Pinterest 365 – Day 34 – DIY Christmas Tree for the porch

Posted on December 4, 2012 by gracieed

Christmas Lights TreeThe first few years that we lived in our house (we’ve been here 22 years) we decorated with Christmas lights.  Mike would spend hours on the roof hanging lights and it would look beautiful, but it was a lot of work.  As we’ve aged, the idea of him hanging out on the roof just isn’t appealing anymore.  So we don’t hang lights anymore.

100_4281When I saw this pin on Pinterest, I knew that outdoor lights would be a part of our Christmas this year.  Along with being very pretty, these lighted trees are very re-purposeful.

100_4286I just strung a set of lights all along the tomato cage and plugged them in.  I’m only showing you one at the moment, but I will be displaying two on our porch.  We will also be running lights along our staircase.  When it’s all finished I’ll post a picture.Grace

 

 

 

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“Are all these lights going to keep us up at night?  You know how I need my beauty sleep.”

Posted in Christmas, Decorating, Homemade, Pinterest, Recycling, Repurposing, Saving Money | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Month of Challenges – Day 3 (December 3)

Posted on December 3, 2012 by gracieed

Today I began decorating.  Man, how I’ve missed this.  I love going through the boxes of ornaments and strolling down memory lane.  It’s been so long since I did this, I’ve forgotten about many of the items we have.  This is going to be a fun week.

  • 100_4270My December Daily picture and journal entry will be the story about my challenges with Woody and Ellie and the reason for the Wall Tree.
  • 100_4260This picture is my entry for the iHeartFaces Photo Challenge.  Today’s topic was “what you’re reading”.  I am working through the Harry Potter series after having tried to get started several times.  I don’t know what’s different now but I’m taking advantage of my interest.
  • For “Journal Your Christmas”, today’s journal prompt was about planning for Christmas. The overwhelming thought that kept popping into my head was how wonderful my parents made Christmas for us as kids.  I remember the cookies for Father Christmas, decorating the tree, the year I got roller skates that were tied onto my shoes and being seven and starting to question the authenticity of Father Christmas, but being convinced by my dad that Father Christmas used fairy dust to unlock the windows to get into our house (we didn’t have a chimney).  Yes I was gullible.
  • wonderful life25 Christmas movies.  Mike and I watched “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  And it’s a wonderful movie.  The
    best part, for me, the reminder at the end from Clarence, the angel… No man (or woman) is a failure who has friends.

Until tomorrow,  Grace

 

 

 

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“I can still reach the ornaments on your wall tree, but I won’t.  I’ve matured.”

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Pinterest 365 – Day 33 – Christmas Tree

Posted on December 3, 2012 by gracieed

I’m in the process of decorating our house for Christmas.  The tree is such a central piece of our decorating, but years ago (7 to be exact) we brought a delightful boy home called Woody (our first boy dog) in September and that following Christmas we went out and bought our tree, set it up and decorated it.  And Woody promptly went over, lifted his leg and relieved himself — on our Christmas tree.  Needless to say I was speechless and completely unaccustomed to the habits of boy dogs.

Then the following February we brought Ellie home as a 7-week-old puppy.  She was soooo cute, but spent all of her waking hours putting things in her mouth.  She didn’t grow out of that until she was about 2, so when Christmas rolled around the next year, we decided we needed a tree that was out of reach for both of the dogs.  We have a small table top tree that did the trick and that we still use, but I miss how a room feels with a larger tree.

Branch Christmas TreeI saw this pin on Pinterest and followed the link.  Unfortunately the link is just a photograph, but it’s a good picture and I was able to figure out what they did.  We have a lot of trees and a lot of good sized 100_4256tree branches so I saved a few and cut them up today.  I shared in an earlier post that we discovered that Ellie likes to help in the yard by catching dirt.  I found out today she also likes catching sawdust.  She’s a weird dog!

100_4255100_4271100_4272100_4270So back to my tree.  I cut the branches into 7 pieces with the longest being 3 1/2′ down to 6″.  Each smaller branch is 6″ shorter that the previous one.  I then roughly painted them with a cream colored acrylic paint and Mike helped me to attach them to the wall.  We ran a strand of white lights and I hung glass ornaments with fishing line.  I still need to fashion a star out of twigs and add more ornaments and maybe some tinsel.  Here is what it looks like so far.  I think I really like this one and I also think it’s going to be hard to take it down after the holidays.  Maybe it could become a holiday tree and I could decorate it for all occasions throughout the year?  We’ll see…Grace

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“Was it really necessary to tell them about the tree incident?  Did they really have to know that?”

