Sparkly Christmas Tree Craft

Earlier this year, my Grandma passed away and we were left with an entire house full of objects, collections and history to sort through.

One of the boxes was full of costume jewelry. The majority of the pieces were broken or missing pieces - such as a single earing. We were all surprised at how many broken pieces of jewelry or partial sets my Grandma held on to. I guess she never gave up hope that she would find the other half of the pair or the missing beads.

My aunts went through the jewelry and chose the items that they wished to keep. After everyone had picked through the jewelry, we were left with a small box of broken pins, earings with out a match, necklaces with the beads unstrung, etc. that were destined for the trash.

I hated to see the pretty baubles and beads tossed so I kept the broken and discarded pieces thinking that I would use them someday in craft projects.

Last week, I thought of a good Christmas project to use them and to keep them as a special keepsake of my Grandma.

I wrapped a foam cone with a wide, satin ribbon and then used straight pins to gently and securely attach the jewelry and beads to the cone tree.

I sorted through all the brightly colored jewelry and selected only those in gold or silver tones with pearl or rhinestone accents to keep the color scheme simple and slighly understated amoung all the sparkle.

Dining Room - Home Tour Part 3

In the previous installments of our home tour, we have taken a look at our master bedroom and living room. Today, I'm excited to share our dining room.

View of the dining room from our front door.

Our family room flows directly into our dining room area and kitchen. The dining room is the most colorful room in our home. Jim left for a weekend bachelor party and when he returned, I had painted the dining room an orangish-red color. I love how the punch of color brought in some visual interest to the room and also made the feel of our home more warm, modern and inviting. Painting the back wall also provided a focal point and helped define the dining room space, since it's an open layout.

Our dining table is on the small side, but it fits our family of three well. Someday, I'll have a larger table so we can actually have company over and fit more people comfortably.

The small baker's rack, on the back wall, holds my collection of cook books. I love cook books and like to have them handy and on display. The art work of the three trees, which hangs above the baker's rack, is one of my favorite finds. It truly made the room. The colors of the trees tie together the green of the kitchen and the burnt orange of the dining room perfectly.

Along the small, side wall of the dining room, we have a hanging display shelf. It holds two of my antique, glass chicken dishes in the middle. (There is a larger, white version of these chicken dishes that sits in the middle of the table. It was a gift from my Auntie Jill and I adore it.)

The top and bottom shelves are filled with our shot glass collection. Jim and I rarely drink, so this is kind of an odd collection for us to have on display. Sometimes I wonder if it gives off the wrong impression. But then I remember that anyone who really knows us, and is in our home, will know what sticks in the mud we actually are. They probably think a few drinks would do us good! Anyway, we started collecting these shot glasses when we were dating in college to have keepsakes of the places we visited. It's nice to look at them and remember some of our adventures. We have shot glasses from Hawaii, Las Vegas, Mexico, New Orleans, ski trips, our favorite college bars and other wonderful places we have traveled together.

Off this wall, there is a door that leads to our laundry room. Further along this wall, is the stairway that leads to our basement.

My future plans for this room is to someday have it laid out in a way to accommodate a larger dining table. We have a lot of open floor space between the living room and dining room table that I don't feel is utilized to its' fullest potential for space and function. I am also on the hunt for new curtains for the window behind the table. I would like something that ties together the colors of the kitchen and dining room. I was thinking of a chocolate brown or golden tan curtain with flecks of green and orange woven in to it, but I haven't been able to find anything remotely close.

Thanks for stopping by for another peak inside our Home on the Range in Phillipsburg, Kansas where we are Sunflower Living.

Living Room - Home Tour Part 2

In the last installment of our home tour, I showed you our newly redone Master Bedroom.

Today, I'll show you the first room in our house that you see when you walk in the front door - our living room. I like to call the style of our living room as Country Elegent. I tried to mix Jim's love of outdoors and our life in rural Kansas with my love of sparkley crystal and dark wood finishes.

Front Entry and Coat Closet

We use the little, antique stand for holding our mail and my purse. It's a great organization piece of furniture for our household and was a birthday gift from my parents a couple of years ago. Usually, the tiled floor is covered in Jim's muddy work boots and various pairs of Ethan and my shoes but I actually picked them up before snapping these pictures.

Piano

Sitting Area

Jim's prize, trophy buck is featured in this room. I'm not a fan, but we all make compromises when sharing a home. I'm sure he's not a fan of many of my little knick-knacks. Jim actually got a bigger deer this year. I told Jim he could hang it on the wall when he got me a bigger home that could handle multiple deer mounts. I think our home's maximum ratio is already met.

Sitting Area - Opposite View

The little desk at the end of the couch is where Ethan colors. The rocking chair was an auction find and is super comfortable and unique in its' construction. I have it covered in a brown blanket throw until I get around to changing the upholstery.

Entertainment Center

The entertainment center is one of my first furniture purchases. It's from Walmart and was a big splurge in my college days. I'm impressed at how well it has held up over the years. The under cupboards on the left hold bins of Ethan's toys and the ones on the right have our DVD collection. I love closed door storage! The display case is full of our crystal and other pretties and the red train, in the middle, was my brothers before he passed away. On top of the entertainment center we display our family pictures and a picture of each of our siblings and their families.

Thanks for stopping by for another peak inside our Home on the Range in Phillipsburg, Kansas where we are Sunflower Living.

