almost here...

it's almost that time! i am so excited to be having friends and family in town soon... now i just need to get the house in order. i would love to be living in that room above right now... found via the someday blog and house to home. i hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday!!

diy ornaments.

after seeing this on design*sponge awhile back, i decided to try my hand at some terrarium ornaments. i even bought the little butterflies and tiny birds... but they were too big to fit in the whole at the top. with only a day before i wanted to hand them out to my friends, i didn't have a whole lot of options. so, i stuffed the glass orbs with two colors of moss, sticks and bark from our backyard, and some floral filler balls (for vases).

i really love the way they turned out. simple. (and green. i love green.) if you are wanting to try your hand at putting butterflies in ornaments though, i would suggest getting the largest ornaments you can find, or the plastic ones that come apart. these are really great for small, personalized gifts... tons of stuff you could put in them. small toys, glitter, bits of colored paper or fabric, candy...

christmas inspiration.

design*sponge

so much christmas inspiration and diy projects all around the internet. have i mentioned that we haven't put up a tree yet? right now one of my thrift store lamps is acting as a stand-in. i've even considered hanging ornaments off of it...

i guess i need to pull out one of our now 3 trees and get it decorated. we inherited a huge one that i don't think will even fit in our house right now. so... it will probably be living in the garage until we get a house with higher ceilings. we have another small one that i've been putting up the last couple of years, i think it's around 4 feet tall? i also have a goldish/silverish tinsel tree that's even smaller that i got on sale at the hodgepodge last year. it would be cute sitting on an old trunk or side table.

i thought i would post some of the projects i've found online that i'd really like to try out. it probably won't happen until next summer though! i don't have the extra time right now to be making wreaths and ornaments...

ruffly wreath from domestifluff

pompom wreath from bleubirdvintage

no-sew tree skirt from thepaperpony

ribbon garland from marthastewart

glittery candles from marthastewart

doily ornaments from marthastewart

it's been one of those weeks...

all i have to say is that i am glad things are calming down. at least for a day or two.

on top of all the normal stresses around xmas time, my computer decided to go bonkers on me last week. luckily, i was able to get the larger jobs saved to another computer and actually finish up two of them before i stopped touching my computer :) i thought all was well... until monday when it wouldn't even let me send an email... with no other programs open, the computer had been on for 2 minutes... i don't know.

lots of phone calls, fingers crossed and a call to applecare... i now have a new video card and we installed a larger hard drive. just how much larger, you ask? i have a whole terabyte on my computer now. i have over 800 gigs of available space...

thank-you, wonderful boss.... thank-you!