From My iphone...

1.Every year Trader Joe's has beautiful, full boxwood wreaths for $9.99. 

They are the deal of the season and usually sell out in a day or so.
They are lush and green. And smell so good.

I hung one up on our French door in the family room last Christmas.

 It dried out perfectly and rarely shed. I left it.

Last week I bought a new one so I took the dried one outside and sprayed it gold. 

That's some serious bang for the buck!

Now.... where to hang it?

2. We went to Charleston for Thanksgiving.

 If you follow me on Instagram then you are probably on Lowcountry picture overload.

But every sunrise and sunset was beautiful.

We just sat on our deck or the walkway through the dunes and soaked up the view

 and the 70 degree sunshine!

3. I shared a few weeks ago that my hair had gotten really long - finally.
(Also, I stink at taking selfies. And I'm really self conscious in them!)

I donated 10 inches to a non-profit called Children With Hair Loss.

I went to the salon Mollie uses - she said I hadn't had a haircut in years and I needed a really good one :)
The hairdresser, Lauren, was great about following the hair donation "rules" and gave me the full salon treatment and a cute long bob that I love.
When I got to the front desk at Challise and Company in Marietta they said it was comped because I donated my hair. They let me tip Lauren but that was it!! 
How awesome is that?!!
I'm definitely going back when I need a trim!


4. My view every morning this week before I leave the house. 
I'm on a ladder painting again.

I get up early. Paint. Shower. Go on with my day.

If only the job was finished when the paint bucket is empty.

More on this later.

5. We had some major thrifting success in the Lowcountry last week. 

Not pictured but artfully packed into the back of the car were 2 vintage bamboo mirrors

 ( matching mirrors, even!!!!), 2 lamps - one a brass pineapple lamp, and two coolers full of shrimp straight off the boats in McClellanville. Oh and the trunk had stuff "stuffed" in it :)

We had to get pretty creative when we added our luggage!!

6. I took a screen shot of this post from Chez V's IG.

She was one of my ORC inspirations and I love her feed and blog.

She found this inspiration pic and said she was going to try and duplicate it. 

Meanwhile, I actually stumbled on a tutorial for this on a new to me blog, Good Life of Design.  I'll be doing good to get a regular old wreath on the door this year :)

That's it. 

I hope my next post has something to do 

with how my house is clean and decorated for Christmas!

#christmaswish

The Official Start...

... of the Christmas Season, in my book, is December 1. So tomorrow is the day and we can start to wish people "Merry Christmas!"  I realize that the retail world started the Christmas season wayyyyyy before I did ( liike my fav craft store was putting out Christmas ribbon in August before they actually rolled out the Halloween stuff!!)
Anyway, I went to grab a fish taco last night at my fav place for those things and pass off some Mod Podge  to a friend that her daughter needed for a school project!



I took her one of my long, skinny signs! She said, "When do you make this stuff?!?" I told her the middle of the night as you can tell from the awful middle-of-the-night pictures. :)   This one even has a cardboard box in the foreground.... My kitchen island is stacked with boxes of sweatshirts to be delivered to my fav Chi Omega's.

I paint these signs on long, skinny repurposed wood. They are actually bed slats from an IKEA bed. Someone left them behind in a rental house, (I KNOW!!!??!!) and my husband brought them home to me. They are awesome. They are connected together with a canvas strip and when you buy them for the real purpose they just roll up to move from place to place. Like everything else from IKEA they have a nice finish. They are sanded smooth. The edges are slightly rounded. With the price of wood and the poor quality I am finding at HD this may be the way to buy wood for signs anyway. I haven't done the math because they left behind two twin bed sets so I am set for a while!!

 

 These have been delivered so now I can show you this fun and easy project! I made these no crimp hair ties for all the girls at Chi O for Christmas. College Girl and I try to come up with a fun little goodie each Christmas. The girls were loving these hair ties but they are pretty expensive in the stores. I experimented a little, googled a little  and found out these are cute, inexpensive and super fun.  I wanted them to be Chi O-ish and not just red and yellow. I love my Staz-On stamp pads so I gave stamping a try and it worked like a charm. I ordered FOE in Chi O colors and bought red and yellow Staz-On stamp pads and went to town.
FOE is Fold Over Elastic and is what the hair ties are made from. It is from the lingerie industry and is very inexpensive. I found it from this super nice company in a zillion colors and great prices. They shipped it right out and I took it to the beach for Thanksgiving and made 190 hair ties in no time flat!!
 

I simply stamped them, cut them to length, knotted them and then used a lighter to lightly heat them so they don't fray. These would be a great girls birthday party activity. They could make a bunch - they love to wear them on their arms bracelet style and they could make them for gifts as well. The FOE is not expensive!! They could stamp their names or designs on them. The little stamp sets are in the dollar bins at Michael's. The only thing they couldn't do would be using the lighter.
I wanted each girl to get two so I bagged them up in small cello treat bags from another great company,Nashville Wraps, and put a little To/From sticker on them.
 In Atlanta they are $5-6 each!! Crazy!

As I mentioned, we went to the beach for Thanksgiving to see my parents and while I do not Black Friday shop (College Girl and I hit King Street in Charleston 3 times before Thanksgiving!! She is now hooked on shopping in the preppiest town ever and would move in and live at Dumas and Sons. ) I did have a black moment on Friday morning....

... my beloved iphone was in my hand one moment and on the concrete at my feet the next moment. UGH!!! Again! But I love my phone so off to the repair shop I go!
I did rescue the day by having oysters at The Noisy Oyster in Charleston so all was not lost!!

 

Let's talk turkey..

I know I'm putting the cart before the horse, or really the turkey before the pumpkin! It's not Halloween yet and here I am pulling out the turkeys! Just in case you want to get a head start on some turkey crafts, here's a cute one - and a cute turkey is not easy to come by!!

This guy is made from a block of 4x4 scrap that I found after a fencing project. Then when he was so cute we made them for art class so I bought a 4x4 and we cut it into chunks. The feathers are colored jumbo crafts sticks because I had them. You could just as easily paint them your choice of colors. They are glued on the back of the block. One year some of the older children wrote what they were thankful for or their family members' names on the "feathers". We painted our block and gave it some polka dots - just trying to "cute" a turkey up a bit!  

I feel a little bad about this headless turkey shot but I wanted you to see how he's put together. We cut the handle off a wooden spoon ( I find mine at Dollar Tree - 3 or 4 in a bag for a dollar) and saved that for another project. We drilled a hole in the center of the block and stuck the head/spoon in.

 

We tied a bow around his neck - I used raffia, some chose ribbon or fabric scraps. The eyes are buttons and the beak and wattle are fun foam scraps.

This Tom is a pretty cute guy!

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