Christmas Advent

Hi Everyone!  I  finished my Christmas Advent calendar. I was so excited! Its been a two years in the making. I started it last season and then got sick and never got to finish it. I got it out a couple weeks ago and finally got it done. Have you seen the beautiful Christmas Tree advent calender at Pottery Barn Kids. Just like the one I liked at Thanksgiving I have been eyeing it for awhile. But once again I just cant fork out that money. So I decided to make one:)). I don't have pictures on how to like I did with the Thanksgiving one just a picture. I can tell you I used a whole lot of felt and a glue gun. The kids were so excited when it was done!! I told them its not the one from Pottery Barn and my daughter and son looked at me and said at the same time, "Mommy this one is much more special because you made it and we helped you." My heart melted!

Hope everyone has a great week. Only a couple more weeks till Christmas!

Link your craft to the link party at: http://www.centsationalgirl.com/

Bringing winter to Maui

Hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season! We sure are. Did I mention that this is my favorite time of the year! I LOVE IT! This Colorado girl loves the warm fuzzys you get and all that Christmas brings. Living in Maui like I said in other post isn't really holiday..ish..So I usually get really homesick around this time. This year is no different. Every time I get homesick and mope around the house I can hear my Grandmas voice in my head "Jilly if you mope around your house cause your homesick all day your kids are going to pick up on that. They don't know the difference because YOU are their home." Aww that just melts my heart and brings me back to reality.  I am my kids home. This is OUR home. I love my Grandma. Here are some pictures of are Christmas decor. They are not the best pictures but hey it works. I really need to invest in a good camera one day. Thanks for visiting! Have a great week!

As you can see I left the beans from my fall decorations. I thought they worked for both holidays:)

This is my front entry table. Those are capiz shells for an umbrella on the trees. Multi purpose:))

Winter Mantel

I finally finished our holiday mantel...well not exactly a mantel but the closet thing to it in our home! I am very happy with the way it turned out. I have to tell you this one was a hard one for me this year. I really didn't know what direction I wanted to go. This picture isn't the greatest but here it is:

 Made these out of paper cones and them wrapped them in rope. My kids thought they looked like teepees! Too cute.. I might say somewhat true:)

 Here is a closer look at the wreath. I orginally started making a whole another wreath but it didn't work out to well:). So I started over and went back to the good old tie knot wreath! I switched white burplap, brown burlap, beige canvas and then red canvas. Hope everyone is having a wonderful start to the season!


If you want to link your holiday mantel to the link party head on over to:
http://southernhospitalityblog.com/

Burlap Lamp Shade

I had fun making these these burlap lamp shadess a couple weeks ago. They are super easy and fun. I would love to show you how to do them but the only thing is the photos got deleted from my phone due to my four year old:).

First of the lamp base I found at Lowes about a year and half ago. They were a shinny goldish color more  on the clearence shelf for $3!! The lamp shades were also on clearance but they were covered in black and gold fabric. I think they were also $3 each. I looked pretty funny going to the check with my black and gold  combinations. A can of spray paint, a glue gun and a yard of burlap later...whala! I am happy with the way it turned out. All in all the whole project cost be about 15 for two lamps.

Goodbye Fall!

Well fall has come and gone once again. Well not technically but the fall decor will be coming down and the Christmas decorating will begin! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We sure did. We celebrated with are friends and we had a great time. Loved it! I am still full:). We have so much to be thankful for and I am forever grateful for all that God has done this year. Also thankful for all the things he has taught me. Its been a hard year but he remained faithful through it all.
I  for one am sad to that fall is already over but looking forward to get my Christmas on. We always put are tree up the day after Thanksgiving and this year was no different. The tree is up and ready to be decorated:). I of course put my fix on it before the kids go at it tomorrow night. Believe it or not the kids were so tired today they did not want to put the ornaments up. CRAZY! I know! So tomorrow it is. Here are some sneak  peaks of our Christmas decorations. More pictures to come!

