Gift Baskets

UPDATE: Since Hubs thought I sounded bitter and hating the world when I wrote the post I decided to get rid of the negative stuff 

I really love making gifts baskets.

I love giving gifts to friends and family. The look on there face when they receive a gift is priceless to me and makes my heart happy.

Does anyone out there like gift baskets? What is your favorite, making them or receiving them?

I like receiving them just as much. A basket full of little bits and bobbles...what fun!

this one is filled with soap, scrub, bath soak, and body spray that I made. 

I made these for our neighbors at Christmas time. A tray with hot chocolate and cookies. Perfect for a cold winter night.

Have a wonderful evening,

Heather

Spring Planting has Begun

Today is about 12 weeks before the last frost so I decided to sow some cabbage seeds. Not many, since last year, or maybe the year before that I had a horrible infestation of cabbage moth caterpillars.

I have a feeling there is a technical name for them but I call them cabbage moth caterpillars and encourage the kids to chase and catch as many cabbage moths as they can.
Year to date: Kids 0 - Cabbage Moths 100

We have also been busy emptying out the raised bed because some how a mole got through the mesh wire stuff at the bottom and ate all my Piment de Padron peppers and some jalapenos and I think it took out my lavender plant and a bell pepper. We will not have that problem again.

I plan on turning the raised bed into a permanent herb garden. Oregano has taken over an entire corner. That stuff is like a weed or peppermint. It roots itself overnight and the next morning it's everywhere!

Here is a picture of last years garden.

Which turned out OK considering I lost my entire collection of starts and nursery stock.
Because me and my vast knowledge of gardening decided to roll my green house out into the garden where it could warm up. Not bad right, until I heard a crash and discovered you shouldn't move the greenhouse let alone move it in the middle of the garden on a windy day. It blew over and everything was a pile of dirt and seedlings. I cried.

But my mistake will surely help someone else, at least I hope.

What are you planting this year? Have you started your seedlings?

Happy planting,
Heather

Handmade Christmas Gifts 2012

In the spirit of Christmas and St. Nicholas I decided to get started on my favorite thing. Making Presents!!! I love making gifts and giving them away.

These gift baskets are stuffed with my home made bath soak, body spray, salt scrub and soap. My deluxe basket! I finished it off with a basket and filler from the Dollar Tree and wrapped in in a clear basket bag and tied it up with simple blue ribbon.

This is another basket I filled with some home made bath soak and salt scrub. I finished it off the same way as the deluxe basket. I also do the little baskets with a scrub/body spray combo and a large scrub/small scrub combo. These are always well received around the holidays. After all the holiday shopping and traveling who isn't in the mood for some relaxing down time? These baskets provide just that!

These cute snowmen are chocolate candy bars we hand out to the kids in the neighborhood, the mail carrier or a delivery person dropping off Christmas packages. They are easy to make and affordable. Just take an 8 1/2x11 sheet of white paper and cut in half. Take a half of the paper and wrap it around the chocolate bar. Tape the back, add a cute little face to the front, tie on some ribbon and you have snowman candy bars! 

This I haven't started yet, but can you guess what I am going to make? You guessed it! Chocolate bars and truffles. These are for a cookie exchange party we are going to in mid December. Can't wait to taste test!

 Here are the soaps that I made this year. Rose scented for the ladies and Drakkar cologne for the men. They turned out quite fragrant. All I have to do is wrap them up and stuff them in a basket with other goodies.

These are the cards and matching box I made for my Mom's birthday. I chose a snowflake theme since she will most likely use them all before Winter ends and by Spring I will have a new boxed set for her!

Last I have these great gift bags for our neighbors. I bought a charger from the Dollar Tree and added a box of cookies and some hot chocolate. I finished it with a basket bag and festive bow. I think project cost me around $6. It's cute, festive and you really can't go wrong with cookies and hot chocolate on a cold winter night.

Do you make gifts for the holidays? What are they? Leave me a link to your blog in the comments and I will add you in an up coming blog post about more homemade gifts!

Two People Fell in Love Painting and Tutorial

I really fell in love with a painting I saw online of each family members hand print in descending order layered on each other with the saying "All because 2 people fell in love".

I love painting and drawing so I thought I would give it a try. I already had the canvas in the garage from a few years ago, I pulled it out dusted it off and got to work.

I used a gray Rustoleum spray paint I had left over from a project I did over the summer. I sprayed the entire thing gray, it took 2 coats.

After that dried I jumped on the computer and created a basic word doc in the font and size I needed. I am a font junkie so I had many to choose from. The font I picked was Amperzand and is free (awesome!!!) you can get it here.

I then printed it off  and cut it up. I played with the spacing and style. When I was happy with the look I got 2 things you most likely have laying around the house: a ball point pen and pastels. You might be able to use chalk (I haven't tried) but I personally like pastels since they don't smudge.

 Once you color the back of the paper with the pastel, I chose peach because the background was darker and I can barely see, so I thought a darker pastel would be hard for me to see when painting.

