Christmas Eve Eve House Tour

Come on in and have a look at the decorations around the cabin...

Simple clippings of berries and fraser fir branches adorn the hallway mirror.  (You can see a tinsel garland hanging on a door in the mirror's reflection, too.)

Making our way into the living and dining rooms...

Here's a close-up of the arrangement on top of the living room armoire.

It was inspired by Dawn's mantel at Creative Cain Cabin.   She had the most adorable red gingham bunting in her vignette and when I saw it, I knew I had to make one.  The glass candle holders were picked up this week on major clearance at Michaels (the red one was $1.99 and the silver mercury glass was $4.99--it sometimes pay to proscrastinate!) and currently contain Wintergreen candles.  The wooden bowl was carved by my now-deceased uncle and everything else I already had on hand.

My friend, Sara, made this sweet little wooden Santa, reindeer and sled for my son last year. 

And nearby is our Elf on the Shelf, "Frigsby."  I have no idea where my son got that name from...

More greenery and berries in a zinc pitcher picked up earlier in the year at Nest in Burlington, NC.

Check out this fabulous pillow made from a vintage table cloth!  Not to sound like a commercial, but I found it and its mate at Fetch Antiques and Interiors in Hillsborough, NC.  Karan had another similar pair the last time I was at the shop.

And though I already shared these photos in a previous post, I'll show them again since I love these glitter houses so hard.

On the dining room table is another wood bowl carved by my uncle.  It holds pinecones and some great vintage glass ornaments my mom brought over earlier in the week.  She hit the cheap-vintage-glass-ball-mother-lode at an antique shop in Winston-Salem when she found at least 8 boxes of ornaments for only a $1 per box!

The corner cabinet is looking festive, too.

Family members, avert your eyes from this upcoming photo and skip on down to the next picture, please...

Everyone else, here's one of about a dozen ornament-sized glitter houses I made last week.  I'll take photos before they're given as gifts and share them with you in my next post.  I just had to sneak one in here because I was so happy with the way they turned out. :)  (P.S.--The delightful paper JOY tag came with the goodies from Stacey's giveaway and I thought it was just perfect to incorporate into the decorations.)

The dining room plate rack sports a glittered paper birdhouse from Uniquitiques, another great shop in Hillsborough.

In the kitchen, I added some pine clippings from the woods around our house to the bunting-bedecked shelf over the sink.

Sitting on a thrifted silverplate cake stand is a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer craft that my son and I completed over the weekend.  We will never tire of the cuteness of these characters!

The decorations in the kitchen are very simple.  Another glittered birdhouse here...

...and some red berries in a milk bottle found at a yard sale this summer.

So, that's it for the decorating this year.  Now, there is baking to be done, presents to be wrapped, Christmas movies to watch and time to simply enjoy these next few days.

This will likely be my last post of 2011, so in the words of the Peanuts gang, I wish you a safe, joyous and...

Vintage Peanuts puzzle my in-laws put together and framed for our family this year.

Happy Holidays!

Erin

The Start of the Christmas Decorating

Well, we got the tree up last night.  And it wasn't horrible for once! (I exaggerate only slightly.) 

The last few years, it's been a total ordeal to get the tree in the house and in the stand fairly straight. And then there have been annoying, unanticipated light issues.  (I was lucky to find two strands of white lights two weeks before Christmas last year when we discovered the lights we'd previously been using were kaput.)

And while the decorated trees have ultimately been gorgeous, the process leading up?  Not so much...

But not this year...thank goodness. It was fun and done in one evening and we even listened to Celtic Christmas music.

I still need to get candy canes to hang on the tree, trim the top so the star isn't lop-sided, and take close-ups of some of my favorite ornaments, but our Fraser Fir is looking pretty good!

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The other main decorating accomplished so far revolves around my latest obsession: glitter houses.

Robin at Happy at Home has a fabulous collection of glitter houses she's made herself, which I saw last year at Christmastime and immediately wanted.  Look at all this wonderful inspiration!

via Happy at Home

On her site, she also has this tutorial and this tutorial. Between the two of these, all the bases are covered for making your own glitter houses.  Highly recommend them!

Now, I haven't actually constructed any houses...yet...but instead started off with the chipboard/paper mache houses available at Hobby Lobby to get my glitter house village going.

