holidays
Blue and Metallic Christmas Tree
Welcome! Come, join me in my living room. I’d love to show you my blue and metallic Christmas tree. It’s a little bit rustic, a little bit glam. We’ll call it an opposites attract situation. This year, pretty much all of the ornaments on the tree are handmade or semi-handmade, meaning I put my own spin on an existing ornament. Truth be told, it’s more fun for me to make Christmas ornaments than to decorate with the things I make. However, decorating a Christmas tree isn’t exactly a chore. This blue and metallic Christmas tree is decorated with all sorts of fun ornaments, most of which are reused from prior…
Five Ways to Decorate With Nuts for Christmas
Decorating for the holidays with natural ingredients is a hoot! This year, I have come up with five ways to decorate with nuts this Christmas. Three of these ideas are mine. Two are not. I consider the two ideas that are not mine to be crafts-in-waiting. There’s only so much time in a day. I can either buy something another maker has made if I really want it now, which is okay! I can also save the idea to make it another year. At my current rate of idea saving, I have enough crafts to keep me busy for the next 1,413 years, give or take a decade. Can you…
Nutcracker Holiday Mantel Decor
Fair warning. Your jaw may drop after viewing my Nutcracker holiday mantel decor. (There also may be a pun or two in this blog post.) You know I love a theme, so I chose nutcrackers as this year’s holiday decor theme for our dining room fireplace. This theme has been a long time coming, as I have been in possession of my mother’s nutcrackers for years. Decades, actually, but who’s counting? I don’t always decorate with the nutcrackers because they don’t match anything that I own. I also can’t seem to get rid of them for sentimental reasons. I’m sure you have your own version of this in your house.…
A Rustic Carriage House Christmas
It’s beginning to look like a rustic Carriage House Christmas! Or, as rustic as it can get with four faux Christmas trees. Just roll with it, folks. That’s what I do. Speaking of rolling with things, please go along with me for a minute as I set up this story. A year and a half ago, we repointed this fireplace in our Carriage House. I’d venture a guess that it had been covered for well over 100 years. Then we immediately covered it, so to speak, with a weight machine because we use this part of the Carriage House as a gym. Not too long after that, we went to…
DIY Giant Plywood Christmas Trees
Decorating for the holidays? The thing your front porch is missing is giant plywood Christmas trees. They can be painted any color, made in most any size, and can fold flat for storage. That’s it. That’s my pitch. Blog post complete. Kidding! You know I’m chattier than that. To make giant plywood Christmas trees, you need to cut two isosceles triangles out of plywood. I might have had to Google how to spell isosceles, but I do know from high school that it’s a triangle with two equal sides and two equal angles. We used rough plywood, not finish-grade plywood, because no one is examining these trees up close. I…
14 Beautiful Christmas Ornaments
Hold your candy canes, folks, because today we are dipping our toes in the sweet inspirational bliss known as beautiful Christmas ornaments. I haven’t started decorating for Christmas yet, but I have Christmas ornaments on my mind. It’s an actual treat for my brain to think about Christmas ornaments instead of what to make for dinner (again), work deadlines, the driver’s license I need to renew, anything on the news…you get the point. I love making Christmas ornaments, and I always buy or make a Christmas ornament for my kids. The “it” gift of the season comes and goes, but those Christmas ornaments last forever…because Mom stores them in her…
Witchy Halloween Mantel – No Cost Decorating Ideas
I’ve brewed up some great, no-cost Halloween decorating ideas to share with you, and they all revolve around my witchy Halloween mantel. I had so much fun decorating my fireplace for Halloween this year. It’s a challenge to come up with an idea that hits the right vibe for our house. Nothing gory, scary, or tacky. I know tacky is a particularly subjective term. Ha! You probably won’t create a witchy Halloween mantel just like mine, but here are some no-cost decorating ideas that work like a charm for anyone. Use what you already have in a new way. It doesn’t take any magic, but it does take a bit…
DIY Floral Witch’s Hat
Gleeful is the only word to describe how I feel about showing you the floral witch’s hat I crafted last week. I want you to like it as much as I do, but it’s just not possible. I’m so obsessed, you’d think I came up with the idea on my own. This is kind of funny because I’m not sure if there are any truly original ideas out there anymore. Adding flowers to a witch’s hat is definitely not original, but it’s the first time I’ve done it, so it feels brand new to me. We’ll call this craft an Annisa Original. I might fly in a little late to…
Memorial Day 2025 + What I Learned About Robert Todd Lincoln
Like some Americans, we have the day off to commemorate Memorial Day. If the weather cooperates, we usually ride our bikes to a nearby town to watch a Memorial Day parade. I kind of miss the days when my kids were little and got so excited to see a firetruck in a parade. Now, it’s just me getting excited. Ha! The other thing I get excited about is history. It’s so much more interesting to me now that I’m older a more seasoned human being. It’s also humbling how much I do not know. For instance, I have not given much thought to Abraham Lincoln’s children until this week. The…
Faux Chocolate Bunny – With Wood Rabbit and Gold Leaf
You can’t eat it, but the Faux Chocolate Bunny I made for Easter decor is pretty cute. Plus, you can decorate with it year after year. That real chocolate bunny you bought won’t even last a day. Let’s hop right to the how-to. Here’s what you need to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny: wood bunny (set of 2 in this pack) dark brown stain or paint gold leaf gilding adhesive or Mod Podge small paintbrush Polyurethane or Mod Podge for sealing How to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny: Step 1: Stain or paint your wood bunny. I used a honey-colored stain, but dark brown paint would work too. Here’s how…
