut down for the semester and they have moved those students and faculty up to our campus. this has been a tricky thing to undertake and these poor Galveston students are used to a student population of 1,700 and now they are mixed in with a student population of 46,000. Quite a difference! We are doing what we can to help them get settled but I am sure they are anxious and probably overwhelmed. In fact, today was the first day that they could go down to the island and get on campus to retrieve their belongings. Many of them left with a suitcase or a backpack and left much of their stuff there only to be told that they cannot go back and get it until today. The island itself just opened up this past Wednesday and campus was open today for people to come retrieve their items for something like 6 hours. Luckily, there was not much structure damage done at all to the campus itself, its the fact that the pipeline that provides utilities to the island was severed and you can't have school without those basic things like running water! So anyway, work has been busy handing all of that plus my boot camp is still going strong so I just plain haven't had much time to post. Sorry! I will try to be better!

So anyway...WELCOME AUTUMN! This is one of my favorite times of years...I love all the colors (except that burnt orange color) and the cooler weather is wonderful! I also love football season...even though it brings with it my busiest time at work...I still love the game!

So, its time to pull out those pumpkins and add a little cheer! I am an Autumn/Fall/Harvest type decorator. I really don't do Halloween decorations very much, I go for more of the scarecrow and pumpkin type themes over vampires and bats...but hey...to each their own! My sister is the opposite and goes ALL OUT for Halloween...she even has a 7 ft spider that lurks in her yard every year for Halloween.

So, be festive with whatever holiday you prefer and have fun! Places like Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and other craft stores have already begun to mark this stuff down so now is a good time to buy a few things if you need to. I also LOVE to buy the really unusual pumpkins. They orange ones are fine but I really love the white and blue ones and odd shades and specles!

HAPPY AUTUMN!

Decorating-Covering Books

I came across this picture in the September Issue of Veranda Magazine. I love this magazine, I came across it one day when I was splurging and getting a pedicure and I grabbed this magazine to look at while I was sitting in one of those fabulous massage chairs while these wonderful people make my feet look so cute and summer fun-ish! (I even got little flowers painted on my big toe nails!)

This magazine is my style...if I had a million dollars to decorate my house, a housekeeper to keep it clean, and a fabulous view out every window. Basically, it is my style if I had an unlimited budget...which I don't! However I love to look at these magazines and take little snipits of their style and use it in my home.

I really love the way these books look with these covers, they make the room colors look in harmony and have a similar color scheme. I admit that I would have to still have their titles printed on the spine so I could find the book, but I like the overall look of this, because lets face it, not all books are pretty or match your decor! I could see doing a series all in the same paper so that you knew it was that series and could easily locate it. I think the most economical way to do this would be to buy rolls of wallpaper (the kind without adhesive on it) and use that to cover the books because you would get a large amount of paper and they would all match. You could also use fabric, wrapping paper, or butcher paper if you wanted to make your own design with stamps or something. Anyway--I think this is a nice way to make your books match and it will probably help keep the cover of your book in better shape since it is protecting it.

I have also seen some wall papers that are beautiful enough to frame and hang on the wall, so that is another way to coordinate your colors. You could also use the wall paper as a mat on a frame.

My father was a professional wall paper-er for a while during his life so we always had spare rolls of wall paper around. We used that stuff for everything from wrapping paper, to decorating, book covers, you name it! I even wall papered a desk once in my life...and it looked pretty good!

So, here is the picture of the entire room and then a close up picture. Enjoy!

You should try to have at least one beautiful space that is yours...a space where you can go and relax and think and just feel good. If that place is sitting on your back porch in a swing or in a sitting area in your guest room...it doesn't matter, just have a place where you can go and feel peace and think. A place where you can feel like you again, if only briefly.

Decorating--Wall Art Vinyl Style

I just love the new trend in vinyl lettering and wall art. It is especially great for people who live in an apartment or rental because they can apply it and take it off without damaging the walls. I think its a fun way to make a statement and decorate, especially because you can have whatever you want made into a quote that you can put on your wall.

Stampin Up has their own version of this, you can see it at http://www.stampinup.com/us/documents/decorelements_web.pdf
I got a few of these pieces for my birthday and I am wandering around my house trying to figure out where they will look fabulous.

We also use the same vinyl art technique in some crafts we did at our Super Craft Thursday last year in our ward. We mainly used them on things with your last name or Family home Evening boards and such and they turned out so nicely. We have a lady in town whom you can order vinyl lettering from but it seems like a really popular thing these days so you might check the Internet or your area listings and see what you can find.

These are really easy to make and yet so elegant. I love things that are personalized and they make great gifts. Honestly, all you do is take off the back layer of the paper, center the word that you are working on and place it where you want, then you take a tongue depressor or similar and rub firmly on the backside of the vinyl transfer. Once you have done that and are sure there are no bubbles and the vinyl has transferred, then you peal off the backside and there you have it. If you are doing it on wood with 2 layers of words, do the back layer first and then the top layer, for instance on the wood one below, you do the surname first and then the other word second so it shows up on top. If you are doing it on glass for the black frame below, then you would have to figure out if you want the lettering on the inside or outside of the glass and figure out of you need to have the name revered so that when it transfers, it is correct. The glass ones are nice because the wall color comes through the glass since it is see through!


The "Christ is the center of our home, a guest at every meal..." one is just transferred onto a kitchen ceramic tile, one of the rough ones that look like a natural stone. I gave this as a gift to a friend of mine and she loved it.







If you are interested in seeing the other projects we did last year and the costs, you can check out this web page http://holidayfuncraftingretreat.blogspot.com/

we created this web page and then never used it, but it shows you our examples and the prices. As a side note, we only charged people cost on these items, we did not make any money, we wanted people to be able to get them for the cheapest price possible!