Last Year's Tree

3 years ago I splurged on some beautiful glass ornaments in all of the jewel tones you can imagine. Then I went a little crazy with the colored ribbon and colored glitter. I loved this tree so much as it was a product of my creation and so much fun to look at! The pinks, the greens, the blues, the purples - so young and vibrant! However, the thought of that gawd-awful tree going up again this year was enough to make me not want to decorate at all. So I have come up with a new design (will post soon) but as I was looking through old pictures, I realized last year's tree wasn't so bad. In fact, it was quite beautiful. See below:

 

I haven't parted with the ornaments yet, I actually used them on my twigg-tree to keep the young, vibrant feel - not willing to let that go.

A Warm Welcome

There is nothing better than a beautiful front door to set the holiday-mood for a home. I am trying to stick with gold and green for my holiday decor this year, which is a change from the jewel tones I've had in the past. Needless to say I am having to recreate several things - including my wreath. For this project I purchased a craft wreath from Hobby Lobby, some swirley sticks, a big green flower and of course some gold spray paint. I also found some extra twiggs to make the wreath look a little more whimsical.

Cute Swirly Sticks

Totally awesome flower (post the spray painting of the wreath and sticks):

Ta-Da!

I have to say it looks cute next to the trees on the front step. Stay tuned for the outdoor tree decor! One of my next festive projects...

5, 6 Pick up Sticks...

Christmas Crafts! I found a very unique Christmas tree at my favorite, Z Gallerie. However, this tree came with no messy pine needles nor did it require much space for display. Although it did come with a price tag of $69.95...for this:

 

For sticks? I don't think so. Thanks to my ample supply of sticks and spray paint - I went ahead and made my own. First step: Find some twigs that look like they can support ornaments:

Second - tie the sticks together so they form the "tree" and spray paint with a metallic color. I went with gold as my theme this year is all green and gold. 

Then you will want to arrange them in a flower pot, fill the pot with rocks so that the sticks wont move and hang your favorite ornaments from your new decor piece. It has a little Charlie Brown appeal, doesn't it?

 

 This new piece adorns the top of my media cabinet and really adds some height to the room. He looked a little lonely up there so I found an old, colorful snowman and Santa and shot them with a coat of gold spray paint. Now they look like the best of friends. I'm pretty excited about it!

Festival Results

So fun! Mayor's Choice Award. And the owners of the Creston House (Main St. Council Bluffs) purchased the tree for $350 to display in their lobby. How adorable. All the funds go back to the Bluffs Arts Council. Glad I could help!

Garage Walls!

Up and at em! Privacy Fence is Up! Frame Work is Up!Starting to look more like a building. Totally blocking out the neighbors and making the backyard much more private...

 

 After writing a paper for my graduate studies class I headed off to the Festival of Trees Awards Ceremony and came home to find this:

 My first thought was, "I'm going to move that wood so I can park in there." Then I realized there is not a roof so it wouldn't make much sense. :-) Silly Girl! Here you can see the brand new car just inching her way in there. It's like she is saying, "Please don't make me stay out in the cold much longer"

We are getting closer!

Festival of Trees: Final Product

As I knew it would, the tree came together. Thanks a million to my wonderful mom, Tammy, for suggesting that we enter, helping with (and laughing at) the crafts, and setting everything up. We had an absolute blast! See the transformation below. First you will see the massive tree they gave us. On a platform and everything. The lady in charge said, "Since you are a professional yours is on a stand." Professional? We use that term very lightly. Actually, we don't use that term at all.

I ended up finding these really cute "Main Street" style ceramic buildings for around $1 each. They were painted the most gawd-awful colors (you can only imagine), so I puff-canned 'em silver and wrote on them with a red Sharpie. Easy enough...

 

Then I also found a beautiful angel for only $1. You can guess what I did to her (ART, remember?) I also dusted glitter on her to make her shine!

The black squirrels hung from ribbon and actually looked pretty cute:

 And, I cut down some of my zebra grass from the back yard and, well, you know spray painted them...

 

I found a few other angels and put them all up at the top so they could be together.

Below you will see the final product. Oh, and the exhausted "designer"

A little tired after a 9 hour work day a 15 minute dinner break and 3 hours of "professional" tree decorating. Professional. Ha!

Festival of Trees Designer Contest

So, mama-bear had a brilliant idea to enter the Bluffs Arts Council's annual Festival of Trees Designer Contest. "I will help you," she said. Of course I would not turn down anything design related. ...Or should I have? The story goes like this:

You have to choose a theme, so I went with Council Bluffs as my theme, and I also planned to use only recycled or second hand items. I was not going to purchase anything new, except spray paint. So we ramshackeld Nana's old Christmas decor and found some silver bulbs, some red apples and some fluffy metalic silver garland. So, I got out my spray paint to make everything look uniformed.

 

To create my Council Bluffs Theme I have decided to go with Black Angels, see CB's Black Angel below:

 

It might seem a little sacrilegious at first, but just think of it in terms of art... I began my hunt at the thrift stores for angels that I could possibly spray paint black. I know it still sounds strange. ART.

I am also going to spotlight our favorite black squirrels, some framed photographs of the well known Council Bluffs hot-spots, hopefully some of the Daily Nonpareil (turned into garland - having a tough time with that) and whatever other random Council Bluffs things we can come up with. Right now, I feel like this was a horrible idea as I am looking at our projects, the look more like kindergarten crafts. Uh-Oh!

 

What was I thinking? What a disaster. After 6 hours of crafts I looked at the mess scattered through the house and said to my mom, "I am going to be so embarrassed." But, like everything else I am sure it will work out.

Garage Progress

We are getting closer! Thanks to the wonderful men in my life who still spoil me rotten. I can't complain! I am so lucky to have them, and look here: 3 Generations of Grimm men working together -

 

Not many people are lucky enough to say, "Oh, just an ordinary day, Papa, Dad and little brother, Nate, are just hanging out and working together." So cool. I have an amazing family.

 

Oh, lookie-see-here! Finally Cement!

 

And thanks to my dad's eye for all things beautiful he is adorning my driveway with a space that will be filled with flowers and other plants this spring!

And, a Patio! I have been dreaming of this day since I bought the house 4 years ago! And do you see that hose running across the patio? Of course you do. Well, guess what? It is now buried under the patio in a PVC pipe that is trenched from the house out to the garage where it pops out of the ground and will hang nicely on one of those hose-winder-upper things. This genius idea was, of course, my fathers. He said, "this way your hose wont get tangled in your patio furniture when you need to water your plants." Smart man. He also trenched one up to the front yard, so I can also water the plants up there without dragging the hose all the way around the house. I love him. And his ingenuity.

Next to come: Privacy Fence, Mulch, and WALLS!

Halloween Part 2

A Great Success! There is no better way to describe our Halloween weekend and our homemade costumes. We had a blast, in fact Jesse won 2nd place at the Barley's Costume Contest with his Billy Idol get-up. I will go ahead and take credit for that. I didn't see him shopping for men's skinny jeans and studded jewelry at Hot Topic! Mamo (Grandma Grimm) made my dress, so we have to give props to her, it fit like a glove!

 

 

We also had tons of guests who went all out as well, it made for quite a fun group!

 

And to top the night off check out the dorky brothers:

It's amazing what a little spray paint, hot glue, a pair of scissors and some eye makeup will do! Totally transformed us into 80's rock stars for one exciting weekend. We shaved Jesse's hair, but the tips are still blonde reminding us daily of the crazy weekend we had in-character.