Little Green Tree!

I love having little trees all over. They're simple and festive. And absurdly expensive! I stumbled upon this website and decided to try a couple!

One was an absolute disaster. I mean, threw the whole thing out absolute disaster. I'm pretty happy with how the other one turned out, though! Here it is!

I dug some boxes out of our fire pile (newspapers, boxes and the like for when the weather's nice for fires outside. Suffice it to say that pile is pretty big come July!), stapled them into a cone shape and cut the edge.

(As you can see, I had planned on both of them working out. Sigh.)

Next, I took an old sweater I was planning to throw out (the sides were all pilled, it wasn't worth donating) and cut it into strips (3-4 inches each).

Fold them in half and iron them so they keep their form on the tree (and are easier to put together).

Now my favorite part! Watching it all come together! I used a hot glue gun because it's easy to apply accurately and it dries quickly. Watch those fingers through the fabric, though! 

(Don't worry, this is the back and the glue will be covered by by the next layer.)

I decided to use the ribbed portion of the sweater for the bottom two layers, and the smooth fabric for the rest to give it some texture.

TA DA! (Don't worry - I fixed that little bit of cardboard peeking through). A cute little whimsical Christmas tree! And all it cost me was a few sticks of hot glue. I can't wait to try more of them next year! 

A Little Holiday Lift

I love, LOVE the holidays! I mean it. LOVE. I think it's because it's the only time Mark lets me decorate with SO MUCH GLITTER! 

I wanted to put little holiday touches around the house, but with a limited budget the past couple of years, we really didn't have a lot of new or extra things. So my husband and I came up with a great idea for about $25, and you can reuse $20 of it!

First, we bought some curtains at IKEA. They're $9.99 for two panels, and we were able to cut one panel and make it into two curtains for one window. 

We bought two sets and made curtains for 2 windows and our sliding back door for $20! This is the part you can reuse - they're just white curtains!

Next, we got some pretty (glittery!) ball Christmas decorations at the dollar store - 4 containers for $1 each (20 decorations total). We took half of them and just put a safety pin at the top of the attached string. The other half we tied white thread to the attached string, and then to a safety pin, allowing about 8 inches of room between. Then, we pinned them to the backsides of the curtains in alternating lengths, and voila! 

A pretty, sparkly winter update to your curtains for less than $5. This covered the two windows and the door. We used some silk red and gold leaves (also from the dollar store - 2 packages) for the fall, but I never got a picture of them. 

I have a couple of other fun projects going on, I can't wait to share them with you when they're done! 

A funny thing happened on the way to the future...

I had a baby, Mark became a stay at home dad, and we got bored and moved to Seattle! We bought a sewing machine, I started making simple art, and fell in hate with running, though I try to do it most days.

We got to welcome this little gem:

She arrived right on time: 8 days late after 8 hours of pitocin on May 13, 2010 at 3:13 PM, 13 days before Gage's birthday. Cool, huh? We liked her, so named her Vesper Olivia and took her home!

She was still forming an opinion on us. We were off to a rough start.

My little man turned the big oh-5...

...and started kindergarten! (Setting himself up for a disobedient life already, since I explicitly forbid the growing of up...)

Mama went back to work after 4 months, begrudgingly at first, but eventually became ever so grateful to work in a somewhat stable industry (that doesn't involve sick people - don't hate. We all have our strengths.) when Daddy was laid off after yet another company went out of business, and became a wonderful stay at home daddy/husband/mechanic/butler/housekeeper/chef. I don't know how he does them all so well. I think he may have a secret butler robot. A butler/chef/housekeeping robot. Yep...

Fast forward, Vesper turned 1 and Gage turned 6!

One day, I was sitting at work. In June. In Southern Arizona. With no makeup on because my allergies were sooo bad, and I couldn't take allergy medicine because I was getting allergy shots - there's a brilliant system (and, yes, you can call it "off meds" and giggle). Our pipes had frozen and burst the previous February. And dealing with 108 degrees and frozen pipes was so confusing, we decided it was time for a change. That's how we found ourselves in the Emerald City that October looking for a house! 

We rolled out of Tucson on Monday, December 5, 2011... and stopped in Phoenix 2 hours later. Do you know how exhausting moving is? We did, however, escape Arizona the next day, and two days later, after 14 hour days, getting stuck a couple of times with that behemoth pictured below, so much fast food, even more coffee, two hotels (one nice, one with strange loud noises all night...) and more than a little wine, we were there!

Home sweet home!

And that brings us to the end of 2011. More later. Carry on, pretending like you have better things to do.