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Winter

winter, holiday, and christmas home decorating ideas, recipes, and crafts

crafts

cinnamon ornaments

I’ve been wanting to make cinnamon ornaments for our tree for a couple of weeks and there just never seemed to be a good time to take over the kitchen counters with the endeavor.  We had a dusting of snow this morning and I had a relatively open day, so I decided to dive on in. There are a lot of different variations on this recipe, but this is the one I settled on… Start with two cups of ground cinnamon… Dump it in a large bowl and add 1/2 cup of smooth applesauce. Mix the two ingredients with a spoon (or spoonula).  I thought maybe I did something wrong, because it looked “mealy”, but I pressed onward… …and added one cup of all-purpose white glue.  The “dough” started to come together more, but it was pretty thick and sticky.  I pressed it into a ball with my hands and dumped it

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crafts

how to make yarn pom-poms

I’ve been using a lot of handmade wool poms in my Christmas decorating and I didn’t even think about making a tutorial for them.  A tutorial was requested, though, so I thought I would oblige. I made these when I was a kid, to use on hats, hair ties, socks, slippers, etc.  I think most of the ones I made ended up as toys for our two siamese cats.  (A little wallet I crocheted out of wool yarn became one of our cat’s “baby” for a time, but that’s another story.) My inspiration for making these was some wool “snowball” garlands I bought from Anthropologie.  They were so fluffy…it was definitely a Despicable Me moment.  “They’re so fluffy, I’m gonna die!!“ I might not have thought that if I saw them online, but in the store they looked so amazing draped over an antique ladder and I bought one.  I

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Decorating

Christmas decorating | the kitchen

I got out of bed this morning and was ready to do some more Christmas decorating.  I had toyed with the idea of going to the studio and doing some work there, but the kitchen was calling my name.  It needed a bit of cleaning and I really wanted to give it some festive touches.  In typical “Marian-fashion”, I got so into what I was doing and didn’t want to stop, so breakfast didn’t happen until 11:00 and a shower didn’t happen until 2:15.  I throughly enjoyed the process, though, and the result. The range hood is my favorite part.  The boxwood wreath is around the cow head (Julia) year round, but I tied some homemade wool poms around her neck for a little something extra.  I nestled some greenery, pine cones, nuts, dried artichokes and more poms along the “mantle” and hung mini stockings filled with cinnamon sticks and fresh evergreen

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Decorating

Christmas decorating | the dining room

Decorating the house for Christmas this year has been so much fun for me.  I stayed home from the studio three days last week to blast some Christmas music and fill the house with fresh greens and Christmas decor.  The decorating is all very understated and simple, which I have really enjoyed.  The rooms look festive, but it’s not a full overhaul that involves bins and bins of decor that need to be stored. The dining room follows that theme… (I caught this room in the morning light when the sun was streaming through the windows.  It casts the prettiest shadows) As I did with chandeliers in the other rooms, I tucked a mix of greenery throughout the arms, allowing it to look loose and simple.  Bunches of fresh greenery hang from each corner cabinet door. Eulalie is topped off with a garland of pine tucked over the frame. She

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Decorating

Christmas decorating | the living room

I’ve been sharing the Christmas decorations in my house room by room over the past few days.  In case you missed it, here is the master bedroom and family room decked out for the holidays.   And now, in the tour, we come to the living room.   As with the other rooms I’ve already shared, I used mostly fresh greenery with a few wintry/festive touches. (And I finally made a scrunchy linen cord cover for my plug-in chandelier.) I have a live blue spruce in an antique bucket on the coffee table and some mixed greenery tucked in the chandelier. The pom-pom garland is from Anthropologie and I just let it swag over an antique screen door.  I love how it looks like a garland of snowballs, so it will transition beyond Christmas to be winter decor. I made a loose wreath for my my milk-painted rocking horse. The primitive hutch

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Holiday

grain sack tree skirt

I intended to make a tutorial on how to make the grain sack tree skirt under our family room tree and it started out that way, but things went south about 1/3 of the way through.  It may surprise you (or not) to know that I don’t usually have a plan when I make something.  Not a detailed plan, anyway.  I know what I want to make and I have a general idea how to make it and then I trust in my ability to wing-it.  I tend to be an optimist when it comes to DIY, which often works in my favor, but can sometimes get me in trouble. It’s hard to get into too much trouble with a tree skirt, so I decided to fly by the seat of my pants and started cutting fabric.  I knew I didn’t have enough of the the antique hemp toweling I wanted to use,

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Decorating

Christmas decorating | family room

I am not detail oriented when it comes to picking out a Christmas tree.  I figure one is just about as good as the next, so I don’t angst over it.  I had the guy at the tree farm hold out one and it was clear that the bottom was a bit mangled, so I asked if he could show me another one.  He lifted it up and gave it a turn to fluff the branches.  Jeff was standing behind me and the boys were yelling from the next aisle over that they wanted an 11′ tree.  I looked over the tree the gentleman was holding out.  “What do you think, Jeff?”  “I think it’s fine.”  He is even less detail oriented when it comes to picking out a tree than I am. “Okay, then.  That’s the one.”  We had it wrapped up and on the roof of the van

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Decorating

Christmas decorating | master bedroom

I bought some greenery over the weekend (and clipped some from obliging trees as well) and we picked up the Parsons’ family Christmas tree yesterday.  The intention was to have it all decorated by the evening, but that didn’t happen.  As soon as we got the tree in the room, I realized it was the largest tree we’ve ever had.  The diameter at the base is almost six feet and it is very full!  We had to trim down the top and reshape it just to make it fit in the room.  It’s beautiful and I absolutely love it, but it’s so big that I ran out of lights 3/4 of the way up.  I made a trip to the store last night and we’ll get it finished today.  I’m enjoying taking my time with it, though, and running out of lights forced me to slow down even more. This

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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