A Christmas Nursery

Christmas is my favorite time of year, the entire house gets decorations, even bathrooms.  This is the first Christmas that I've had my son who will be 3 months old for Christmas.  I wasn't planning on completely redecorating his room, however this year we started a tradition of book advent calendar. Since the nursery is mainly decorated with books, it seemed so natural to decorate the rest of the room to match.

Wrapped picture frames and Christmas book advent calendar on picture ledges

Hanging snowflakes and card stock reindeer and sleigh

Decal trees decorated with reusable sticker ornaments

See how the nursery looks for the rest of the year.

Like what you see and want it for yourself?

Add holiday ribbon to your stuffed animals to give them a festive flare! Tie the ribbon into a bow or wrap it around the neck like a winter scarf.

Wrap any picture frames with wrapping paper and bows. Its an easy way to instantly bring some holiday cheer into a room.

Replace any fabric items such as pillow cases, blankets, crib skirts and changing pad covers with Christmas themed ones. You can replace or cover a large frame with an advent calendar. You can find my Angel calendar at Fabric.com along with a lot of other designs. I made the Santa Suit changing pad cover from an apron panel I found in store at Hobby Lobby but you can find it online at Etsy. You have to piece the pockets into the arm hole area and find some red fabric to make up the difference, but it looks pretty good still!

Place holiday wall decal or reusable stickers, the kind used on windows or sliding doors work well, on the wall.  I got mine from a super Joann's in the seasonal section but they aren't available online.  It had pine branches, which didn't match the nursery trees, so I just used the ornaments from 4 packages.

Hang craft foam or paper snowflakes from the ceiling using Command Hooks.  I took down all of the nursery's normal hot air balloons and replaced them with snowflakes. You don't have to go crazy, 3 in a corner gives the right affect without over crowding the rest of the decorations.  I found both the large foam and smaller 3D cardstock snowflakes at Hobby Lobby in the seasonal craft section.  I hung them from artisan wire, its easier to make loops to hang from the Command Hooks and looks better then string. I also found a card stock craft kit with reindeer and sleigh at Hobby Lobby or you could use Martha Stewart's holiday garland.

Design Studio Update: Photo Studio for Quilts

Over a year ago I converted my guest room into a design studio or craft room for my sewing, scrapbooking, painting and other creative pursuits.  I updated it again to have more storage and now I've updated it again to help me take photographs of my handmade quilts.

I've been using thumb tacks, push pins and even safety pins to hang my handmade baby quilts so I can photograph them for our Etsy store.  This has left hundreds of holes in my wall and has caused my post production color issues as my wall is slightly pink.

I had been doing research on backdrop systems photographers use for photo shoots, homemade pvc alternatives, quilt hanging wood blocks, really everything I could think of.  On a visit to my favorite furniture store, Ikea, I found the perfect thing -- a curtain rod with curtain rings with clips! Great news, its not expensive or hard to install either ;)

I can move my storage containers around, quickly and easily clip up a quilt and take pictures.  When I'm not photographing quilts then I can put my storage containers back.  While I mostly only use a small portion of the curtain rods and clips for the majority of our baby blankets, I got a curtain rod long enough to support a a king size quilt to show off my larger master pieces.
 
With the white clips and rod I can more easily find true white when correcting the color of the pictures.  I also added colorful, inspirational fabric in black frames to help provide more color to help the graphics program make better 'automatic' adjustments.

Ikea Shopping List:
Racka curtain rod
Betydlig wall/ceiling bracket (I got 4 for the length of my curtain rod)
Vasentlig finial set
Syrlig curtain ring with clip and hooks (comes in 2 sizes, I got 4 packs)

Seasonal Decorating: Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day isn't a very big holiday for my husband and I. We skip out on all the busy commercial stuff like restaurants, chocolates, and flowers. Usually we stay in, cook a dinner together and then snuggle on the couch while we watch a DVD. But that doesn't stop me from decorating the house! I started the Valentine's decorations last year with some wooden words and wreathes and kept the pillow cases very basic. This year JoAnn's had a gorgeous Antique Valentines fabric that fit perfectly with my style and the decorations we had already. I ended up loving the fabric so much I designed a Valentine's Quilt that I'm going to try to complete this month.

I've also made matching his and hers aprons with the remaining fabric for us to wear as we cook our annual Valentine's Day dinner together. Mine is a skirted apron in the Antique Valentines fabric and my husband has a BBQ apron in the coordinating plaid.

The couch covered with Valentines Pillow Cases.

Our LOVE jars filled with silk roses.

The original LOVE wooden words decorate the mantle.

Even the bathroom was decorated with a tissue box cover.

The table decorated with reversible placemats. I love the coordinating plaid.

This is the end of the Seasonal Decorating series.  In 2012 we plan to blog about all of the quilts we have made in the past or projects we are currently working on.  The first of which should be the Valentine's Quilt with the Antique Valentines fabric and coordinating plaid.

2011 Christmas Ornaments

Another tradition our family celebrates each Christmas Eve is opening our grandmother, Baba's, yearly ornaments.  Each year she spends most of the holiday shopping seasons hunting for the perfect ornament to portray a special moment of the year or special significance.

