Our Christmas Mantel

The Lettered Cottage was hosting a mantel party yesterday and of course, I am late!

I decided to decorate our mantel a little differently this year. If you want to see last year's mantel, click here. Because our tv sits right on top of our mantel (not too excited about that, but it is what it is), I can't use really thick garland or the remote doesn't work...which makes hubby and the kids upset. So, I went with a skinnier garland and a few red bulbs scattered throughout.

I saw these topiaries on a blog (I thought it was How Does She but can't find the post now.) and decided to make some of my own. ((( ----Found them. It was here.)))

I only spent $4 at the dollar store on glitter and 2 styrofoam cones. They are placed on top of some brass candlesticks spraypainted cream. The larger round topiaries are made from some old forms I kept. I stuck them in my trusty white Ikea pots and threw some moss and ribbon on them. I think they might need a polka dotted bow tied on the stem. Don't look too close- I ran out of glitter!

Next to the topiaries, I put some milk glass vases each with a silver ball ornament on top

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I bought these stocking holders last year at Target after Christmas for like a buck a piece. Although the shapes are kind of cute, I was afraid they were a little too juvenile looking.

So, I peeled off the felt backing on the bottom and unscrewed the metal weight.

Then, I unscrewed the decorative piece and put it all back together.

I had been wanting some stocking holders for a while, but they can be so expensive when you have to buy 5 of them! This was a great fix and they are plain so they are versatile with any Christmas decor.

Speaking of stockings, I made new ones this year out of burlap. I made each one a little different and accented them with trims and buttons that I already had.

I like the way it turned out this year!

Go on over and check out everyone else's mantels to get some great ideas!

2010 Christmas Cards

Well, it's almost the end of November, so it's time to start thinking about Christmas cards. This was our card last year.

I loved the way it turned out. I just made it in Photoshop, but I think I'm going to try out Shutterfly this year. They have some awesome designs to choose from.
I"m trying to decide between this one, this one and this one. There are so many great designs to choose from. I love the ones with several pics, but we'll see how well my kids cooperate for more than one pose!

Don't forget to check our Shutterfly's wall calendars and canvas wall art. Both would make great presents for grandparents!!

Do you want to get 50 free Christmas cards from Shutterfly this year? Check this out : http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/

Do you send Christmas cards? Do you send photo cards or premade cards? Well, it's almost time to send those babies out, so you'd better get to it!

Halloween at our House

I have been such an amazingly bad blogger lately. Oh well, there are more important things in life. I do love documenting our outings, projects and just everyday life, though, so I'm attempting to get back at it.

Here are some pics from Halloween:

Beetle decided to declothe (Is that how you spell it? ...if that's even a word!) himself and jump on the trampoline while K & E drew faces on their pumpkins.

Then there was the messy part.

I think this was the first year that they actually pulled most of the guts out by themselves.

We had a variation of costumes this year
E and B were Jesse and Woody for our church Fall Festival.

K was originally gonna be Buzz, but I think he decided that might be a little juvenile for a mature 8 year old and decided to be a basketball player.

On Halloween night, E switched it up and was a ballerina, I think. K was still a basketball player and the Woody costume was falling apart by this time, so I just threw a jersey on B.

We had a great time and still have LOTS of candy left!

Well, we'll see if I can keep up with blogging a little better. I have some updated house pics to share, so I'm going to try to get those up soon!

Where did October go?

It's been over a month since I have last blogged! Trust me, I've been busy. So here's what's happened since September 13th (my last post).

This boy turned 8!

We went to a lot of football/cheer practice and games.

We had a great fall break where we went to Gatlinburg!!

E's cheer squad took 1st place overall at cheer competition!

Then she turned 6!

And finally, my friend and I participated in a craft show at her office. We had tons of fun and actually sold stuff!

During all this, our church was going through the book, Radical by David Platt. As a church we have several commitments (you can find them here)- two of which are reading through the Bible in a year and praying for the whole country throughout the year. This really has been an awesome experience so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how God uses it to bring us all closer to Him and to make more of a difference!

So, that's it in a nutshell! Hopefully I will be able to keep up with blogging a little better, but we'll see!

