Christmas Bird Craft

My Nana saw this in a magazine in a waiting room recently and whipped herself up one. I went to her house this weekend and LOVED it on her coffee table so she got me the stuff to make my own too!

It's super easy to do and doesn't require any crafty bone in your body. I promise.

"Ingredients":

- Greenery

- White stuff to put in the bottom (fake snow, sugar, epsom salt, or normal salt)

- Glass bowl (any shape is fine, my nana's is in a glass urn). 

- Birds

- Little ornaments (for the "eggs")

- Birds nest

So all I did was collect some evergreen-y twigs and pine stuff from a tree in her yard (well okay, she did this for me). Then we used some expired salt the previous owners of this house left. I was never comfortable actually ingesting it so this was a good use. The rest of the stuff can be found at Hobby Lobby (I got my glass bowl from there for $6 on sale). The birds, nest, and ornaments are less than $10.

Then you just pour in your "snow", plunk down some greenery, pop in your nest and eggs, and then perch your birdies wherever you want! 

I liked one of them being perched on the rim of the glass. The kitten keeps knocking it over though.

I put the extra greenery awkwardly on the dresser. I am not crafty enough to make it look nice. Maybe it's my brand/breed of evergreen. My living room looks very christmas-y now. This picture also highlights how dry the coffee table currently is. 

Anyhow, it's easy to do, cheap, and it makes me happy to see it! :)

The funny thing is that Rhoda at Southern Hospitality posted another remake of the very same article my Nana used! I read it a few minutes ago and sent her the link to this page too. That's so funny. Everyone likes bird bowls this year haha! 

Linking this up to:

Oh Christmas Tree...

Ta Da! Here is ours this year. It's just white lights, candy stripe ribbon, glittery red/gold tree picks from Michael's (50 cents holla), and ornaments that I've/We've collected since moving out from home. 

Here are some noteworthy favs of mine! 

This is dorky I know, but if you solve the problem the answer is 2007! My calculus teacher gave them to everyone in my class the year I graduated. It makes me smile :)

Fact.

This is my little girl ornament from Holland. My great grandmother got her (I assume for me since I've always been told it's mine). I have no clue how old it is but I've had it as long as I can remember. 

Cracker Barrel ornament from last year. I think it was only like $3.

I love the tree topper top hat. I got it from Cracker Barrel last December for $14.99. 

Nighttime view...

etc. etc. 

I love turning it on at night, it feels so cheerful :)

Living Room Paint - Gray Cashmere

Ta Da! After only a month and a half of half-ass painting, the living room is done!

I've hung some things up, the room is very much not done. But, it's more presentable now I guess.

The wall above the couch is just begging for some love.

Do you like my $3 goodwill lamp? Brassy and in charge! I was going to paint it glossy white. I'm not sure what to do with it now... I kinda like the brass.

I also removed the other couch pillows. They felt a bit busy to me. I'm still trying to think of replacements.

That random lack end table with nothing on it won't stay there. There isn't enough room for it obviously. They were in the mancave for a while though acting as dual coffee tables. Rob found a proper for in there so these came back out to the living room for now.

I am debating repainting this to a softer dark gray since it got banged up in the move and I tossed out the can of black paint in a fit of rage. I'm definitely going to change the knobs. The squished bug brass pulls have annoyed me for long enough! 

We donated the turtle to a co-worker of Rob's. Poor Franklin wasn't getting the care he deserved by a busy Rob... plus the cat was too interested in him. He was going to end up as a snack on the half shell any day. His old end table is going up to the guest bedroom most likely after a makeover). 

Now we've kinda got a dead space behind the couch. I have no clue what to do with it :(

See my painted ferris wheel Michelle?! That's for you!

On the dining side I've managed to decorate a bit more. I got 12 $1 frames from the Dollar Tree in plain black and slid in cut outs from the Paris scenes art book I got at Goodwill for 50 cents (past post link here). I think they look pretty. 