This year's biggest hit was the Hallmark 2011 Peanuts Wireless musical boxes.  They each have 2 songs that play and can link together wirelessly to compliment each other's songs.  Check out the video to see how neat they are.



Baba confessed she held off wrapping them till the morning of Christmas eve because she was having too much fun playing with them herself!  The family liked the 3 she gave to us (1 for my dad, 1 for my sister, and 1 for her boyfriend) but they might never be all in the same place again so Baba is going out after Christmas to buy sets for each household.

Seasonal Decorating: Christmas!

Christmas is my favorite holiday!  I love the warm fuzzy feeling you get when its cold out, you're all bundled up, holding hands with your loved ones while you hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. Decorating the house as we grew up was so much fun; turning the house into a winter wonderland!

While this is the last post of our Seasonal Decorating blog series, the decorations were actually the first I made to celebrate our Christmas two months after I got married.  I fell in love with Debbie Mum's 2010 Ornament fabric and used it as the basis for all our Christmas items.

As you've seen in our other Seasonal Decorations Love always plays a big role, so it had to be a big part of Christmas time too! Santa Claus has never been a big part of my family Christmas so choosing the Peace, Love, Joy theme was perfect for us.  For Peace I used a dove icon, for Love a heart, and for Joy a star.

Mantle decorated with fabric trees, candles and hanging stockings.

One of three handmade ornaments, the peace dove.

Christmas pillowcases with Peace, Love and Joy and Ornament fabric.

Our Love jars, pine cones, and cream and gold candles.

Seasonal Decorating: Acorns & Autumn Leaves

Autumn is an important time for our family.  Its especially important to my mother, Jeanine, who always hosts the family at her house for Thanksgiving.  She's decorated her house with turkeys, pilgrims and cornucopias. Since she's got the holiday reserved for her home I decided to keep our November decorations simply autumn.

I found beautiful unique autumn fabric that is a gorgeous golden mustard yellow with brown acorns and green oak leaves.  It goes great with cream birch and brown bark fabric to bring in natural elements.

 

Check back for our next holiday decorations: A Peace, Love & Joy Christmas
Our next seasonal decoration change will be for December.  Our Christmas decorations was the first project I completed after getting married last year. It was the perfect theme of Peace, Love and Joy for our new life as man and wife!

Seasonal Decorating: Wedding Anniversary

My husband and I married last year on 10.10.10 at a rural park in Orange County so we [ ok, to be honest all this decorating business is really a*me* decision ;) ] decided to decorate each October not with gouls and goblins and jack-o'lanterns but with reminders of our wedding day.

Love Jar with black ceramic birds and candles.

Our couch is so big it begs for lots of pillows. I love the bird fabric!

Seasonal Decorating: Summer by the Sea

My husband and I had our first date in August. We spent most of our first months together driving up and down PCH, walking around Dana Point Harbor or Huntington Beach Pier.  We even said our first "I love you"s while walking around Alamitos Bay Marina. On the first anniversary of our first date I gave him a unique one-of-a-kind quilt filled with symbolism and with an ocean theme. So the beach and ocean have been very significant for us... what better way to continue celebrating our love and memories then decorate the house with an ocean theme for August and September?

Our 'sea' of pillows featuring sea, shells, sand and stripes.

Seasonal Decorating: Patriotic Celebrations

Patriot Decorations

4th of July is a big holiday for my family. It's Jeanine's second favorite holiday beat only by Thanksgiving. Even though she always hosts the 4th of July BBQ I still wanted to celebrate our Independence with our decorations.

Joann's has some beautiful patriotic fabric, so much in fact that we purchased enough to make some placemats to sell online. I first selected a the same Patchwork Americana fabric we used on this Historic Barbie Dress but I fell in love with the Inspirational Patriotic fabric with words in old font styles which lead to the fun vintage Pinwheel fabric. Because the Inspirational fabric has so many patriotic sentiments besides Independence day I think these decorations will be out from Memorial Day to 4th of July.

Seasonal Decorating: Springtime

Decorating for holidays has always been a big tradition in our family. On the first day of every month my mother would have us all help take down the past month's decorations and put up the next month's.  Now I'm 'nesting' with my husband and creating our own holiday decorations.  We got married in October so I started decorating for my favorite holiday, Christmas. You can see a few pictures of the decorations in our Facebook photo album. I also kinda decorated for Valentines but didn't take any pictures because we had decided to upgrade our TV which lead to us getting a new couch, a new TV stand, a new coffee table and a new clock. It was a lot of work but we've finally finished rearranging our living room! Then it was my turn to decorate!

Springtime Decorations

The decorations all started with a remnant from Joann's. I love remnants!  They are small pieces of fabric, usually a yard or less at the end of a bolt and are 50% off!  We get a lot of remnants because most of our projects like our historic Barbie dresses don't need a lot of fabric.  The remnant was beautiful, but it was only 18" and I needed 18.5" inches to make an 18" pillow cover. So my mom, Jeanine, and I spent 15 minutes hunting for the bolt or roll of this beautiful modern cream, mustard, teal, green and brown leaf fabric that was perfect for my room.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find it anywhere.