She's Crafty (or cheap, you decide)

So I have accumulated a fair number of race medals this year thanks to the Hogwarts Running Club and Geek'd Out Running Club, and since they are all such adorable fandom medals I really wanted a way to display them (or show off, whatever).  I found some great medal hangers online by Allied, and while they were really well made, I didn't want to shell out $60 - $80 at this time. 

https://www.medalhangers.com/

As I consider myself to be a relatively crafty girl, I decided that I could totally pull off making my own hanger for much less. I of course hit up the holy grail of the DIYer, Pinterest, to find some inspiration. After a quick trip to Lowes and AC Moore I had everything I needed to fabricate my hanger. Here is the finished product:

In total it cost me around $25, the most expensive part being the letters at $1.15 each.

My New Favorite Thing…

I hate the cabinets in my home; frankly it is my biggest regret when we built our house 13 years ago. Within 1 year I knew I hated the golden oak but what was I going to do? Gut the kitchen and bathrooms? Clearly that was not an option so instead I have lived with them for 13 years.  I have thought about painting the cabinets, but that is such a scary commitment and once it is done you can’t go back. I don’t need that kind of pressure in my life! Whenever I go to Lowes I spend far too much time lusting over the beautiful cabinetry, especially the painted, distressed look. However, this is nothing I would attempt to do myself in a million years, despite my knack for DIY projects… that is until I discovered the wonder that is Chalky Finish Paint!

Inspiration Cabinets

I’ve seen this product used on one of my favorite DIY shows, Flea Market Flip, but didn’t really get the full awesomeness of the product until a lunchtime visit to Michael’s with a coworker who was refinishing an old, beat up side table using American Deco Chalk Paint. That afternoon I started trolling Pinterest for projects using chalk paint when I stumbled upon an image of beautiful, gray kitchen cabinets that were refinished using *gasp* homemade chalk paint.  I quickly went to the corresponding blog site where I found step by step instructions on how to use chalk paint to refinish cabinets, referencing this magazine image of a modern kitchen as inspiration:

I was astounded that such a dated looking kitchen could be transformed into a modern show-stopper using this painting technique to update the cabinets. The next day, I was on the hunt for the perfect chalk paint in a blue-gray color, and of course who else but the domestic goddess Martha Stewart herself would make the EXACT shade of gray paint that I was envisioning. 

My Harry Potter Tree

For many years I have thought about making a Harry Potter themed Christmas tree, however because I have a small addiction to holiday decorating (especially Christmas trees ) I knew that if I tried to sneak a Harry Potter tree into our already overly decorated house that I may push Shawn over the edge of tolerance. 

Luckily I work at a company that seems to encourage, if not foster, my love of HP so I decided that this was the year I would have my Potter-themed tree and set it up in my office.  For several months I have been trolling Pinterest and Etsy to get ideas on ornaments that I could craft myself and in early November I started fabrication. 

I found so many great ideas that I had to edit myself down to what would fit on the little 4 ft tree.

 I love the little potions bottles made out of heart-shaped glass ornaments filled with glitter glue and corked, the mini Harry Potter books were a breeze to construct using modge podge, computer printouts and wooden blocks found at the craft store.  I scored a great find on eBay, 6 little plastic cauldrons for $2 that I stuffed with fiber-fill to look like they were brewing potions.  I had so much fun painting the wooden game pieces to look like Harry, Ron, Hermione and Luna and one of my favorite projects was painting a tacky

Step away from the cookie…

No really, this year I have decided to step away from the cookie.  I have always enjoyed baking holiday cookies, sugar cookies being my favorite as I love to put sprinkles on anything and everything! However, because we don’t do much entertaining I have found that we (and by “we” I mean “I”) end up eating the vast majority of the cookies baked, leading to prolonged feelings of bloating and guilt.  So I am not even going to tempt fate or my waist line this year. I am going on a cookie strike!

Instead, I decided to make tasty sweet treats to give away as gifts to my friends and coworkers.  This way I still have the spirit of holiday baking without the guilt of late night binge-eating. 

