Christmas Home Tour 2015

December 17, 2015September 20, 2016 spcountrygal Accessories, Christmas, Craft, Decorating, Home Sweet Home Accessories, Armchair Decorator, Christmas, Craft, Decorating, Home Accessories, Snowman

I guess that I may as well jump on the blogging bandwagon and post some pics of my holiday home. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will mostly let the pictures do the talking.

My Front Porch:

Christmas front porch santa foil wreath

Front Entry and Living Room

Pool Table Room/Library:

Christmas Stockings bookcase

Our crystal and red tree

This tree is absolutley dripping with these bead/crystal ornaments

Kitchen and Dining Rooms:

Kitchen Counter

This brightens up a dark corner on my kitchen counter

Kissing Ball

Snowman Tree: this is where we keep our Christmas books

Family Room:

Well, that about sums it up. Thanks so much for stopping by! I would love to offer you a nice hot cup of cocoa, but, well…you know. You will have to really stop by my home for that to happen. Until then, Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Concrete Look Dollar Store Pumpkins

November 9, 2015October 5, 2016 spcountrygal Accessories, Autumn, Craft, Decorating, DIY, Dollar Store Craft, Gray and White, Home Accessories, Painting, Super Saturday Accessories, Craft, Decorating, DIY, Dollar Store Craft, Gray and White, Home Accessories, Painting, Super Saturday

If you have been in pretty much any dollar store in the last month or so you have likely seen lots of bright orange light-weight pumpkins. El cheapo looking pumpkins. But, for some reason, they inspired me in a big way. I bought a couple of them and before I had even gotten out of the store, I knew what I wanted to do with them. Happily enough, they turned out exactly how I envisioned them!

Concrete Pumpkin

I love them! The process, once I figured it out was quite easy. It took some trial and error, so to help you avoid all that, I will show you the easy way to make these concrete look pumpkins. First, though, my base ingredients:

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I had noticed this half used bag of thin-set mortar in our garage recently and wondered what a person actually does with it once the tile job is done. The trial and error portion of my project consisted of just mixing water with the thin-set mix and painting it on. Not wanting to use a nice bowl to mix the stuff in, I cut down a gallon sized milk container. The handle made it really easy to hold while I stirred. I used the top part for my scoop. See what it looked like after one coat:

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Too transparent for the look that I was going for so I made some changes to my thin-set mix. First I added some white paint and then decided to add some Plaster of Paris powder, as well. I didn’t have any specific recipe, just added until it was the consistency of pancake batter. A couple more coats (let it dry completely first) and this is what they looked like: WP_20151106_008

As you can see, I added some short twigs to make stems for my pumpkins. At first I added a silk leaf to the top, but removed it because I liked the starker look. Can I just say that I’m loving the white pumpkin look this year? Truth be told, however, these could be made in any color… of course your paint color will dictate that. It would be fun to make gray or peacock blue or black concrete pumpkins, don’t you think?

Since these pumpkins are made of Styrofoam, they can be easily pierced on the bottom and place on a candlestick that has a “nail” for holding candles in place:

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Isn’t it amazing how just a few items found in most garages can make el cheapo look high end? I’m loving my new pumpkins and plan to make several more in different sizes next year.

So, what do you think? Are you still there, or are you grabbing the car keys and heading to your local dollar store to buy some pumpkins?

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I was FEATURED! What an honor!

Great Ideas — 18 DIY Thanksgiving Ideas Part Two!

Super Saturday Craft Day

November 5, 2015November 7, 2016 spcountrygal Christmas, Craft, Decorating, DIY, Gift Idea, Home Accessories, Painting, Pillow, Quick Project, Snowman, Super Saturday Accessories, Christmas, Craft, Decorating, DIY, Gift Idea, Home Accessories, Painting, Quick and Easy, Sewing, Snowman, Super Saturday

SuperSaturday2015

One of my favorite things to do this time of year is to help organize a “Super Saturday” at my church. Super Saturday is a day where the women from church and their friends, family, neighbors…can come together and craft. This event is always in November so we can make holiday decorations as well as inexpensive gifts for Christmas giving. I just thought that I would share what we are doing this year:

This Snowman/Scarecrow craft was requested by someone who had seen a similar craft online using planks. As you can see, this craft is reversible, making it possible to have it out from October through January. Love that! I will do a tutorial on this soon. Promise! ***UPDATE: Here is the tutorial***

This 2 minute craft is great for display as well as for holding a plate of holiday goodies. It is as simple as removing the backing from the vinyl sticker that I cut with my Roland Dr. Stika machine, placing the sticker and rubbing it to smooth it out, then removing the masking layer. Easy peasy! I love how simplistic it looks.

