Admit One

I made this Admit One ticket holder for my musical-loving sister for Christmas. I think I might need to make myself one too. I realize it matches absolutely nothing in her house, I just don't care! It was too cute not to make. Good luck finding somewhere to put it Kate!

I actually got the idea from another blog I read, written by a crafty old friend of mine I went to school with. Check out her inspirational blog here, and her Admit One project here. Like Ashley, I went hunting for shadowboxes at Michaels. They were having a crazy good deal that day, so I picked up a plain black one, about 8x10. I also searched around for theater-looking letters and background. I found the most beautiful piece of scrapbook paper for the backing - it is textured and glittery and inky black. I just glued it right to the back of the frame with hot glue. Then I added some shiny textured letters, securing them with hot glue as well.

For fear she would open the gift and have no idea what it was for, I took some old tickets and taped them together to put in the box. They are not musical tickets (because those are for my own scrapbook) but they are WMU tickets, which I thought would be funny (my sister went to WMU's rival school). Go Broncos! 

I also learned it is incredibly hard to take a picture of a frame during this project. 

Any tips out there? Yikes!

Gray Kitchen!

This week I broke down and did something I really did not think I would do... I repainted a room in my house. I always thought that once I had the house set, and had painted the walls I wanted painted, I would be content. I should have known better...

I do think it is fitting that the first room to be repainted is the room I painted first when we moved in.

So now it is gray. A big improvement I think! There was just too much green in there before. Now it feels a little older and more sophisticated.

The room has come a long way... here is a comparison with a couple weeks after move in. Since then we painted the cabinets and updated the hardware, and now we have switched out the paint color and updated all of the plugs and light switches.

I also made a new valence. I did a tutorial for the curtain that was there before.

I think the gray really makes the white cabinets and trim look sharp. 

Today T.J. and I celebrated our Christmas a little early. I love this crackling fireplace "movie" on Netflix. It really set the mood! If you want to read about T.J.'s gifts, he is writing about them on his own blog today. Read about them here.

Put a Bird on it Christmas Cards

Is "put a bird on it" dead yet? I hope not. I still love putting birds on anything, but I hear foxes might be next. :-) In case you've been living under a rock, here is what I am talking about.

I was inspired by this idea on Better Homes and Garden's website, but made a few tweaks of my own. For example, I used felt to make the trim on the Santa hat, to add a little dimension. I also used flannel on some of the fabric wings so they were fuzzy. The cards were pretty straight forward to make... but they made a big mess. Check out the Christmas card making frenzy below. There are step by step directions on the BHG site if you are interested.

I even got T.J. to help with some of the gluing and cutting - and drawing on the eyes. The artwork you see in the eyes was all him. ;-)

I almost forgot to mention the best part - I made these cards for free! I just used what I had. But if I had needed to purchase the materials, I would estimate it would cost less than $5 for the whole set (I made about 25). You just need a pack of white, green, and red paper (around $3), 1 sheet of white felt (30 cents), fabric for the wings (less than 1/4 of a yard), and a marker!

Who doesn't love a good Christmas bird?