LOOKING BACK AT 2012

As 2012 draws to a close, it's a great time to reflect back on what's happened and been done at the Parsonage over the past year.

Here's a little peak at some of these projects.

A few rooms received a makeover.

My Office

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 May you have a very
Merry and Blessed Christmas!
 

HOLIDAY HOME TOUR

Today will be the last of my Holiday Home Tour for 2012.   I've already shown you the Living Room and Family Room.  The two remaining rooms are the kitchen and dinning room.  These two rooms are open to each other, so I'll combined them together for viewing.  You will see my Winter Wonderland Theme in these rooms as well.

On the side cabinet I placed three small Christmas trees in white bowls, and added two little birds sitting in some faux snow.

21 QUCIK AND PRETTY HOLIDAY DECORATING IDEAS

A few weeks ago I received an exciting email from the Redbook magazine. They asked me if they could feature THREE of my holiday decorations in their online-exclusive Holiday Decoration article.  Of course I said "yes" - who wouldn't want to be featured by a major magazine.

The article is now up live.  Here's the link to the published article - 21 Quick and Pretty Holiday Decorating Ideas.  As you scroll through the 21 ideas, you'll see my three featured items.

The three featured decorations are are my -
Epsom Salt Candle and Ornaments

 

Metallic Bay Leaf Tree 

HOLIDAY HOME TOUR

Wow! what a busy weekend we've had. You may have noticed that I was MIA.   My husband and I flew across country for a preaching appointment in another church.  We ended up spending a lot of time in the airport do to flight delays.  I'm glad to be back home and ready to continue the Christmas Home Tour of the Parsonage!

In my last post, I showed you our living room all decorated for Christmas.  Today we'll move on to our family room.   I wanted to continue the same theme/color through out the house this year with a winter wonderland theme. I've incorporated a lot of snowflakes, blue and silver and a little faux snow.

A few years ago we purchased this artificial tree.  The mistake we made was that in the large store the tree looked small, but when we brought it home it was much larger than we thought.  It takes up a lot of space in our small home, so placing it in the corner  take up less space.

I like having the tree in our family room as we sit in this room every day. We can view the tree easily  from the kitchen and dinning room.

The tree is decorated with silver and blue and a lot of glittery items.  I've added a few new ornaments this year that my mom gave me for my birthday.  Here are a few photos close up.

 Thrift store ornaments.

I used what I had for the tree skirt again this year. A table runner left over from our daughters weddings.  I love how the beads reflect the lights of the tree adding sparkle and a little bling.

Next to the television stand, I placed a poinsettia in my grandmothers old red wing crock.

On the top of the desk I placed three buckets I bought from the dollar bin at Target.  I added some jingle bells in the one bucket along with some faux snow.

 

I'm linking this post to ~
Thrifty Decor Chick - Holiday Home Linky Party - Trees

CHRISTMAS DECOR IN THE LIVING ROOM

If you're like me, once December hits I love to start decorating for Christmas.  I've been adding decor to each of the rooms in our home.  I thought I'd start sharing room by room  ~ Christmas Home Tour.

Today I'll start in the living room since this is where you come into the Parsonage (Our Home).
As you come in the front door you look directly at the wall with the sofa and coffee table.

My decorating is always done on a limited budget so many of the items are from garage sales, thrift stores or hand made myself.  This year I found some sparkly candles and snowflake candle holders along with a snowflake box at the thrift store.  I placed the candles on the table runner I made last year.  On the top of the table runner I added  ribbon and jingle bells.

The only things that aren't second hand items on the table, are the wreath that I bought new last year and the ribbon bought after Christmas last year ~ 75% off.

On the sofa I placed a piece of  faux fur and a pillow.

 

On the top of the corner cabinet I placed various metallic pieces, along with a few items that add texture and a bit of nature.

  The coat shelf also had a few items added.

I've already showed you my tree vignette that sits on top of my grandmothers cedar chest.

and my candle sticks that I made over sit on a side cabinet.

 Last but not least, the top of the cedar cabinet.

Come back and I'll show you more of my home.

Linking this post ~
Southern Hospitality Holiday Home Linky Party

CANDLE STICK MAKEOVER

While shopping at my local thrift store this fall, I came upon a pair of brass candle sticks.  I bought them at the 50% off sale, making the total price for the candle sticks $1.49.

I knew I would give them a makeover eventually. It was while decorating the living room for Christmas that I decided to make them over.

CHRISTMAS TREE VIGNETTE

Hello everyone!  I hope you had a great weekend.  I sure did.  Over the weekend, I was able to add a few  more Christmas decorations, and our home is starting to look pretty.

I've chosen a winter wonder land theme for decorating this year.  Over the past two years, I've been collecting little Christmas trees.  This year I've added a few more home-made trees to my collection.  I thought clustering the trees together in a vignette would be a great way to display the trees.  If we had a fireplace mantle, I would place them on top of the mantle, but since we don't so placing them on top of the cedar chest was the best alternative.