I found some little wood boxes that I thought would make perfect little chalkboards. Before Super Saturday, I will paint the boxes white. That day we will add a vinyl frame to use as a stencil. After painting with chalkboard paint and letting it dry (we always use hair dryers at Super Saturday to speed up the drying process!), we will remove the frame vinyl to expose the white below. I’m also going to do a quick demo about how to easily “write” on chalkboards. I love that this little guy can stay up year round. I love, love, love chalkboards and the fact that “art” can change in a matter of seconds.

We are also going to do a demo of how to make a 5 minute pillow cover. Soooo easy! Here is a great video tutorial to show you how it’s done and here is one of the many pillows that I have made this way:

Lastly, here is a craft that I patterned off of one that my friend found online and loved. I made sure to use an image that is copyright free of the LDS Salt Lake Temple spires. We will decoupage that as well as the saying, “Families are Forever”. This idea can be used in a thousand different ways, using different pics (pics of children and grandchildren, family home…) and sayings. I drilled tiny holes in each corner of the word wood so I could easily insert little brads for added detail. I also drilled a couple of larger holes on the top for the ribbon to go in and, BAM! it’s a fabulous item to hang in your own home or to give as a gift.

I’m so excited for this Super Saturday event…I can hardly wait! It is so much fun to turn on the Christmas tunes and work and laugh and craft with friends.

Do you participate in a similar crafting event? If you are not aware of a similar event around you, why don’t YOU get one started? Grab your friends and family and get crafting! You just might end up with some pretty cool stuff and warm memories as a result.

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Autumn Colors: Peacock and Pumpkin

October 29, 2015October 29, 2015 spcountrygal Autumn, Decorating, Flowers Autumn, Decorating, Flowers, Home Accessories

As of last month, I have a new favorite fall color combination:

I came across it by fluke, really. First I purchased this shower curtain

I bought it for $10 at Ross with the intention of turning it into decorative pillow covers, but I threw it over my dining room table to get out the wrinkles and it morphed into my new table cloth instead. I must say that L*O*V*E it. The above pic reflects its true color. I call it Peacock Blue. I wish that all of my pics reflected this color correctly, because, sadly they don’t. I’m not sure why. Hmm. Anyway…when I brought my Fall décor in and threw my regular Autumn flower pot in the center of the table…magic happened.

I admit that I had to manipulate the hue in order to get the true Peacock Blue for the above image. It looks a bit oranger than it should. But I still love the color combo. More pics

New Favorite Autumn Color Duo

Yummy color combo

Peacock Blue and Pumkin Pie Orange

Peacock Blue and Pumpkin Pie Orange…my new favorite Autumn color duo.

What colors are you crushing on this Fall?

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Textured Wooden Pumpkin

October 27, 2015October 24, 2016 spcountrygal Craft, Decorating, DIY, Home Accessories, Super Saturday Accessories, Armchair Decorator, Autumn Decor, Craft, Decorating, DIY, Home Accessories, Painting, Super Saturday

Fall is in the air…isn’t that exciting? Around here, that means that we are no longer having triple digit temperatures. Woo hoo! With daytime highs of less than 85 degrees and night time lows in the 50’s, I’m in the mood for everything Autumn. The other day I got the hankering to just make something new to add to my Fall decorating. I gave myself a challenge. Do you ever do that? My challenge was that I would use materials that I already own and create something I’ve never seen before. Here is what I decided to work with:

Some stained old textured wallpaper and 3 scrap pieces of 2×4 left over from a garage shelving project. Are you inspired? I was. Wanna see what I made?

Turned out okay, don’t you think? I happen to love it! Would you like to see how I made it? Alright. Here we go:

First step, I cut out the textured wallpaper. I wanted a continuous pattern so I traced around the 2×4’s, stacked vertically, on the back side of the wallpaper. After cutting out the wallpaper, I glued a strip down on each of the 2×4’s using regular white glue. Easy. To make sure that it didn’t bubble, I stacked them up and weighed them down with books. As the glue dried I made up a pattern. Kind of. I’m not an artist so I went to the computer and found a basic pumpkin template. I printed it out then cut the image in 4 pieces so I could stretch it out to make a larger size. After taping it down to a large sheet of (pieced together) paper, I drew in my own lines. Next step, I cut out the paper template and then transferred the pumpkin shape to my textured wallpaper 2×4’s, again making sure that the pattern was continuous.

After cutting the individual pieces out, I sanded random dents in the edges to make them more rounded and textured. See?

I wanted the pumpkins to look nice and finished and not thrown together so I made sure to “caulk” the edges with spackling.

See how much better the spackled part looks?

I chose to paint my pumpkin a nice white, but orange, black, aqua or teal would be equally nice. I had originally painted mine black with the intention of sanding the edges to allow the black to show through, but ended up liking the white, un-distressed look.

My stalk is a cut piece of a branch from a tree in my yard. If wishes were fishes, I would have made it longer, but by the time that I decided that, the darn thing was too attached to remove.