DIY Advent Calendar

I can't say this was a quick or cheap project, but I LOVE the way that it turned out! Plus, we plan to get many years of use out of it considering Ben is only 19 months.

I had purchased the vinyl from Stampin Up! probably about 4 or 5 years ago but only now that I have Ben did I bother putting it all together. I bought a large frame from Michael's and put a white poster board inside of it. Using double sided tape, I adhered the red and green ribbons along the two borders of the frame (this wasn't initially part of my plan, but it developed as I felt the outside part looked too white). The containers are just little containers from Michaels from the wedding favours section and I put a piece of Stampin Up paper inside each and adhered the tins with glue dots. The numbers are on green and white paper and attached with a magnet so they can easily be switched out everyday - it's a bit early for Ben to do so (he'd probably just eat the magnet) so it's currently being kept out of his reach!

More Halloween Decor

I posted my candles that I made for Halloween a couple days ago and here is some more Halloween decor I made for around the house.

These pumpkins were made using the Definitely Decorative vinyl "Spooky Expressions." I actually purchased these around when they first came out but I didn't have anywhere to put them since we were in the apartment. Now that we have a house, we have tons of places to put them! I have one in our kitchen, one in the dining room and one in the living room.

This is a totally non-SU project, but I wanted to share the wreath I made for our front door for Halloween. It was super cheap to create and fairly easy too (except for the second degree burn I got on my finger from the hot glue gun)!

I purchased a wire wreath frame from Michael's and wrapped it with 8 feather boas I got at the dollar store. Then I pulled the leaves off the stems of the skulls (you may have noticed that they are placed underneath the candles I posted a couple days ago) that I got at Michaels and wrapped them around the frame. Finally, I tied on some orange Christmas balls to the frame as well. There are actually quite a few more than you can see in the photo, but the wind made the feathers cover them up when I was photographing it.

Hope you enjoy some of my Halloween projects!

Dandelion Flurry

It's been a while again since I last posted and will probably be a while again following this post. Since Grant is a teacher, he has the summer off and we've been spending lots of time doing things and visiting people we didn't have time to during the school year.

One of the small things we have done is create the following canvas for our future bedroom in the house we're building. We've had this dark gray dandelion flurry decor element from Stampin' Up! for a long time but never put it together because we were waiting to decide what colour our new sheets would be so we could match the canvas to them. Our duvet is a nickel colour - which matches nicely with the dark gray and the sheets are a dark red (although the canvas looks a bit brighter in the photo). We love the way it turned out. This is actually a very large canvas too 30" x 40". For the time being we have it hanging in our living room.

As for our house, it's coming along very nicely and quickly. They are really ahead of schedule at this point so we are getting excited! Here's a pic for those who are interested!

Decor Elements in the Office

The office in our house is my craft room as well as a work space for Grant to prepare lesson plans for his students. We loved the idea of putting the Decor Elements definitions of create (for me) and inspire (for Grant) in the office space.

We purchased the vinyl definitions some time ago but only recently decided to put them up. I didn't want to put them directly on the wall as we are renting and looking into building a house in the near future. We found these great frames at Michaels that fit the element perfectly. To make them a little more interesting we purchased some fabric to put behind them. I want both of them to have the same fabric behind but I couldn't decide on which I liked more at the store so I bought two so I could see what they look like.

I love the pink (my favourite colour) and cute honeycomb pattern of this fabric.
I love the polka dots and green-blue colour of this one. After seeing both, I still can't really decide because they each have different things I like. Grant thinks we should leave them different but I want them one on top of the other in the office in the same pattern for consistency. Which do you think looks better?

Decor Elements Christmas Arrangement

In honour of the promotion I shared with you yesterday (you can read it here), I thought I would share a Christmas arrangment that I made using the Decor Elements line. This was so simple to make and looks great! I purchased the vase and flowers at Michael's using coupons so the whole arrangement cost less than $30 to make. This was my first use of the Decor Elements line (despite buying several of them) and it was so simple! This is the small real red "jingle all the way" (item 114707) and it costs only $4.95. Although the medium element did fit on the vase, I liked the way the smaller one looked better because you could see the green branches better.