Master Bedroom Makeover - Home Tour Part 1

This past summer, we finally made over our Master Bedroom. It was time for us to grow up, get rid of the mismatched college furniture and have a bedroom that actually reflected that adults reside in the house. Plus, Jim wasn't too fond of my elbow in his back for the majority of the night due to our much too small bed!

When I started planning out the makeover, I knew that I needed some help.

I reached out to my Internet buddy and fabulous home decorator, Lauren, for some help. She graciously designed an Idea Board for my bedroom. You can view some of her awesome design Idea Boards over at her blog, With Two Cats.

My Idea Board designed by Lauren:

I loved the color scheme of sage green and chocolate brown. It seemed so relaxing and sophisticated. I loved the punches of coral but, unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble finding pieces that I liked when shopping in my limited availability of stores in the area. I used a lot of her suggestions and ideas for inspiration and then tweaked to what was easily available our here in rural Kansas and within our tight budget.

Now that I had my road map, it was time to do lots of shopping and painting to get the room in order.

And now for the finished product...

Here is the view of our room from the entry door:

My first design dilemma that Lauren was able to solve for me was what to do with our offset, small window behind the bed. You can see the light from that window in the picture to get an idea of its' placement. Lauren suggested a genius idea of making a faux curtain wall of windows through the illusion of drapes spread behind the head board. I love how the curtains frame the bed.

We also used Lauren's wall color suggestion for inspiration in picking out our paint. We used Whispering Wheat from Glidden that we color matched with Behr's Premium Plus paint line.

The bed frame, headboard and bedside tables are from Ashley Furniture. The bedding is from Target and the bedside lamps are from Walmart.

The left wall in our room is covered in closet doors. We have two full closets. The first closet, on the left, is full of closet shelving for folded clothes and our shoes. The second closet is for all of our hanging clothes.

We painted the closet doors and trim in the room a nice, bright white with Painter's White color by Behr. Changing the trim and doors from oak wood to white really brightened the room and updated the style.

Because I love any opportunity to snoop, here's a glimpse of inside our closet. I'm not the neatest person but I am rather organized. My hanging clothes are arranged by type and then by color.

Our right wall is another window. We hung the curtains slightly outside and above the window frame to make the illusion of grander windows. It's one of my favorite decorating tricks. I also prefer the look of full length curtains to continue with the illusion of bigger windows.

Brown curtains are faux duponi silk curtains available at Walmart.

I completely fell in love with the art print that Lauren had found for our Idea Board. It captured our love of the country and I loved that it tied in the colors of sage and brown. The largest the print came in was 8x10 so I grouped it with some other items on floating shelves that we installed.

Floating shelves from Hobby Lobby.

This is the view from the other side of the room:

I really liked the idea of a dark wood, low dresser that Lauren had picked out. This dresser used to be Jim's childhood dresser that was in storage in our basement. It was a bright, orange pine and had bulky, brass hardware. I sanded and painted the dresser for a money saving renovation and replaced the hardware to bring the style up to date.

I absolutely adored the flower vase that Lauren suggested for on top of the dresser. If you look closely, it's actually metal twigs. I liked the idea of a nature inspired element but couldn't find a similar item in any of the stores I looked at. I finally found this wooden beauty that had the same natural element, even though it was a different shape. It is the perfect landing place for all the junk Jim carries in his pockets.

One idea that Lauren gave me was to use a rug to anchor the bed and provide another layer of design. I never would have thought to put a rug under the bed. See, she's full of great ideas and inspiration!

In order to save money, I opted for a runner sized rug at the end of the bed instead of a full sized rug since most of the rug would be under the bed and not be seen. This swap saved us hundreds of dollars.

Rug found at Target and it was on sale too!

I'm not a huge fan of lots of excess throw pillows but I found this checkered one at Walmart and it was the perfect combination of colors to tie in our bedding and our rug. The little white pillow is the ring bearer's pillow from our wedding.

Well, I think that's everything in our little room!

Thanks again Lauren for the fabulous Idea Board. Make sure ya'll check out here other Idea Boards here or pay her blog a visit.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

I love decorating our small tree for Christmas. The last few years, I have done it while Ethan was napping so that he wakes up to the magic of it already being done and sparkling in all it's holiday wonder. As he gets older, hopefully he'll be able to help his Mommy out.

My mother-in-law told me the other day that Jim loved to help decorate when he was little and especially liked to help with the outside lights. I don't know what happened, but Jim doesn't want anything to do with helping decorate for Christmas anymore. I don't mind, as this way I can decorate how I think it should look.

Our Christmas tree decorations are rustic and country in style, to match our lifestyle. There are lots of pheasant feathers, moose, deer and other outdoor references.

Here are some of my favorite ornaments from our little Christmas tree this year:

This is an Our 1st Christmas ornament that my mother-in-law gave to us.

We have lots of these feather balls on the tree. They were the first real Christmas tree ornaments that I purchased.

Small, glass pheasant.

Ethan's 1st Christmas ornament. Also a gift from my mother-in-law.

Another glass pheasant. I think pheasant feathers are beautiful.

I also decorate Jim's prize deer for the season. Last year, I attached a red ball to it's nose to be Rudolph, but that was too degrading for Jim's trophy. This year, we compromised with a Santa hat. I figure if I have to live with a deer head in my living room, Jim can live with it being decorated for a couple of weeks a year. He's just lucky I don't hang ornaments and tinsel from his antlers.