I've been waiting for a sunny day to take photos but I've given up, so please forgive the dark photos.

DIY METALLIC BAY LEAF TREE

I hope you had a great thanksgiving weekend.   I've been greatly blessed once again over this past year. I'm also thankful for the wonderful day we could spend with our children and grandchildren.

It's hard to believe that thanksgiving is past and Christmas is right around the corner.  While browsing through the Pottery Barn catalog recently, I came across their beautiful Metallic Bay Leaf Christmas Trees.  They have these trees available in gold and silver.  I was really drawn to the silver tree since I plan to decorate with a winter wonderland theme this year.  The trees are $89 to $99 dollars each.  All the silver trees were sold out, but since I'm a real DIY gal, I decided to try and make one my self.

Here's what I did to make my own.

DIY EPSOM SALT ORNAMENTS AND CANDLE

I have some exciting news to share with you today.  Way back in July, Peter from the Epsom Salt Council contacted me in an email.  He explained that he'd seen my Epsom Salt Candle and Ornaments.  He told me that the Epsom Salt Council was going to add a new section to their website: crafts and projects people can make using  Epsom Salt. He was wondering if I minded being featured using my Epsom Salt Ornaments and Candle.  Of course I said "yes," and that it would be an honor to be an addition to their website.  The link  is now up and running just in time for the holidays.

The Epson Salt Ornament and Candle are something that I made back in December 2010.   I thought I'd share it once again since Christmas is fast approaching and some of you are new followers to my blog and may not have read the post.  The DIY candle and ornaments receives the most hits from readers.  Kinda crazy, because it was a craft I just thought up and decided to do on a whim while decorating one afternoon. 

DIY Epsom Salt Ornaments and Candle

I know there's been candles and ornaments
made with Epsom salt floating around blog land for a while now,

DIY CHALKBOARD LABELS

 I hope you all had a great weekend.  As you know, I've been  working on a closet makeover in my office. While working on this I made a little promise to myself.  I'm going to get our home more organized.  Not that it's a total unorganized mess, but it definitely could use some sprucing up.   Thus began the process of sorting, purging and organizing.

As part of the organization process, baskets were added to the closet shelves.   Wanting to know exactly what was in each basket, I add chalkboard labels.

You can buy  ready made labels in stores like Pottery Barn, but they come with a price tag of $8  for a set.   I thought making my own labels would be more budget friendly and a  fun project to try using some chalkboard paint.

Here's is what I did.

FAUX MERCURY GLASS TREE ~ Tutorial

Do you love mercury glass as much as me?  I love its vintage look with its shimmer and bling.

While shopping, I noticed that Pottery Barn has some beautiful mercury glass trees.  However, they are asking $39.50 for a small tree up to $74.50 for a large tree. Sad to say, those prices are not in my budget, so I decided to create my own.   As I told you in my last post, I'm working on a few projects to get ready for the Christmas holidays.

I started out with a glass tree that I found at Goodwill for .99 cents.

DIY CHRISTMAS TREE

Can you believe it's almost the middle of November and Christmas is right around the corner?  The weather is turning colder, I even saw a few *** snowflakes this morning. The stores are starting to look festive with all their Christmas decorations.  I usually don't even think about Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving, but we'll be out of town the first part of December.  So I've started thinking a little earlier about Christmas projects.

 This weekend I made a Christmas tree to use for a part of  my decorations this year.

Here's the DIY instructions if you'd like to make your own tree.

THE OFFICE REVEAL

The day has finally come that you've all waited so patiently for: my office makeover reveal!  As you may recall, it started out as a closet makeover, but turned into a larger project when we had to treat a mold problem and do a lot of painting .  We also decided to add new baseboard and trim while doing this makeover.   I also did a lot of purging and organizing of this space including going through all drawers and files. The end result - a prettier more organized office that functions well for me.

 I present to you my new office closet.

I really had planned to go to IKEA to buy storage boxes and containers for this space, but we ended up not taking our daughter to the airport in October.  I couldn't justify a four hour round trip just to get them.  I've instead reused many items I already had in my home.

THE OFFICE MAKEOVER PROGRESS

I had hopes to share my office makeover last week, but I was unable to upload photos or blog posts because of the bad weather causing our  internet connection to be down.  A very small inconvenience compared to what the people on the East coast are dealing with.  Today I want to show the progress of the office closet; and hopefully later this week, I'll be able share the whole room.

Wanting to keep to our budget (which is small and limited), I decide to keep an eye out for used materials.  I couldn't believe my good fortune while shopping our local thrift store,  I found a shelving package.  It had 4 lament shelves along with rail and brackets. The only problem was that I wasn't sure the shelves were the right length, so I passed them by.  A week later when I saw the price of materials (a package of two brackets at Lowe's - $13.37 and the rails for $12.60 each), I decided to go back to the thrift store and see if they were still there.  To my great surprise, they were still there and on sale for half price with a price tag of five dollars!

In the photos below you can see the progress of the shelves going up.

