Holiday Plans

While I am waiting to get ahold of pictures taken of the Halloween party I had this last weekend to show you guys, I have started looking ahead at the holidays and making plans for what I want and need to get done.

We have decided as a family/group that BF and I are hosting Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve at our house. We have also thrown around the idea of an ugly/tacky Xmas Sweater Party! Since we're doing so much entertaining already, and we don't want to overfill our weekends for the last 6 weeks of the year, I'm not sure if that last one will be a Xmas sweater party, or just tacky sweater party maybe in January? But there is also the matter of us wanting to take the weekend of December 6-8 for ourselves as our 6-year anniversary is on the 7th!

But what holidays mean is that I get to try and come up with some decorations perhaps to put up for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I borrowed Christmas decorations from my parents last year as well as BF's brother's tree (he and his wife weren't able to get it up and since they weren't hosting any family event...) so I had that covered, but what about Thanksgiving?! I'm thinking at the very least I can make more yarn chain/garland to put under the kitchen bar and over the fireplace like I did for Christmas last year, with orange and brown perhaps? But what else?! 

Most of the pictures you see online are of table centerpieces or fireplace decorations... on a ledge or shelf. We do not really sit at a big table (numbers are way too many for that) and we don't have a ledge or shelf over our fireplace, nor do we plan on installing one as we are only currently renting. This is something I will definitely have in the house we plan to purchase, but for now, no ledge. We do have the bar countertop from the kitchen to the living room, but what can I put on there that will look nice and not cluttered. What can I put in the dining room area where the food will be set out for people?

As for regular decorations to place around the living room and dining area, there are some that are a little too simple and would be better suited if we had kids...

Leslie's Latest Creations

Some decorations, although cute and/or funny, are a little outdated...

Vintage Thanksgiving Decorations

Then there are decorations I like, but would maybe be too much for our simple Thanksgiving celebrations...

A Cultivated Nest Thanksgiving

Although, looking through Pinterest at Thanksgiving decoration ideas, it makes me realize that when we do get our house one day, I kinda hope to be able to have a little more formal a setup and house layout so that we can have some of the nicer decorations make sense. Currently, we have only a little square table in our dining area as a full 6-seater table would not fit, with chairs, to eat at. Forget about the idea of eating in there at all when it's a family holiday anyways since his side has 6-8 direct family members, I have 3, but we also invite friends of the family and friends from work and it gets up to about 30-40 people for the holidays!! 

We will just do what we always do, setup the 4-seater and an additional folding long table (like Halloween in a T backing to the window between the shelves) to layout the food on and people will either stand in the kitchen eating while talking, find a seat in the living room or just go to the backyard and eat over their laps as we only  have 1 table out back. **siigh**  It's fun times, I just sometimes dream of having a little more formal, closer to family oriented holiday so it doesn't get quite so crazy, but then that's probably because before meeting BF, I never EVER had a family/friend base like we have now. Holidays used to be just my mom, dad, brother, me and my grandma. So you can just imagine the culture shock I had the first few holidays we had when I realized the first one wasn't a fluke, nor was the second, and wow, it's ALWAYS like this?!

Anywho, enough of the rambling. I'll come up with something and show you guys what I do come up with.

In the meantime, this month will (hopefully) be reserved for things like working on scarves with all the yarn I got last month (yay sales!), finishing the baby blanket I started for a friend (that's a post all its own!) as well as trying to get the jewelry and clutches posted on my website that I got back from Easely Amused to see if any of those might possibly sell, maybe work on some new ones for Xmas times as well as finish the 3 I owe my boss and friend plus many other things on my plate!

There's always things to do when you're a crafter!!

Craft ya laters!!

Halloween and my obsession with DIY decorations - Pt 1 - 2012

I - LOVE - HALLOWEEN!!

Why? Because you can scare the little kiddies? Well, that's only a part of it ;)

The biggest reason I think I love Halloween is because it is the absolute best holiday for the DIY-er!!! This holiday has so many ways you can make things and use your creative genius to side-step the atrocious prices you see for things at the stores!! Of course, one of the best ways to save money would be to hit up the after-Halloween sales after the holiday's passed, but what about when it's a month or two til the big day, and those ghouls are rocking their $60-$200 price tags, the garlands are at their $10-$15 tags, the props are sold separately at $5-$40 for the smallest things, etc!! YIKES!! I just couldn't justify spending that much on any one item unless it was the most awesome thing ever which truly, it usually isn't!

To give you an idea, below is a picture of the walkway between my mobile home (perpendicular to the street) and the garage, only connected on one side by the covered patio to the kitchen and the gate entrance on the street side, where this picture viewpoint is taken...

 

Now, it may be a little hard to see, and I apologize for the poor quality but this was taken in 2006 by a friend, and we both regret not having gotten much better pics!! The ceiling is made of black trash bags, cut in half and taped together to cover, with fishing line hanging from it (what the heck did I just walk under?! EEK!). Then you've got the webbing tossed here and there, covering the path... the glow sticks in the yard and in the webbing, there's a fog machine and a strobe light (the light towards the back, middle left). What you can't really see is a ghoul hanging middle right and the creepy music we've got playing. The very middle of the picture back there, is the covered patio with the light on. This way, the kids could see my friend standing there, telling them "It's ok, come and get your candy!" What you (and the kids) couldn't see was right next to him on the left, I was sitting in a chair, hunched over, right behind the red strobe light. When the kids would be so focused on getting their candy and congratulating themselves, "We made it all the way through!! Yayyy!!", they'd start to turn around, ready to head home when right in their faces.....

HISSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, the screams we heard that night!! And of course, some laughs after they realized they just totally screamed as loud as they did!! **siigh** That was a very fun year! Again, not (just) because we scared a good bit of kids, but because we made such an impact with so little a budget and decorations!! I don't want this to sound like such a sales pitch, but seriously, with just a little bit of money and a lot of imagination (and time of course), even YOU can create your own awesome decorations!! And think about it this way, if you have kids, what better way to spend time together and to start teaching them to use their imaginations than to sit down and make your own decorations together!! EVERYBODY WINS!!!

What I'm going to do now is show you some of the things I did this year for Halloween that were very little cost, but had a really big impact! First of all, ghouls! Those guys are way expensive IMHO, am I right? Well, instead of spending $60 a piece, why not go to your local thrift shop, Goodwill, wherever and buy a cheap mask! The most I've spent on any of my masks was about $6 I believe. Then you head over to the linens and spend about $5 on a whole twin size sheet (or two or three for color variety) or even the fabric store where some have solid cotton fabric for as cheap as $2-$3/yd and cheaper if you have a coupon!! Lastly, party section for black balloons! What do all these make?

On the side gate in the backyard for party.

In the backyard for a party.

Front yard for Halloween night!

Coming around the wall from living room to kitchen.

Look at how freaking awesome those are, right?! And each cost me only about $10 max total supplies!! I don't know about you guys, but I would definitely call that a win!!

I'll go ahead and end this post now as it's getting long, and next post, I'll show you guys a few more low budget ideas you can try!!