Plus the prints are neutral so they don't stand out that bad. Also, I will never again do a symmetrical gallery wall in my life. Do not tell me they look crooked. According to my laser level they're not so they're not!!  (This is me plugging my ears now) haha.

One of the frames IS wonky though. The wood is warped. Oh well that's what you get with $1 frames. I'd still rather have it wonky then pay $7 for each at Ikea for a whopping grand total of $85 for just frames! Yowza.

I think the paint color makes the wood of the table pop nicely.

Christmas tree!!

Oh and the lantern on the table was just $3 at Lowes last summer. I haven't bought a candle for it yet. 

Ugly ceiling fan shot. That is next on my list to tackle.

In general, I like the paint color and so does Rob (it's Gray Cashmere by Benjamin Moore). In natural light it's a pretty smokey blue-green. We don't love it though... hopefully it'll grow on us. I'm not repainting it anytime soon.

Linking to:

How to Hide Surround Sound Wires.

This long term sub position is taking it out of me! Thank goodness for the weekend, it's been so nice to wind down and focus on the house again. The actual job is going great, I love my kids, but there wasn't much preparation for my position, so I've had to do a lot of lesson planning which isn't normally required. My mom (who teaches 6th grade math at the same school) has been helping me loads though! It's so nice to work with and learn from her :)

So this technically happened last week, but I didn't have time to blog about it during the week, sorry!

We've been focusing on the mancave lately, and decided to move the 42 in flat screen to that room instead of the 32 in. Mainly because of the lighting-- the 42 in is a plasma, and it got way too much glare in the living room. But also because we want that room to feel like a movie room so the bigger size just fit better.

Moving the big TV in meant that we could hang up the surround sound set thingy, and Rob used his master mind and manly muscles to figure out a way to hide all the ugly wires. Why do they make the wires so colorful?? It looks stupid just dangling down the wall.

(The speaker is sitting on top of the TV in this picture, the cord doesn't stretch across the wall normally!)

We decided to run the wires along the insides of the walls. We did each side of the TV differently because we are silly and didn't think of the best way to do it til we got the other side. Oh well. Essentially all you do is get a spade bit for your drill (or dremel) and punch a 1/2 in. hole into your drywall at the spot where your speaker will hang, and then down at the bottom of the wall near the baseboards.  Make sure you are drilling over an empty space in the wall-- no studs! Push the drill lightly, you don't want to go all the way through to the wall on the other side either. Then just feed in the wires into the top hole. That hole will be hidden by the surround speaker that's mounted on the wall.

To get the wires back out of the wall, shine a tiny light into the hole and use a pair of tweezers (bonus points if they're leopard print!) Ignore the annoying cat that's curious. 

Sorry it's blurry, but he got it out! 

I won't lie, it's tedious trying to find and get that cord back out of the wall, we both got short tempered, but by me wiggling the top wire, he was able to find it at the bottom and drag it out.

And yes it makes a mess on your carpet! Ha. Now you won't have annoying dangling cords though! 

We tucked the remaining cord into the space between the carpet and the baseboards, painted the 2 in. of wires showing across the baseboard white to match, and called it a day. You'll see the final product in a few days when I show off the painted mancave! Yep, and it's now a gorgeous color ;)

Like I said though, we hid the wires for the two different side speakers differently. For the right speaker we just drilled through both walls and fed the wire into the closet and back out. It was SO easy, and you won't see it unless you go into our walk in closet. We couldn't do this on the other side though because the wall on the other side isn't in a closet, it's in our downstairs bathroom... we don't want guests seeing a random cord entering and disappearing!! 

In all then, there are two ways of hiding these wires:

1.) Drilling into both walls and feeding the wires in and out. This is very easy as you can actually see the wire to poke it back out. 

2.) OR, drill halfway into the space between studs and feed the wire through-- using tweezers, flashlight, and patience to get it back out again. 