Posted in Backyard, Christmas, Decorating, Homemade, Pinterest, Recycling, Repurposing, Saving Money | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pinterest 365 – Day 31 & 32 – Ornament Wreath and DIY Vintage Ornaments

Posted on December 2, 2012 by gracieed

100_4241I love Christmas ornaments.  The more colorful the better.  I often pick up boxes of them at garage sales and as you can imagine I have quite a few, but not as many as you would think.  I dug most of them out today for my two Pinterest picks.

Ornament WreathI have various sizes and colors and love displaying them in jars and bowls and on the tree.  However, when I started seeing the ornaments wreaths that were showing up on Pinterest I just had to give them a try.

100_4240100_4243100_4244I found an old wire coat hanger, had Mike help me bend it into a circle and began the process of hot-gluing the metal cuffs to the tops of each ornament.  Because these are glass, if they fell out of their clasp they could fall and break so gluing them helps to keep everything in its place.  100_4247After the ornaments were all glued, I started sliding them onto the wire hanger.  It took quite a few ornaments to fill the hanger, but I had enough.  I found a wide ribbon, glued it to the hook part of the hanger and then started filling in some of the open spaces with smaller ornaments.  These I just hot-glued straight onto the larger ornaments.  And this is the result.

 

 

Create Vintage OrnamentsNext I broke out my bottle of nail polish remover and started wiping it onto a collection of smaller ornaments.  Very soon the color started coming off the ornaments and they were left looking old and tarnished which is the look I was going for – vintage. 

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100_4251I mixed these together with some bright new ones in the glass candle holder I made the other day.  I really like the look.  I have a trifle bowl tucked away in storage that would work wonderfully for displaying a collection of different sized ornaments.  I think I’ll find that and add it to my decorations.

100_4254100_4252Both these tutorials were easy to follow and fun to do.  And it feels really good to be using the stuff I’ve been collecting for years.  Grace

 

 

 

“100_4227So even though they are a round shape, I’m not to climb up on the dining room table and try to play catch with them?  I just need clarification.”

Posted in Christmas, DeCluttering, Decorating, Homemade, Pinterest, Repurposing, Saving Money | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Month of Challenges – Day 2 (December 2)

Posted on December 2, 2012 by gracieed

Today reminded me that we can plan like crazy, imagine how events are going to unfurl and still we can be pleasantly surprised with how life unfolds.

  • My December Daily picture and journal entry will be the100_4189 story of being part of lighting the Advent candle at church for the first Sunday of Advent.
  • 100_4223This picture is my entry for the iHeartFaces Photo Challenge.  Today’s topic was “elf”.  I was going for the idea of elves having large, pointed ears.  Seems like we have an elf-dog living amongst us.
  • For “Journal Your Christmas”, the suggestion was made to choose one memory of the Christmas countdown from your past. I added a story about the Christmas packages that my Nanna and Da would send to us when I was young and the Advent calendars they would include.  This will be added to my December daily album.
  • white christmas25 Christmas movies.  Mike and I watched White Christmas.  This is such a feel good movie yet I am always reduced to tears at the end when they sing the tribute to the General.  Make sure you have tons of Kleenex.

Until tomorrow,  Grace

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“Elf-dog, really?  Are you getting me back for not wearing the reindeer antlers?”

Posted in Christmas, Christmas movies, December Daily, Dogs, Paper Crafting, Scrapbooking | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Month of Challenges – Day 1 (December 1)

Posted on December 2, 2012 by gracieed

Wow today was a busy, but really good, fun day.

  • 100_4165My December Daily picture and journal entry will be the story of decorating the tree at the zoo and this picture of Cathy, Carol and I.
  • 100_4171This picture is my entry for the iHeartFaces Photo Challenge.  The topic was a picture of me.
  • For “Journal Your Christmas” I am adding a story about getting together with some other friends tonight and having a gift exchange.
  • Nine Dog Christmas25 Christmas movies.  Mike and I watched Nine Dog Christmas. You had to know it would be a movie involving dogs. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say I didn’t know that dogs could fly :-). Woody and Ellie give it a ‘two paws up’.

Until tomorrow,  Grace

 

 

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“Okay the movie was good, but there were some tense moments and I had to close my eyes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pinterest 365 – Day 31 – A double up

Posted on December 2, 2012 by gracieed

As you can tell from the last two posts, today was a busy day.

I will double up on my Pinterest365 tomorrow and get back on track.

Thank you for understanding.  Grace

 

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“That’s okay mom.  Sometimes we all get behind on stuff.  Just don’t let that happen with our walks.  That’s not acceptable.”