Here's a shot of the burgeoning collection in the living room.  (The house second from the left was a gift from my mom.)  I'll be making this house next from LittleGlitterHouses.com to fill in the bare spot on the far right. 

The last house is my favorite with its sweet vintage color scheme.  The sparkle is just perfection. The insides of the windows of all the houses I made are lined with crinkled wax paper (to give the feel of frosted glass) and have battery-operated tea lights inside so they can glow at night. 

Making glitter houses is addictive and now I'm trying to figure out the color scheme for the next one.  Anybody have any ideas?  I have an 18-pack of Martha Stewart glitter so there are plenty of color choices!

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Since there is no shortage of mason jars in this household, I also a jumped on the Anthro snow globe knock-off wagon. They are very simple to make and are cute as pie.  Here's just one of several I made last weekend.

And after much struggle, I managed to get a little bottle brush tree into a glass ornament.  It's cute but gawd was it a pain!  I won't share a photo of the other one I did--that poor little tree looks like it has scoliosis after all the unceremonious jamming it took to get it in there. And don't even get me started on the process of finally getting it to stand up straight! 

Is there any technique to these kinds of ornaments or am I just clueless about how to assemble them with ease? Because I couldn't find a single tutorial anywhere on Pinterest or in blog land. 

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I still need to go clip some cedar branches and red berries from outside to add more natural elements to the house. And for some artificial elements, I'm dying to get the spray snow/frost to spray on some of the windows.

Hey, it's slow going around here but the decorating will get done eventually.  :)

Happy Decorating,
Erin

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

It's less than two hours to Christmas here and The Holiday is on the telly while I ready stockings. Besides Christmas morning itself, this is my favorite part of Christmas!

For the last few years, my husband has worked on Christmas Even from about 9 p.m. to midnight. He's a fire safety specialist at Duke University and the university's Duke Chapel always holds a midnight Christmas Eve service. It's an extremely beautiful--and exceedingly popular--service and so someone from his office has to be present to ensure the building capacity isn't exceeded.

Though you might think it would be a bummer to have him gone for a few hours on Christmas Eve, it actually works out quite well. Our son is young enough that he goes to bed before my husband heads out, and then I usually watch a movie, stuff stockings, etc. And then my husband gets an extra day off for just a few hours of work!

Since this week has been a whirlwind of last-minute shopping, candle-making, present-wrapping, cookie-baking, lunar eclipse-watching, and marmalade-cooking, I'm enjoying and relaxing in the final, blissfully quiet hours of Christmas Eve.

I also wanted to share a few more pictures of Christmas decorating that I did this week since we're down to the wire on holiday decorating posts!

After seeing so many folks at the Christmas home tours use fresh greenery, I finally got off my tush and headed to the woods for a few snips of cedar to further prettify the house.

My son and I--as part of our advent calendar activities--studded oranges with cloves this week, too. Besides pricking my thumb several times on the pointy ends of the cloves, this was a fun, old-fashioned Christmas activity to do with a preschooler. Highly recommend it!

And to top things off, my mom gave us this adorable glittery house this week.

It even has its own yard, complete with a picket fence, a snowman and a tree!  Luh-luh-love it!  This will be my first in a collection of glittery houses for next year. (Robin at Happy at Home made a gorgeous village of these lovelies and I've deemed them a "must-make" for next Christmas--how sick am I to already be deciding on crafts a year in advance?!?)

Anyway, I hope everyone reading has a wonderful Christmas with their loved ones. Thank you so much for visiting my humble blog, and for following along as I ramble, attempt to craft, and do whatever else strikes my fancy. Your comments are little gifts that buoy my spirit and I derive so much inspiration from the creativity, generosity and beauty each of you contributes to blog land. I wish you many blessings as we round out 2010 and head into the New Year!

From my home to yours!

Christmas Home Tour

The Christmas decorating is finished at the cabin and we're partying at these awesome blogs:


Cottage and Vine's 2010 Christmas Tour of Homes 
The Shabby Chic Cottage's Holly Bloggy Christmas Home Tour
Funky Junk Interiors's Christmas 2010 Full Home Reveals


Come on in...

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by!  Many wishes for a wonderful and safe Christmas!