Anyway I thought I would share some pictures of my home and job decorated for the holidays.
The new kitchen
More counter space to do all my food and baking prep. If you remember, before the kitchen remodel, I had little to no counter space.
This ended up being my main tree as I just could not find the type of tree I wanted (Actually I waited til the last minute to look for a tree.) LOL I just had so much going on.
This is the tree in my diningroom.
I had a different idea of how I wanted to dress up my coffee table, but I ended up using one of my Nativity scenes instead.
This is the foyer. This picture was taken before I added lights to the wreath and the topiarys so that the area is lit at night. (I have an idea to cover that wall with some nice fabric. Just haven't found the right pattern yet.)
The hallway: Pulled out my trusty dollar store Christmas socks. I've had these socks for about 15 years and they are still in great condition. Notice the closet doors? They're new! No more dingy, ugly metal doors. Yey!
This was one of the crafts I had on my to-do list that I actually got around to completing. New wreaths for the bedroom windows.
My apologies for the blurry photo. I used my cell phone to take this picture. My phone used to take very good, clear pictures. Not sure what I did to it to mess it up.
These are the supplies I used: 4 picture frames, several packs of berry picks, 4 red bows, 6 things of garland and a spool of red ribbon. I already had the berry picks.
Before I continue let me say that the picture frames in this second photo were plastic and I with my heavy hands broke them attempting to wrap them with the garland. So I ended up using some nice wooden frames I got from Walmart. Plus they were larger - I think 8 x 14 - and I love the end result.
All you do is wrap the frames with garland. Because the frames were larger than the original ones, each frame used about 1 1/2 bundle of garland. Next I just attached a bow in the lower right corner and I added a few of the berry picks around the bow. The final step was to cut some lengths of ribbon to hang them in the windows.
I got the idea from a picture on Pinterest. The actual website can be found here. (You will have to scroll way down the page). As you can see, her's is more involved and looks beautiful. I sometimes don't have the patience and tend to look for simple, easy and fast, craft projects. Plus when I want my frames back all I have to do is remove the bows and berries and unravel the garland.
As I'm going through my photos I realized that I didn't take many pictures. My mood was up and down this past Christmas thinking about my grandmother. This was the first Christmas without her.
Now on to work. This year I decided to decorate the office in the theme of my favorite, hometown football team, the Baltimore Ravens. So glad I did. WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!, Singing: Ooooooh, Oooh - Oooh - Oooh- Ooooh, Oooh. Ooooooh, Oooh - Oooh - Oooh- Ooooh, Oooh. LOL
The price for sports ornaments were too rich for my blood. So I came up with a solution: make my own ornaments. I found some images on the internet. Copied, pasted and resized the images then printed them on whole sheets of label paper. After I cut out the images, I took some purple ornaments I bought at a dollar store and attached the labels. Voila! Ravens ornaments. (Note: If you try this, to make them last, you can use decoupage or a mixture of crafter's glue (Elmers) and water as a sealer.)
Using my computer and a program from Wordperfect (Corel Presentations) , I used another Ravens image and created this banner to cover the over-sized board behind my desk. I cut the letters out using heavy card stock paper and taped everything on black and purple wrapping papers I found in the dollar store.
I covered the door to my office with this Ravens wrapping paper. I had been looking everywhere trying to find rolls of Ravens paper but had no luck. I found this paper online for $10+ (included S & H). Do you know a week later, I was leaving out of the Kmart behind my job when I saw a box filled with rolls of this paper for $7.99. SMH.
With another roll of wrapping paper, I cover my boss' door. The paper was long enough but not wide enough so I trimmed it out with some purple metallic garland.
Everyone in the building came to see my office and loved what they saw. I did. So much so that another office decided to decorate in purple too. See.
Well that's all I have. Next. Deciding what I will do to celebrate Rudy Day this Friday.
