decorating
St Patrick’s Day Craft: Burlap Pot of Gold
Happy first day of March! Who’s excited? March is a big month on the little island I currently call home. Ireland. I don’t say that every time to rub it in. I only mention it, again, on the off chance someone is joining the blog today for the first time. It could happen! Anyway, there’s this little holiday on the 17th with leprechauns and drinking. Lots of drinking. You might have heard of it. Well, have you heard of island time? Ireland operates on its own sort of island time. I just started to see advertisements go up for St. Patrick’s Day events. The local newspaper is still asking for entries…
Colorful Wall in a Girl’s Room
It was inevitable. Every parent faces it. That moment when your child develops an…it’s hard for me to say…here goes… An OPINION about what his or her room should look like. Cue the dramatic music. A little bit louder, please. Now, cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Mine. Yes, it happened. Opinions, opinions galore. Conflicting opinions that changed without rhyme or reason. It was exhausting to keep up with it all. I’d add a “woe is me,” but I don’t want to sound melodramatic. After much discussion, brainstorming and compromise my daughter and I ended up agreeing to a basic framework for a design plan for her bedroom. The design plan was very specific. It…
1960s Wood Paneling That Looks Good
There’s a bookcase in my house that bugs the crud out of me. Really bugs me. I have to make it look good without changing the root of the problem. I’m still not sure how to do that, so I decided to dive into the black hole of inspiration commonly known as the Internet. While there, I got a little distracted… But those boots I’ve been eyeing were finally on sale! Then I stumbled on a new-to-me blog, Bigger Than The Three Of Us, and ran across a picture of blogger Ashley’s playroom/office. Two things made me pause in my scroll. 1) She has a wood bookcase similar to the one that bugs me to pieces.…
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I thought I’d go for a sensational headline to kick off my 2017 blog posting. I’m baaack! I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about after my Christmas blogging break. I didn’t do much that was project or craft-related. I tried to feed my kids cereal three times a day instead of cooking. I stayed off the computer more than normal. The days were lazy and unscheduled, which is needed from time to time. Well, except for that one day when we went hiking and Handy Husband swore this was a trail. That’s totally a trail, right? Needless to say, that wasn’t a lazy day. I did flip…
Christmas Tree 2016
It’s hard to wrap my mind around how fast time flies. We’ve been in Ireland almost 6 months. We’re getting ready to celebrate our first Christmas in this beautiful country. I’m convinced that the true beauty of Ireland is not its scenery, but in the spirit of the people who have welcomed us with open arms. Now, let me segue out of the mushy stuff into some practical matters. We downsized DRASTICALLY when we moved from the United States to Ireland. I cannot emphasize how drastically. Have-no-furniture-to-sit-on drastically. One of the things left behind in the downsizing was our fake Christmas tree. Haters can hate, but I am firmly in the fake…
My Christmas Decor Hacks
I’m not sure if hack is the right word. How about here are three of my favorite Christmas decor work-arounds? ALTERNATIVE TO GARLAND Don’t have the time, patience, space or money for a Christmas garland? No worries. Free greenery clippings from your yard, or the neighbor’s yard, or the park (can you do that??) placed in a shallow bowl can achieve a similar effect. DON’T HAVE STOCKING HANGERS? NO PROBLEM. I do have Christmas stocking hangers, but one of them is broken and I haven’t found anything else I like better for hanging our Christmas stockings. Last year we used hooks screwed into the bottom of the mantel. That won’t work this year and…
Christmas in the Foyer Part 2: The Wall I Never Show You
It’s important to take pictures you see online or in magazines with a grain pound of salt. You only see certain angles at specific times of day. You don’t see what’s 2 inches outside of the cropped photo. In the case of my blog, there’s an entire wall I’m pretty certain I’ve never shown you. Or at least I haven’t shown it to you since we moved in. That’s because it’s not the star of the show. It does work hard though. It holds coats and shoes and sometimes mail. (Or “post” as people in Ireland call mail.) This wall is immediately to the right of the front door. It…
Christmas Mantel – Peace
I brought my scrap wood dove out of storage for the Christmas season. He’s fragile, but resilient. He just needed a little time and some wood glue to pull himself back together. Before long he was flying high above our Christmas mantel again representing peace, hope and love. As Christmas approaches and world events unfold, peace has been on my mind lately. Having peace doesn’t mean that we never disagree. Having peace doesn’t mean that there are never endings. Peace stems from the ultimate realization – a belief at the very center of one’s core – that as human beings far more binds us together than tears us apart. That there must be…
Christmas in the Foyer
Last weekend we pulled the Christmas boxes down from the attic. All three of them and a wreath box. Even after culling out over half of my Christmas decorations in preparation for our overseas move, it still feels like Christmas vomited all over my house. Why is it that decorating a tree and putting up a few festive touches means that the entire house is destroyed in the process? After I took the kids to school on Monday, I returned and tidied up one area. The foyer. Don’t foyers look so much better without the stuff that actually goes in a foyer? Backpacks, jackets, shoes…so many shoes. I even dusted the Christmas glitter off…
