Christmas, Holiday

Happy New Year!

Holy smokes — it’s been almost a month since I’ve posted on my blog! Every time I went to do a blog post in December, I realized I was blogging about a gift for someone who would probably see it. #itshardtobeablogger

I finished up a leadership program I was doing at work on Dec. 18 and have been off work since the 19th — it has been a whirlwind of holiday activities, but now that 2015 is here and I have a few more days off, I have great plans! First, I need to catch up on the blog. It will take me all of January to show you what I made folks for Christmas gifts! (I’m only half kidding.)

Once I’m all caught up, I am getting started on my next project: a master bedroom refresh!

So before I show you the fun projects I did as gifts, here are some of my favorite family photos from the holidays.

I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday and that 2015 is a happy and healthy year for you.

Holiday, Home Improvement

Happy Mother’s Day — and the start of a new project!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there! My Mother’s Day was fantastic — I got to see all three of my moms and hopefully made each of their days special. Oddly enough, you will see no photos of my moms in this post because during the time I got to spend with them yesterday I completely forgot to take pictures! Oops.

We started out our morning in Annapolis with my mom (who did remember to take pictures, phew!). It was a beautiful day for brunch on the Chesapeake Bay and we had a wonderful time.

It was also a beautiful day for a duck selfie. Sorry ladies. This goofball is taken 🙂

Duck Selfie

After brunch, the hubby and started on our new project: replacing our outdated brass closet doors in our living room. You might think it is odd that we chose to replace these doors in the five hours between brunch and when our guests would arrive for dinner. Well, we actually started this project on Saturday. … or, I started the project. I wanted to move our more modern (if you can call them that) sliding mirror doors from our guest bedroom to our living room to replace the brass doors from the ’80s.

The only picture I could find of the doors is here, from when I was painting the living room gray. It’s crazy how much in this one photo has changed! (The TV lived in that spot for maybe 2 weeks, we have a new front door, curtains, paint. That’s a lot for the front area of the house…)
Brass Doors

Anyway, you can probably see where this is going. The brass doors were a bitch huge pain to remove and we ended up breaking the mirrors in both during the process. There was no turning back, which ended up being unfortunate because the replacement doors didn’t fit… which of course we learned after I spent 20 minutes hacksawing the frame down so it would fit in the opening. Grrrrr. Oh well!

Hacksaw

So we took everything to the dump and planned on putting up new doors in between our Sunday engagements.

Here’s how the closet looks without the doors. Honestly, it looks way better without than it did with haha. You can see at the foot of the closet the strip of missing carpet and our hardwoods underneath! Someday I would love to rip up the carpet and refinish the floors 🙂 Call me a dreamer because it will probably never happen.

NO DOORS

We want our doors to eventually look like the closet in our office:

Closet Doors Painted

We got the doors hung up, but there is currently no hardware, no paint, no reinforcing the bottom of the doors from the parts we cut off…. we have a little bit more to do! But I’ll save that for later.

Brian’s mom and my step mom came over for dinner as we wrapped up our door project. Thankfully I spent the majority of Saturday cleaning the house, setting up for dinner and prepping food because it was all ready to go when they arrived.

Check out my fancy table 🙂

Place Setting

I got to use my pretty teal napkins for the fist time and a lot of our wedding stemware! So fun. I even set up a “gift station” because I had to move our table from our dining room into our living room so the eight of us could eat comfortably. This chair and table were the only things in our dining room haha. Temporary solution!

Rem and the presents

Even though there are no moms pictured in this post, we had a wonderful day celebrating with our three leading ladies. Brian and I are fortunate to have been raised by wonderful women.

Happy Mother’s Day!

 

Christmas, Craft Projects, DIY GIFT GUIDE, Holiday, Quick and Easy Crafts, Wine Crafts

DIY GIFT GUIDE: Wine Cork Wine Charms

Wine Charms

Need quick and easy gifts to give this holiday season? Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some super simple, super affordable gift ideas — all made with things you probably already have around the house.

Today’s gift idea: Wine Cork Wine Charms

Brilliant, right? Who wouldn’t want to make a wine accessory out of something that comes in wine?!

Supplies:

  • Wine corks
  • Permanent Marker or Stamps
  • Drill
  • Hoop Earring findings
  • Jump Rings
  • Cutting tool

Steps:

  1. Using a knife, scissors, or any other cutting tool, CAREFULLY cut your cork into half-inch thick pieces. I recommend creating sets of 4 or 6, so cut enough to make as many sets as you’d like to gift.
  2. Using a permanent marker or a stamp, draw or stamp your design onto each cork sliver. It is important to note that each design should be easy to remember and different from one another. For example, I drew numbers (well, my neighbor did) on my corks. If I had stamped different scrolly patterns on each, you’d never remember whose wine was whose.
  3. Drill a hole through the top of each sliver. Test out your drill bit size on a scrap piece of cork.
  4. Put your jump ring through the hole and tighten.
  5. Attach your hoop earring finding  by looping it through the jump ring and bending the straight end into a sharp angle. This will prevent the circle on one end of the finding from sliding off of the other end and will allow it to stay on the wine glass.
  6. Fill up your wine glass, add your charms and end enjoy!

Charms

Like the idea of wine charms but don’t have a ton of extra corks around the house? Try making these other holiday themed charms.

Christmas Light Wine Charms

Holiday wine charms

Christmas Cookie Cutter Wine Charms

wine charms

Color Coded Wine Charms

wine charms cg