Ethan has been a sweetie and painted the fireplace white this week, and even did an extra coat as a favor to me. ;-) He's a keeper. (And he puts up with ALOT with little 'ole me. Well, I'll say, a HANDFUL of me. He goes along with all of my crazy decorating ideas without too much of a fight.)
As I mentioned before, I've been bemoaning the ugliness of our fireplace for a very.long.time. Since we moved in to this house (our very first and only house!) 11 years ago. So now that it's finally painted, it's kind of a shock. But it looks great! and it *is* actually white, although it looks cream in these photos due to the light but mostly because of the vintage-y photoshop actions I use. I'll post more pics of the fireplace once it's fully decorated.
It also turns out that this white brick backdrop has proven to be quite the little photo backdrop! Which is nice because we don't have good light in this house, so finding good photo-taking spots is always a good thing.
Here is my own little Magpie Ethel creation, you know the ones I raved about here?
She is the CUTEST!
I found a few decorations that I bought last year that I forgot about.. that's always a nice surprise. Remember my obsession with honeycomb last year? I found this garland soon after Christmas last year and just totally fell in love with it. There are so many great vintage honeycomb decorations out there, but alot of times they're torn up because of the nature of the paper, or ya know, smelly. ;-)
Smelly/dusty vintage is a job hazard for people like me with awful allergies. I spent all day last Sunday having sneezing fits because the vintage shirt I just recently bought and was wearing, either hadn't been washed, or because the seller used some crazy smelly detergent. Oh yeh, and real Christmas trees? don't even get me started with those and allergies. :-( Anyone else deal with this every year? That is why I like finding vintage-inspired things like the honeycomb garland. ;-)
I did find this awesome (vintage/non-dusty) macrame Christmas tree this year on Etsy for a great price. Let's face it, not all macrame is good-lookin'. ;-) But I like this, and I think I will add some yarn pompoms to it to make it even more festive. Not sure where I'm hanging it yet...
Some more gingerbread house progress...
So once I finished the sides of the house and roof, I realized that all the other stuff is going to go FAST. Which makes me happy! I think I WILL actually be able to finish this. We'll see how construction goes this weekend. :-)
that's both sides of the roof to the right.. Those peppermints on the house part were pretty tricky. It's probably hard to tell the scale of this thing, but those little "candies" on the house and the door and the wreath are T-I-N-Y. It's awkward crocheting such small things. But they sure are cute.
I'm still fairly new to this crocheting thing, but things are going along pretty well. It's been a great project to just refresh so many different kinds of stitches and I love that the pattern is designed so that every single thing on this house is crocheted, no other techniques used.
Here's the pic again of the one in the magazine. Mine is slightly different and i used different colors of course.
One thing that they tell you to do is hot glue everything onto the structure.. but I'm not a fan of hot glue, or glue in general with crafts. I'd much prefer stitching things on.
So I'm wondering what you guys think: Should I stitch the embellishments on BEFORE the entire thing is glued onto the balsa wood structure underneath? Or glue the sides of the house and roof on, and THEN add the embellishments (candies, door, windows, etc)? I'm not sure what would be easiest. I'll use embroidery floss to stitch them on.
I'm thinking that if I add the embellishments after the sides of the house are glued on, that i will use a bit of glue just to keep the items in place so they don't move around while I stitch them into place. Any thoughts? I was concerned that if I put them on BEFORE the sides of the house are glued onto the structure, that the whole thing will get stretched etc and things maybe look distorted.. i dunno. This sounds confusing, not sure if I explained that well. We'll see how it goes. ;-)
Close-ups of the french knots I added to the roof.. have never made french knots with yarn before!
I love those mercury glass candy canes I bought at @ Home Vintage General earlier this year in Savannah, GA. I was so SO sad to hear that Elizabeth Demos is closing the shop after MANY years. It's such a heartbreaking thing for these brick-and-mortar boutiques I'm sure.. of course the economy has had such a huge impact on these shops.
When things like this happen, I remember the 3/50 Project. Such an important thing. I can think of several local shops that I love and would hate to see them go. And many times I've said to myself "oh, i'll just buy something online" (since I do probably 95% of my shopping online).. next time I will get that gift locally. Every little bit helps.
The good news is that Elizabeth has lots of fun things planned for the future and I can't wait to see what she will be up to! Some things she mentioned are event designing, teaching some workshops and book proposals! and she will be selling online as well! So I'm glad that we'll still get to see more eye candy from her. :-) you MUST check out her amazing portfolio on flickr.. gorgeousness!
The illustrations in the background are from a vintage Japanese paper
doll sheet i have.. i'm hoping to make a printable PDF of Holiday gift
tags using my vintage illustrations that you can use for free. :-)
Hopefully to come in the next week.. in time for Christmas!
And last, my new redheaded doll that I got as an early Christmas/Birthday gift made her way from Canada to Kansas city to get her bangs cut by Ana. She looks very Jenny Lewis don't you think? (Ana's photo)
So I haven't seen her in person yet! I hope to get all 5 of my girls together for a Blythe family photo next week. I've got a photo idea. I also think I've settled on a photo idea of the boys for our Christmas card and now that our forecast looks sunny for the most part this coming week, i'll finally have good light to take some photos. Here's hoping the rain stays away. : )