Family Night

Kris and I have been talking lately about how we felt like we weren't being as intentional in discipling our kids as we once were. With football/cheerleading 3 times a week and on Saturdays and church on Wednesdays and Sundays, it is just so busy. So, we decided to have a weekly family devotional time on Friday afternoons. We plan to do it pretty soon after the kids get home from school so that if even if there is something else going on that night, it won't get in the way of our family time. My friend Kelly and her husband, have a great website called Family Muscle. It has plans for family nights all laid out for you. It is a really awesome tool to help bring your family closer to each other and God. So we decided to try one of them out. We chose to do the Back to school Family night, even though school has been in session for a month or so!

I only had a day to pull together decorations. I just used stuff I had and a couple things from the dollar spot at Target. ( I will go ahead and apologize for the poor quality of the pics! I realized right before dinner that my good camera's battery was dead, so I had to use my son's old point and shoot!)

I really wanted to find some school trays but didn't have time to really search them out, so I just bought the styrofoam ones. We had rectangle pizza, corn, salad, school bus cookies and milk.

The food was really good! So good, that I think we'll have it more often!

After dinner, we took all of our broken crayons and melted them into round disk crayons. The kids really enjoyed doing this.

Once the crayons cooled, they really liked coloring with them.

After craft time, we played a few games like show-and-tell...

and Red Rover, Red Rover.

We ended with a devotion and talked to the kids about obeying their teachers, leaders and of course, parents!

We really had a great time and look forward to our next family night!

Now go check out this website and get started planning your family night!

B turns 2!

I can't believe that my baby boy is growing up so quickly.

It seems like he was born just yesterday, but he turned 2 last week.

Here are a few pics from his Toy Story party.

I only have a few pics that turned out because my camera was on manual focus. Darn it! I just can't believe he's 2!

Cheap Kitchen Furniture Redo

I bought this little table 2 years ago at GW for $15. I painted the oak finish a distressed cream right after I bought it. I didn't prime it so, after moving, the distressed finish became a little too distressed and not very desirable.

I planned to paint it cream again, but thought I might go a little bolder and paint it blue. The paint was left over from another project, so there was nothing to lose but time, right?

So, I painted it blue and distressed it. Then, I applied 2 coats of wipe-on poly. I also added a shelf and trimmed it out with molding. This is the first time I have ever altered a piece of furniture with more than paint. I was pretty excited about the way it turned out. I love how the cream and the bare wood show through in spots.

This is a very important table in our house. Each child has his/her own basket to keep school papers in and those little things I find around the house that belong to them. Then on the weekends, we empty them out. I put special school projects or work that I want to keep in the bottom drawer. The top shelf has a basket where we keep things that used to clutter up the top of the table, like receipts, invitations, pens, pencils, etc.

I even gave my kitchen table a makeover. It used to look like this:

It was just a cheap-o black pedestal table- I think from Target (I bought it at a liquidation outlet.).

I really wanted a dark stained wood table with cream chairs. I was pretty sure that this table was not solid wood, so I thought it was hopeless. I decided to sand it down just to see.

I'm so glad that I did, because it was wood!

I found 2 of these chairs at GW for $14.99 (for BOTH).

I Painted them cream and recovered the cushions with a $4.98 shower curtain from Target. (I added some clear vinyl to the seats also to protect them from the many spills that will be in their future.)

Now, they look like this:

I also took two chairs like this, also bought from GW for $6.99 each, and gave them the same treatment.

So my table went from this:

To this:

And the kitchen went from this: (when it was semi-done)

To this: (done for now...I still want to paint my cabinets! )

I love it!

Cost breakdown:

Stain for table- $8
Poly- had on hand
Chairs- $30 for all 4
Spray paint for chairs- $12

Material- $4.98 shower curtain (but already had it on hand)
Clear Vinyl- around $5
Fabric trim- $3
Paint for small table- free leftover from another project (but $5 was original price)
Poly- had on hand
Piece of MDF- $7 cut for free at Home Depot
Braces for shelf- $1 also cut for free
Piece of trim- had on hand
New drawer pulls- $2 for both

Linking here, here and here. And also here and here.