After the back is colored and working with one word at a time, take the ball point pen and begin to trace around the letters ( see pic below for reference).

This is how it should look so far.

The next part is really difficult if you have little ones that love to paint and craft too. They always want to help! I waited for them to go to bed the broke out the enamel paints and model brushes and got to painting. It took me about a half hour to complete the lettering.

I think it turned out rather well.

Now all I have to do is get everyone to get there hands dirty and layer our prints (before the kids are all grown up).

When it is totally complete I will add a new picture and update you!

Right now though I have it hanging in the foyer of the house, it doesn't look half bad.

Have a great weekend!

Heather

Paper Bunting and Subway Art

. 

Here is my cute paper bunting I made for the holiday season. I bought a scrap pack from Oriental Trading Company and decided that this would make a great project for the scrap pieces. I have this obsession with making these since I saw a few on Pintrest and they are so easy to make.

I might even add a tutorial son making this stuff, no sewing required. Just glue, scissors and paper.

Here is a close up. I recently purchased a Sizzix off Craigslist. It really did a great job at cutting the pieces out. I usually use my Cricut but it pissed me off while making some cards and I have put it in the closet for a while. Or until I forgive it for making me so darned mad.
Below is my Autumn bunting. It is my favorite so far. I love the colors and the font I used is really whimsical and adds some fun to it.

OK, as far as subway art goes I really wasn't a fan until Thanksgiving. We were at our families home when Aunt Helen pulled out a framed picture her daughter had given her. It was subway art of Christmas words.I fell in love.
That night I went on to (can you guess??) Pintrest and found some free printable subway art from eighteen25. I sent it over to Costco and had them blow it up to 16x20 which cost around $7, it turned out beautiful. They have many more I will be printing and framing.

As far as the framing goes I haven't made it out to the craft store. So I painted a cork board I had in my office and used brass tacks to secure it. I didn't go through the paper though, since I will frame it at some point. I just secured the edges with the side of the tack and pushed the pin into the board. I might go all the way around - just haven't decided.

So what are your holiday decorations? Do ya'll like subway art and paper bunting? Did you make any Christmas decorations this year?

Let me know, I would love to share them!
Heather

Decorating For Christmas

I have started and finished decorating for Christmas. I keep it very simple, basic. We live in a small house by today's standards so our tree is only 3 feet tall.
It makes for easy decorating. I stick to two colors, red and white and add a few pops of green, silver (because you have to have some sparkle) and maybe gold.
Side note: See that white wall. I painted that myself a few weeks ago. If you think that is no big deal, you are wrong. I have lived with a wood paneled wall behind our fireplace for 12 years and finally won an ongoing disagreement we have had about painting it. Not to mention we are remodeling the house in 6 months and taking this wall completely out. But that doesn't have anything to do with my WINNING! Does it?

You must excuse the photos. I love taking pictures and when I got sand in my camera at the beach this summer I ran out and bought a small point & shoot Canon camera that was in my budget. Well, I should have waited until I had more money because I cannot take a decent picture with this thing!

Anyway, my Christmas decor is simple. I love it and the kids think it looks lovely. This year I did add some subway art from Pintrest. It cost me all of $7 and I will post that tomorrow.

I also changed up the Advent calendar this year and made my own with small gifts and activities for the family to do.

It started out, I was going to decorate 24 mason jars and fill them with goodies. I got out 12, realized that It was taking up WAY too much space, and was going to be a lot more work than I anticipated so I bought a pack of brown paper bags at the Dollar Tree and there they sit in a bucket I wrapped in scrap Christmas paper left over from last year.

I will leave you all with one more little picture of our tree. A very bad picture but it will give you an idea of how I have decorated it and kept it simple.

Tomorrow I will spill the beans about my obsession with making paper bunting, subway art and some recent decorating I have done - not Christmas related.

Night All!

Heather

How do you decorate for Christmas??
Simple?
Elaborate?
Not at all???

Let me know.

After the Hiatus

I have been on hiatus for some time. Enjoying time spent with family and rebooting. Dabbling in small business ownership (which sank), starting a NEW & BETTER small business venture that is slowly failing, and becoming a total Pinterest addict.

I also started other blogs to coincide with my businesses, so I have officially cheated on you Blog and I am sorry.

But on the bright side I will be importing all the great little decorating and household things from Azzurro Cancello (Blue Gate) blog here within the next few days. I am excited about that. I can close my accounts with Etsy (both of them, long story about how much I dislike Etsy).

I can now concentrate on making this blog better and I really do have A LOT to say, spill, gossip and bitch about.

But for now enjoy that I am back and I really have a lot of great things coming up in the next few weeks.

What have you been doing while I was away? What new blogs have you been reading?

I am out of the loop and would like some new stuff to read!!!

Make sure to check out the posts below. They have some of the great stuff I have been working on this last month...and it is about my decorating challenge!!!

It has been fun so far and I have so much more to post on decorating and renovating on a budget.