My husband decided it would be best to have 3 rails with three brackets for each shelf, because of the weight these shelves will be holding.  We ended up having  to buy two more brackets costing $13.37.

Total cost for materials = $18.37
Cost for labor = FREE, thanks to my dear husband for doing the work.

If you've missed any of the posts on the progress of the room, you can read past post by clicking on the highlighted area below.

Chair Makeover
New Baseboard and Trim
Lamp Makeover
Office Closet Painting
Deciding the right wall color for the office closet
Office Makeover
Office Makeover Progress
The Closet Makeover Has Begun
Closet Makeover

This makeover is almost finished and I can't wait to share it with you!

FALL DECOR

This past weekend I finally got to do some fall decorating around the house.  I've been wanting to put out my fall decorations, but with all the office stuff sitting in the living room it was delayed.

I love using my mercury glass pieces.  I purchased a few new thing to add to my collection including this mercury glass pumpkin from Tj Maxx ($5.99)   In this vignette, I brought together silver and gold to accentuate the fall colors in the candles and leaves.

The fabric and silver pine cone candle holder were recent thrift store finds.

( candle holder - .49 cents)

(fabric $1.49 for 5 yards)

In the photo below, you can see this vignette placed on the top of my cedar chest.

CHAIR MAKEOVER

A chair makeover for my office.

The work in my office is coming along slowly but surely.  I don't share a lot about my personal life on this blog, but do so occasionally.  Today  I thought I'd explain why the progress on the office  has been a bit slow.   My husband (a pastor, and my helper/carpenter) has had to sustain a very difficult exam this past week. Our church has been independent for the past 6 years and decided to join a federation of churches; and because of that decision, he was required to take another oral exam.  This exam is very difficult and stressful.  It's compares to the oral exams he took for his master's degree.  What made it even more difficult is that it's been over 20 years since he received his master's degree.  Over the past few weeks, this has required all his attention to his studies for the exam.  I'm very thankful and proud to say he passed the exam!

While he was busy with his studies, I decided to work on a few small projects  for my office. 

I bought a chair for $5 a few years ago at a yard sale to use as a sewing chair.  This is how it has looked since the day I bought it ... brown cushion and brown wood.

OK...but I thought it could use a little sprucing up.

NEW BASEBOARD AND TRIM

We're moving on to adding the new trim and base board in my office.  Let's take a look at what we started with.  Old yellow looking wood dating back to when the house was built.

We decide to add white trim molding and baseboards.

 In the above photo, you can see the trim inside the closet. We decided to go with a plain trim on the inside of the closet without the rosettes since it's not visible when you walk into the room.

We added rosettes on the corners of the door trim. I like the charm it adds to the room but also adding these made it much easier for installation.  My husband could do straight cuts and didn't have to make mitered corners.

Here's a view of the new baseboard.  It's amazing how this new trim makes the room look so much newer and brighter.

LAMP MAKEOVER

The  progress in my office /closet makeover is slow and steadily moving forward.  Today I thought I'd share with you one of the small projects I've done.   I knew I wanted some sort of lighting for the closet since it can be a bit of a dark corner.

 I decided against a lamp that would sit on the desk and take up precious work space.  I reflected back to the inspiration closet/office photo from Jen @ I Heart Organizing.  She used a wall mounted lamp.

At Pottery Barn I found the perfect lamp in an antique nickel finish.  The problem was the price tag it came with of 89 dollars.
Then I remembered an ugly old gold lamp in our attic purchased back in the 80's.  Its lovely pleated shade was dented and falling apart.

The base with a "lovely" gold finish.

OFFICE CLOSET PAINTING {PART 2}

Continuation of the office/closet painting makeover.

Originally I'd thought that I would paint all the walls blue in the closet, but after applying the white primer, I realized that I really liked how bright the white made the room look.  I decided to paint the back wall white and the two side walls the blue color - Lighthouse Shadows by Valspar.

I checked into putting pretty wall paper (allen + roth Sea Breeze Floral Trail wallpaper) on the back wall, but it was to expensive for my budget with a price tag of $59.96 a roll.  We're already spending more in this room than we first had planned by adding new baseboard and trim.  I opted to stencil the wall instead.  In the photos below you can see my test spots.

 The first one I tried was from Jones Design Company  -  a hand painted wallpaper.

The second  is a stencil I found on line at Hobby Lobby.  It was $16.99 but using an online coupon and free shipping made it $10.20.  I ended up choosing the Hobby Lobby stencil even though I liked the painted wall paper.  The thought of painting all the lines by hand seemed very labor and time intense.  Note the white paint over the blue, which was my first thought for the painting project.

In the photos below, you can see the process of painting the stenciled wall using the blue paint over the white.  I followed the instructions and stated at the top of the wall in the center.    To make sure the stencil stayed straight on the wall I used a level and worked across the wall horizontally. I continued this process working  my way down the wall.

Here's how it looks once the side walls were painted and stenciling was completed.

Oh, so much better !

I'm loving how the closet is turning out.  Stay with me; and I'll continue to show you the process for the rest of the closet and room.