Christmas Tree Link Party

Hi all!  Welcome to our Holiday Cheer link party- Christmas Tree edition!  Our tree is strung with red wooden garland, white lights, and an array of red, pink, aqua, and green ornaments.  This is a bit of a departure for me, but I like how it turned out.

My favorite ornament this year is from Crate & Barrel- the colors and shape are so pretty!

Having no proper mantle, I hung our stockings on the iron scroll on our stairs and you can see our tree in the background.  Of course, the "love" one is mine, and "joy" belongs to James. I've been looking for a Mickey or Elmo or a more toddler-like stocking for him, but haven't found one yet. 

It's nice how our leaning mirror reflects the tree when you enter our home. 

This adorable fabric wreath is a new find from Lowe's.  Don't overlook the hardware stores for holiday decor, they have some great stuff!

And over the weekend, I attempted some Christmas tree Bokeh!  I'll share with you tomorrow how I took these photos and got the bokeh behind the stockings also. 

This year, we bought a 3 foot real tree for our son's room.  The tree is cute, but loses more and more needles by the day.  By Christmas, I anticipate we'll have just the trunk! We strung the pom pom garland we made, and he put most of the ornaments on by himself.

I love how little kids cluster all the ornaments together.  I left them that way since it's his tree and it makes me smile every time I see it.

                       Our 2010 Christmas Tree                                        Our 2011 Christmas Tree

Now it's your turn!  Show us your Christmas trees here and please grab a button!  

DIY // Christmas Pom Pom Garland

Tuesday kicks off our Christmas Cheer link party featuring your Christmas trees!  This year, we put our 5 year-old faux tree up in the stairway, and bought a real miniature tree for James' room.  I wanted to keep his kid friendly and thought handmade pom pom garland would be a cute craft project we could do together for the tree.

I should have known my son would be more interested in making a mess of the furry little balls instead of helping me string the garland! 

Later, he did help hand me the balls and I strung up the garland using red and white baker's twine. The pom poms were found at Hobby Lobby.  A big bag doesn't cost much.

I made about 7 feet of garland for his 3 foot tree.

Here's a sneak peek of his Christmas tree with the garland on it.  

See you and YOUR Christmas trees tomorrow!  Please grab a button.  The party will go live at 6:00 a.m. central time. 

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Christmas Mantle

Happy Holiday Cheer link party mantle day!  Michelle at Ten June is our host and you can link up your mantle at her blog.  As you know, we don't have a fireplace or mantle in our house, so the console table in our entryway functions as our "mantle".  This year, I shopped our house and came up with this Christmas mantle.

I started with the gold Z Gallerie runner that I used on our dining table for Thanksgiving 2011.  Then I added the three Pottery Barn candle holders with green candles and faux snow.  The fois bois candle is also from Pottery Barn.  

One of my favorite things is this Pier One reindeer.  He's so sweet and adds some charm to the mantle.  Finally, I added the twig and berry wreath for some color and I'm loving adding touches of red throughout our home this year. 

See you over at Ten June!  Please grab a button!

Make Your Own Christmas Photo Card with PicMonkey

This year I'm sending out a picture of James inside our Christmas cards that I had some fun editing in PicMonkey.  I wanted to share with you how I did it in case you aren't familiar with the free online editing tool.  It's super easy to use and I edit almost all of my photos in it.  I wish I knew how to use Photoshop, but I find PicMonkey works well for my purposes. 

Here's the end result for the picture that will be included in our cards for 2012.  

Would you believe I took 99 photos of James to get ONE I could use for the card?!  Literally 99.  You ever tried to get a good picture of an active two year old? :)

Below is the out-of-the camera shot that I used for the photo.  It's a great straight on, in-focus shot of James with a cool background given the water fall and brick wall.  The random guy and stroller need to go, obviously.  

To begin editing, go to Pickmonkey.com and click on "Edit a Photo".  You can choose the photo from your computer library or drag the photo into PicMonkey. 

First, I used the cropping tool to crop the image.

Here's the cropped image. 

Then I used the Clone tool to copy the water fall to cover the stroller. 

Voila- no more stroller!  It's not perfect, but close enough. 

To lighten the photo without over exposing it, I used Curves.  You can also lighten your photos in "Exposure" and take out any yellow or warm tones in "Color". 

To write on the photo, I clicked on the "P", then chose my desired font.  You can resize and move the words around too. 

Then I used the color editor to color each letter a different color. 

I then chose the winter application to add snowflakes.  PicMonkey has all kinds of cool effects for different seasons. 

And then I colored the snowflakes to compliment the words Merry Christmas.

Finally, just Save your image.  

I print my photos at Walgreeens.  You can just go to their website and upload your photos from your computer there.  They always have coupons and can print your photos in an hour.  You could also print them at home on photo paper or card stock.

Here's the finished result.  Too cute!

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Christmas Craft (DIY Outdoor Holiday Sign)

Hi all!  Today we kick off our Christmas Cheer Link Party over at Hi Sugarplum where you can show off your Christmas craft!

I got the idea for my craft a few weeks ago at our annual Nutcracker Market when I saw an adorable 

outdoor holiday sign for about $40.  I thought I'd try my hand at recreating it at home, and it only cost me about $5.00.   

  

If only my lettering were cuter:(  I think that was part of the charm of the Nutcracker sign, so I may try repainting and rewriting mine since I'm not crazy about how that part turned out.  In my defense, I used my chalk ink markers to write with, and they were a little difficult to use on the wooden surface.  I may try regular markers next time and write in cursive.  

To make the sign, I used PVC pipe, red duct tape, a piece of wood and red, white, and green spray paint.  I topped it off with a red glittery bow and ornament.

I spray painted the PVC pipe white and folded the red duct tape in half so I could make narrow stripes and get the placement where I wanted it without it sticking while wrapping.  The result is a candy-cane looking pole. 

After cutting the wood into three pieces, I primed each and then spray painted in red, white, and green. 

I determined where I wanted the boards placed and got my husband to drill the holes for me. 

Here's the sign all assembled.  It's meant to go in the front yard, but it got late before I was finished, so it's on the front porch for now.  

Of course, you could put whatever festive message you'd like on your sign, "Merry Christmas" and your family name or the year or "Naughty or Nice?"  So fun!

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See you over at Hi Sugarplum!

Christmas Cheer Holiday Link Party Start Tomorrow!

This weekend I was knee deep in spray paint and craft projects in honor of our upcoming 2nd Annual Christmas Cheer Holiday Link Party!  I had hoped to have completed at least one of my projects to show you today, but neither project is ready yet.

And, yes, we really are in tank tops and flip flops here in Houston.  It was 85 degrees on Sunday! Are you getting to wear your cozy sweaters and boots? So jealous!

The party starts tomorrow at Cassie's blog (Hi Sugarplum) with Christmas crafts.  On Thursday, Michelle (Ten June) will be hosting the mantle party.  See you there!