Two last things. One, I have not forgotten about my daughters room pictures. They will be up soon! Two, I put the Follow this blog button at the top now. So if you come on here often I would LOVE to hear from you. So please follow this blog and leave comments when you want to of course! Thank you for visiting my little old blog:) Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
Love, Jill

The Boys Room

This past weekend we finally got to the boys room. Don't worry I didn't forget about my daughters room. Pictures will be up soon. She just has a couple of last min things to put up. The boys were so happy to have a room again. They have been with out a room for a week and were looking forward to having a place to call their own. Their room was much easier to put together because they had all the same things. We bought nothing to make it happen. All we did was change the paint color. Here it is:

This is not the best picture. The room is so small I couldn't get a better picture then this. The boys chose to paint their room blue. Of course:). We found this Pottery Barn boat bed on Craigslist a year ago for about 1/4th the price. I sold are entertainment center that was just to big for are home and bought the bed for the boys. I have done that a lot. Sold something on Craigslist that was just not practical and buy something more practical with that money. Craigslist in Maui is a must! As you can see I took the trundle part of the bed and put it diagonal. Then every night we don't have to keep taking it out. It can get a pain believe me. Also my youngest son feels special because he has his own bed. I put baskets in the open space.  The bed spreads I got on clearance one year for an amazing price. They are the Island Surf collection from PBkids.

This is the book shelf I made years back. I love the one that PBkids sells but just could not afford it at the time. So I made one. I had scrap wood laying around from an old bed. I used 5 pieces and cut them to the length I wanted. I layed it the way I wanted it to look making sure books could fit on each shelf..ect. I used a two inch drill bit and drilled three holes in the side of two of the pieces of wood  at the same measurements. Then I screwed the other three pieces to those two pieces, those being on either side. I spray painted it blue and  I attached it to the wall using long wood screws. I had bamboo on hand and put those threw the holes I drilled. That was it. I put the books in and it was all done! I was so happy with the way it turned out. You could always attach beadboard to the back too. That would look cute! My youngest son wanted it by his bed in this room. He was SO happy. When he came in and saw it the first thing he did was lay down and he grabbed a book:) This project pretty much cost nothing. I had everything on hand. Now that is one happy mom!

Now these are my favoriate things in their room. I found these life perserves at are local discount store for $3. I bought transfer lettering for $3 and put the boys names on them. The bamboo hooks I orginally bought for my husbands surf boards years back at a local bamboo dealer but they didn't work. So instead I used them for the boys rooms. I belive they were $10 each. Pricey but well worth it. I love the look.

All in all the boys were so excited to sleep in their new room last night. They had more space to play today which made it all well worth changing rooms:)

Pancakes and Corn Husks

I made yummy pumpkin pancakes this morning. My youngest son ate 7 of them! I guess they were good. They were just the right mix of everything and I think they turned out pretty yummy. I left out the ginger and the cloves though cause I didn't have them on hand. This is the Martha Stewart recipe I used:

1 1/4 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar;
2 teaspoons baking powder;
1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon, ground ginger, and salt;
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg; and a pinch of ground cloves.
1 cup milk,
6 tablespoons canned pumpkin puree,
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 egg

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, ground ginger and salt. In a separate bowl blend milk,pumpkin puree, butter and egg. Fold mixture into dry ingredients. Melt some butter in a skillet over medium heat; pour in 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Cook pancakes about 3 minutes per side; serve with butter and syrup. Makes 8 to 10.

I found the prettiest fall wreath made out of corn husks online a couple months back. Me and my friend fell in love and  we wanted to have a wreath party and make them but it just hasn't happened so I decided to make one this week. Here it is what you need: A hay wreath and a pack of corn husks. I got the wreath at a thrift stores for a $1. Its a small but it was only a buck so who cares:) I got the corn husk at a local grocery store for $3. No tamale making here just wreath making:).

I cut the corn husks in half length wise and soaked them for about 5 mins. This step makes it much easier to deal with. Then I got started pinning them to the wreath. The tutorial I found said fold in half and pin. So that is what I did. I did not have flower pins so I just used sewing pins:) Probably didn't work as well as the others but it did its job. Fold in half pin and then fold another and lap over the existing one till you go all around the wreath. You could also do a couple rows of corn husk then pin and overlap. I just did one cause it was such a small wreath but looking back now I wish I would have done a couple rows of smaller pieces pin then overlap. Next year:).

Here is how it turned out. I thought mine looked a little plain compared to the tutorial I followed so I put my own twist with adding some berries and hanging it from a piece of twisted burlap fabric.

I know it will only be up for a couple weeks but hey who cares right?? It was fun making it and I can save it for next year.