And now the mancave looks much more stream lined. We're going to do this to hide the power cord for our flat screen in the living room too. 

Award Time

I've gotten two of these awards in the past few weeks but I am a bad blogger and haven't mentioned them yet.

Thank you Erin and Sarah!!

Erin is from http://his-and-hers-blog.blogspot.com/ Where she is a cat lady like me and does gorgeous stuff with her gorgeous home. And wears beautiful lamp shades when in public ;)

Sarah is the lovely maker of http://reneweduponadream.blogspot.com/ . She does tons of inventive crafts and teaches us how to tweak your home even when you rent! Plus she leaves me super nice comments :)


So, I am supposed to talk about 7 random things about me.

1.) I refuse to touch cotton balls. It's the squeak they make when you squeeze them. It's like nails on a chalkboard. Rob likes to be mean and throw them at me. He is bad. Please tell him so.

2.) I hate perfume. I have scent induced migraines so I only use jergens original lotion and I don't use sprays and such on myself. I also judge people who bathe in perfume and I HATE being stuck in an elevator with people who smell (good or bad). :)

3.) My favorite treat is anything sour. Right now I like Sour Gummy Shrooms from Wonka the best. Trolli Sour Octopi, Sour Life Savers, and Sour Patch Kids are always welcome though. I don't really eat cake or chocolate, they're just okay.

4.) I don't actually like to paint walls. I like the after, so I force myself to do it, but I have to reward myself afterwards. Furniture is better because it's less to paint. Primer is annoying though.

5.) I like to play Call of Duty with Rob and friends. I am better than some, and much worse than others. I like the zombie maps best. I always shock my students when I tell them this. We don't tell our teammates that I'm female though or they'll rage quit in the middle of the game! Rudies.

6.) My favorite movie is the Sound of Music. My favorite books would be either Harry Potter's or Laura Ingalls Wilder's. I don't have a favorite type of music, I just listen to the radio so it changes with the top 40. My favorite food is CHILI or fried squash  :)

7.) I road tripped across Tunisia with a $35 rented car with Rob 2 years ago while on spring holiday. I am lucky to be alive considering how maniacal everyone drove. I also hid from Rob that I knew how to speak french quite well... til the last day when I fluently asked a vendor for some coca colas. Previously I had made Rob talk to everyone in a mix of English and German (Tunisians speak Arabic, French, and then English). He was shocked... I don't know why I didn't speak French before then, I think I was intimidated... plus the Tunisians spoke good English generally. This was before the civil unrest. We were safe!

Guest Bedroom Tweakage

This is a month old technically, but I completely forgot I had not yet mentioned it! 

We hung the curtains in the guest bedroom, now the room feels much softer. 

This room is fairly impossible to photograph in the early morning :( Sorry for the weird colors. The curtains look good though don't they? 

The rod is a $22 Oil rubbed bronze rod set from Target, the curtains are WILMA $14.99 for a pair (or close enough) from IKEA. I LOVE these curtains, we used 6 panels on these windows since they're light and airy. The shades I made using mini blinds and walmart unbleached muslin for ~$4 a yard. 

The room before looked so harsh:

And yeah, I was too lazy to properly make the bed before I took the new pictures... the sheets were in the washing machine anyways. :) 

Click here to see the original post on the guest bedroom (link). 

Rob Earns Manpoints

We installed the new lights!

Here's the before of the breakfast nook side of the kitchen,

And here's the lovely new view.

Let the record show that Rob installed these the same night we bought them. So manly ;) 

We picked the larger 20" version because we liked the idea of it being oversized. But also because it was the only one that had a proper ceiling connectivity thing. The others had a normal outlet plug at the end. Too complicated to change it out. 

Much better now, yes?

And on the other side of the kitchen, 

I am sorry for your oak induced migraine. :) But look! It makes swirly shadows on the ceiling!

So much better than before!

But now I have a box of this in my kitchen:

Do you think Restore would even want these old lights??