Christmas dinner...Great decor ideas for any formal meal

On Christmas, my older sister and I decided we wanted to make a nice dinner for our entire family. 

I love to decorate and do crafts, and my sister loves to cook and bake... So together we make a great team. I got to teach her how to craft and she got to help me in the kitchen with my cooking and baking skills. 

For our theme we decided to go with the rustic winter decor, as I had in the rest of the house. Of course we turned to Pinterest. We found a great name tag idea.. For practically free! Cut some sticks...hot glue and print the names out. One problem we ran into with this simple project was that the sticks were wet, so the hot glue wouldn't keep them together... So we popped them on a cookie sheet and baked them in the oven for a few minutes to dry them out! Walla! We had dry sticks. 

We then cut a lot of branches of fir trees and expanded our table decor down the length of the table. We also cut logs and set candles on them. 

For the silverware and napkins I rolled the napkins, wrapped twine a few times around it...and tucked a cinnamon stick and green twig behind the twine. 

For our food and appetizer table, my friend had just cut down a tree and I saw in the back of her truck a wedge about 6" thick, some used that to add height and dimension. I then added candles, and burlap and wine, cheese, appetizers, and water. 

A Stylish Upgrade...

A few weeks ago, we were trying to figure out a good way to display our ribbons and lace, but also make them easily accessible. After looking at many pictures online of ideas, we finally decided on the design. Off we went with our brother to Home Depot.

We got 2 wall mounts, a piece of smooth plywood for the top, some dowels, and a nice trim for the edge of the shelf to finish it off.

It's so easy even you can do it! Just paint everything, measure and put it up! I love how it turned out, and all the colors of ribbon draw you to it.

Painting

On a side note...Here is something we just finished for a customer, it is for a first birthday. I think it's a cute idea for any little boys first birthday!

The front of the onesie...

The back of the onesie...

Creative Tutorials...They're All Free!!!

I stumbled upon a blog today as I was looking up patterns for baby knit hats. This blog is full of sewing tutorials for baby and kids sewing projects to home decorating tips and recipes. I looked up the baby and kids stuff and found lots of easy projects like hats, bloomers, headbands, cat seat covers, pillows and lots, lots more. Have fun checking it out! It's called Make it Love it

Here's a few pictures of some things I liked -

what a great idea for a bib!

diaper and wipes holder

what a cute owl pillow!

felt headbands

cute pillows

these are the hats I really like - and they're so easy! I like the blanket too.

Crafting Baby Headbands with friends...

 Last night we went to a friends house to help her make baby headbands. We pulled together all of our laces, ribbons, trims, buttons, feathers, fabric, glue gun and more! We also got some old tights, and necklaces that we never wear and tore them apart for the headbands. I love crafting because you can pull from so many different resources!

We looked online for how to make all sorts of flowers and began! First we made a burned flower...(to learn to make it go to this blog post!. We also made a folded flower...its pretty simple- cut circles, fold them into quarters and sew them together in a round...

Each head piece was so unique, I loved it!
We had a great time with our friends crafting and just being together!

Adding buttons to the center of flowers, adds a perfect touch of style!

I also made a clip with tulle scrunched in a circle, and glued rhinestones on it...

The Shop has turned to a Winter Wonderland...

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

On Saturday we decided it was time to turn our fall harvest shop into a Winter wonderland.  After decorating the last time, we decided we needed more help then just the two of us. We also needed some fresh ideas. Who better to call then our designer friend Olivia? We asked her to come over and she brought 3 of her younger sisters as well as a cousin. It was lots of fun! We pulled out everything we could think of that was white, silver or blue. Then I took a couple of the girls to the store and we bought more decorations. It is so hard to restrain from buying decorations because this time of season there are so many cute ornaments, little trees, gift wrapping items, and much more! Well we loaded up on all kinds of things. When we returned Olivia, Veronica, Ellen, and Rose had already hung glittering snow flakes, spray painted pine cones silver, and shimmered up the window sills. It was looking great! Ellen made a wonderful bouquet of wintery flowers and feathers. We hung stockings from the ceiling, wrapped boxes to look like gifts, It all looked spectacular! 

To add the finishing touches we bought the spray snow for windows, and also got soft peppermint sticks. Yes, you can't have winter decorations without your candy canes or peppermints!

Oh and by the way, that beautiful looking snow fairy doll on the center table, is outfitted in our friends new line of doll clothes she is making. She has started an Etsy shop now with multiple doll clothes....don't miss it for your Christmas gifts!

It is always so much fun to have a project to work on with friends. It makes decorating all the more fun!