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December – A Month of Challenges

Posted on December 2, 2012 by gracieed

Okay this may be a reaction to the transition I’m experiencing in my life right now, but December is shaping up to be a month of a whole lot of challenges.  Fun challenges, but ones that will surely keep me on my toes.

Are you ready???  Starting today and for the next 30 days (in a later post), I will be:

Now before you think that I’ve completely lost my mind, let me point out that several of these items can be combined.  Most likely my journal post will be included in my December Daily album and the photo I take for the Photo Challenge will also be featured in the DD album.  As far as the movie reviews go, let me assure you these will not be long and involved.  Mostly they will be a couple of sentences (if that) about my impression of the movie.

So on that note… here we go.  Grace

 

WoodyEllie

“Okay mom, you do remember this blog is called ‘While Walking My Dogs’, right?  And you’re still going to be doing that with all this other stuff taking up your time, right?”

Posted in Christmas, December Daily, Paper Crafting, Project Life, Scrapbooking, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Decorating a tree at the Zoo

Posted on December 2, 2012 by gracieed

100_4186For my December Daily entry today, I’m going to journal about our experience of decorating a tree for our local Zoo.  Back in November, my friend Cathy discovered that our zoo was asking groups to volunteer to decorate a tree for the Enchanted Forest at the zoo.  She signed us (Cathy, Carol and I) up and called our group “Pinterest Pals”.

 

All of our decorations (minus the lights and the tree topper) were ideas we found via Pinterest, were repurposy, earth and animal friendly and extremely inexpensive.  There was the acorn garland that I shared as a Pinterest365 post using hemp cording, acorns from my yard and buttons from our stash.

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Cathy, Carol and I also took small mason jar lids, painted them and decorated with stamps and glitter.  Cathy sprayed them with a clear acrylic because they needed to stand up to the weather which has been very bad this past weekend.  We punched a hole in the top of the lids and strung raffia ribbons that we tied onto the branches.

Cathy also took the hemp cording and hot glued pine cones to it and tied them to the tree as well as red bows.

100_4165100_4148To begin with because of the storms in this area, we were on standby for our decorating time today.  If the weather was going to be too bad, we were to come back on Monday, but at 8:30am we got word that decorating was a go.  The area where are trees were was called the 100_4179100_4150Enchanted Forest, but in yesterday’s storm about half of the trees had fallen down and they estimated that several more would go that way by the end of the weekend.  We managed to find a tree that was almost straight, on top of the hill near the wolf enclosure.  It took about an hour for Cathy, Bruce, Carol and I to decorate our tree and we were very pleased with the result.  We can only hope that it survives the wind and the rain.

100_4166We’re planning on going back in the next couple of weeks in the evening when the whole zoo is lit up and see our tree.  I’ll post more pictures then.  Grace

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woody & Ellie

“Yeah, we’re just checking on something.  Whenever you visit places with animals you have a tendency to want to bring them home.  Don’t bring any wolves home.  That wouldn’t be cool.”

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Pinterest 365 – Day 30 – Frosted Candles

Posted on November 30, 2012 by gracieed

Well I have to say, I can’t believe I actually made it 30 days.  It has certainly been fun, but there were some days when it felt like I wasn’t going to make my deadline.  Only 335 days to go!

Here’s a visual recap of the last 30 days:

November RecapFrosted CandlesSo onto today’s post.  Frosted candles.  I found this tutorial on the Martha Stewart website via Pinterest and then a friend shared the craft with me at a Pinterest party.  And I wanted to share it with you.  It’s super easy, really inexpensive and leaves you with a very elegant candle that you could give as a gift, wrapped in cello wrap or use it as a decoration.  The six I made tonight will join my Nativity scene on my mantel in a week or so.  I love the frosty look; reminds me of snow.

100_4133So how did I make these?  Well, let me tell you :-).  You’re going to need Epsom salt, Mod Podge, a foam brush and candles.  I also added white glitter to the Epsom salt to give it a little sparkle.  This was not included in the tutorial instructions.  It’s hard to see the glitter in the salt, but I’m hoping when the candles are lit, the light will bounce off the glitter.  We’ll see.

 

100_4137100_4138100_4139I poured out the Epsom salt onto a plate and then mixed the glitter in.  I then brushed the entire candle with Mod Podge and proceeded to roll the candle through the Epsom salt.  It’s important to apply some pressure when you’re rolling the candle so the salt really sticks to the glue.  And as quickly as you start, you’re done.  Just set them aside for several hours for the glue to dry and then you can begin wrapping them or placing them out for decorations.

100_4144Aren’t they pretty?  Grace

 

 

ellie 7

“I’m pretty sure that you don’t want Woody and me to lick these, even though I’m sure they would taste really good.  Just checking.”

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