One of my favorite holiday activities is making Hard Tack Candy (click here for the recipe), I generally knock out about 10 pounds over the course of a day and this year was no exception.  My 2012 flavor selection is: root beer, cotton candy, blueberry, sour cherry, lime, cinnamon, pineapple, pina colada and tutti fruity.  I love the way they look like a stained glass window through the clear cellophane bag, and this year I opted to find a more creative way to package the candy for gifts. 

So, I put my mad-crazy Power Point skills to good use and designed the above label for my candy

Tis the Season to be Jolly!

Where have I been? I’ve been a busy little elf preparing for the holidays! Thanksgiving weekend I was able to put up all of the holiday lights and my 2 big & 2 little Christmas Trees.  Our tree in the Rec room contains all of the ornaments we have collected over the years, I love this tree.   I finally broke down and purchased colored lights a few years ago in all different sizes just for a fun change (I am generally a white-light nazi) which really compliments the assortment of mercury glass and keepsake ornaments we have collected together over the years. Each ornament I hang on this tree is a memory.  One our favorite traditions is to collect an ornament from the places we visit while on vacation as well as to purchase a special ornament for each other every year at Christmas.  This year we added several new ornaments to our collection: a mercury glass street car from San Francisco, the 2011 Harry Potter Hallmark Keepsake Ornament, a mercury glass Big Bird and a Christopher Radko snowy owl (a homage to Hedwig).  I also have my “Silver & Gold” tree that I put in the living room, this is Shawn’s least favorite and each year he tries to convince me to skip this tree altogether (and each year he fails miserably).  I like it, it is very pretty & elegant, looks beautiful in our livingroom but to Shawn’s point there is nothing sentimental about this tree. 

When I was going to school at University of Maryland, Shawn stumbled upon a little gem at CVS pharmacy; they were selling ornaments from the old claymation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie, probably the ONLY holiday movie that Shawn really likes.  Over the course of that holiday season in 1999 he managed to collect every one of the ornaments.  To this day Shawn is very pleased with himself for completing the collection, therefore the only logical way to display them was to highlight them on their very own tree.  So, in addition to our 2 large trees we have a delightful little 4 foot tree that showcases his Rudolph and misfit toy ornaments.  This year I made a new addition to my tree collection, a cotton candy pink tree that looks lovely in “my” room.  I adorned it in a Sweet Treats theme, using candy and cupcake Martha Stewart mercury glass ornaments as well as some lollipops I found at le Target.

Somehow I was able to find time Thanksgiving weekend in between putting up the Christmas Trees and the holiday decorations (both inside and out) to order our holiday cards and write our family newsletter, this is hands down one of my favorite holiday activities every year.  Miraculously my cards were in the mail the first week of December!  For the first time in many years I didn’t br ave the black Friday crowds and instead opted for the majesty of Amazon for the bulk of my holiday shopping, for those of you who don’t have it, Amazon Prime is worth every cent and the free 2-day shipping was a life-saver last week! I even squeezed in an entire weekend of holiday baking; aside from the standard cookies I also reacquainted myself with another holiday staple in our house growing up, hard tac candy.  I used to love making this with my mom and decided that this year I would try and make it on my own.  By the end of the weekend I had 10 ½ pounds of hard tac candy in 10 different flavors, therefore for all of my friends living in the greater DC metro area there is a good chance you will be receiving a bag of candy from me as I really can’t imagine that we will (or should) consume this all ourselves. 

With today being Christmas, I am able to sit back and reflect on how busy the past 4 weeks have been for me with the realization that I didn’t HAVE to do any of the above mentioned activities; I don’t need 4 Christmas Trees, I could just send out store-bought cards, I definitely didn’t need 10 ½ pounds of homemade candy but I WANTED to do all of those things because that is what defines the holiday for me.  It reminds me of my childhood, my family and my friends.  I hope that your holiday season has been filled with joyous activities that added sparkle to your Christmas Spirit!

 Feliz Navidad everyone!