Yellow + Gray Love

I find myself apologizing again for the sparse blog posting - but I do have a couple drafts in the works for some fun Portland dates, an addition to my anxiety story, my upcoming 27th birthday and some fun personal goals and transitions for me and T. Stay tuned!

It's no secret that I am a fan of Pinterest and blogging about it.. (see example #1,  #2, #3 and #4). So when I came across the many images of making a new wreath for our front door, I absolutely loved this little gem..

So I wanted to put my own spin on it just ever so slightly.

Using the tutorial I did before on how to make felt flowers for a wreath (see example #1 above). I gathered up a straw wreath (leaving the plastic wrapping on to keep the circle shape), my extra white felt fabric, bought some yellow felt fabric and some super soft gray yarn. I absolutely love the yellow, white, gray color combination!

I did not take photos of how I went through it step by step because it is a bit self-explanatory once you have figured out how to make the felt flowers.. but here is my finished product.

the lighting on our walk way doesn't really help that the photo was done a la iPhone.

close up of the cute little felt flowers.

So that is my latest DIY for under $10 and it's such a fun eye catching piece walking down our walk way. I really had a good time making this wreath, although stringing yarn over and over and over around the wreath took forever - it was still fun to see the progress happen. Have you found any inspiration or Pinspiration lately?? Time to put those pins into action friends! :)

Old Window, New Life!

At work, we have Christmas music on all day long in our arts room and I am loving it! Today some of the windows got decorated and more decor to come. I love that I get to celebrate the holidays with family, friends and in my work life too.

Back at home Trav and I have finished up some of our garlands, glass hurricane bowls with ornaments and reindeer setting. (I love decorating with reindeer adornments at Christmas time.) Remember how we decided to forgo the traditional Christmas tree and decorate with our natural branches and ornament/pine cone arrangement ?? Well we still wanted to have a way to display a few of our favorite ornaments. As I was doing my often-frequent occasional browse on Pinterest, I found this image..

It also just so happens that back on our summer vacation in Bend we checked out a fun antique market area in Sisters, Oregon. After a brief negotiation this beauty was ours for a small price. 

I have a thing for old window frames and window panes. I think they are their own art piece by themselves. On our honeymoon in the San Juan Islands we picked up a good size 4 paned white window that had chipping paint, wood in need of serious sanding and spotty glass marks. But we were instantly infatuated with the idea of the cool art work possibility it had. Travis spent an afternoon making it all pretty and now it sits above our dining area on the wall in a gorgeous pearly white color. 

But back to ol' red there. We didn't know where it would go or how we would utilize it but we loved the idea of having another old window in our home. After some light cleaning on it (the chipping red paint didn't look quite like our other piece did) and having it sit next to the couch, we decided about 2 weeks ago it was time to give it a fresh look for the holidays.

We picked out 12 of our favorite ornaments so that we could hang 2 per window pane spot. Below you can see how Travis drilled beginning holes along the top to put small white hooks in the frame to hold the ornaments. 

The top row of ornaments left to right: a ferry boat with Orcas Island painted on it (our Honeymoon Destination), a W (our last name initial), 2 heart ornaments from West Elm that I picked up last year - the proceeds went to art employees in Haiti, a Gingerbread man from my mom, the fun hawaiian tee shirt and sunshine (from our trip to Florida a few years ago). 

 The bottom row left to right: a gorgeous sunshine in a glass piece of artwork from my mom to me, Batman (if you know my husband - you know why this is important, wink), Weger's ornament (yes we know that doesn't look like him, but we need to get his photo in that little frame), August's ornament, Christmas tree and grocery bag ornament both from Seattle's Pike Place. We bought those the weekend we got engaged there and we've both worked in the grocery industry too! :)

Here is our fun ornament arrangement on our wall, sorry for the lighting.. (you work with what you have in apartment life)

Some ornaments got rearranged to hang facing forward and not to the side and for a little mix up variety too. We placed our little "Merry Christmas" door post up there too because .. well we just felt like it. :)

Whatcha think??? We love it and I am glad that we still got to display some of our favorite ornaments despite us not having a tree this year. And yes Mom I still have all my penguin and polar bear ornaments. :)  I know she'll read this and wonder .. but no worries they are just hibernating this winter.. 

Anyway - that got weird.. so that's our latest Pinterest inspired creation for the holidays. What type of things have inspired your creativity lately? On the search for anything in particular and having a hard time? Let us know and maybe we can help channel the inner handyman/woman in you and find some cool inspiration!

Our Christmas "Tree"

Less than a month until Christmas! I don't know about you, but I love the holidays. The lights, cinnamon smells, hot chocolate, Christmas movies, shopping for presents, church gatherings with a little extra in their messages and seeing other people get into the spirit of giving. In the Waltz household we waste zero time getting ready for the holidays. For anyone who has tried to celebrate the holidays while living in an apartment - you know that it can be a pain lugging a tree up the steps and trying to be cautious with the hole drilling and such. So without further ado - we have a few DIY Christmas ideas to share this week and maybe you can tackle one of them yourself! Here's the nitty gritty of how it's all going down over here in the rainy northwest. Our black Friday consisted of going to Goodwill and Michael's for a fun tree display a la Pinterest.

 

In a past post, I made some candle holders with branches. Well, we kept the extra branches so that I could either make more of those or find another creative outlet for the branches. I saw some creative ideas online and decided to do a twist on the traditional tree. We went to Goodwill to search out a big oval style hurricane vase/bowl. As an employee was putting items away I spied this beauty on his cart and made it ours for $2.99. Of course this is after we gave it a bath.. 

I had 2 bags of cinnamon smelling pine cones from last years decorating and decided to see what I wanted the set up to look like. We trimmed down the branches a bit so that they were about double and a half the length of the vase. As you can see Weger kept a close eye to make sure we did a good job..

 After shopping at Goodwill I wanted to make the branches sparkle and our theme this year is a gold Christmas. We picked up some gold and silver (for a little extra sparkle) spray glitter for $5.99 each. When we got home we cut open a garbage bag - laid it out on our little deck and sprayed a few branches at a time with the gold first, then the silver.

After a few hours of drying time, the branches were brought back in and we reset them in the vase with the pinecones.. it looked okay at this point but I still thought something was missing.

A little more sparkle! I raided our ornament box full of different colored ornaments and specifically pulled out just the gold ornaments and we took everything out of the vase to start over. Filling in a few pine cones and then some gold ornaments in the dead space leaving room in the center for the branches to stand. After fussing with it for a little bit and trying to find the best angle - here is our finished product.

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out - I don't really think the photo does it justice.. but you get the idea. : )  Voila!

Here is a better shot of how pretty the gold ornaments shine next to the warm brown in the pine cones.

Going with our Oregon look of a Christmas in our lovely apartment abode - we did up the mantle a bit but I won't make this longer with the details of that.. but take a look at how Travis added the gold touches to the garland (also found at Michael's). 

So that's the start of our holiday decorating.. have you ever done something "different" tthan the traditional ideas for decorating?? Tell me you're crazy like us and also pick a little bit here and there from nature to make your home pretty.. :) 

  Here's a sneak peek at our next activity -