I’m wearing my favorite winter sweater today. It’s a really deep purple with a really warm but comfortably loose neckline, somewhere between a turtleneck and a cowle. I got it as a Christmas gift last year and I love it! Today’s tea party is all about dark purple, warm natural wood, and christmas spirit. I had a difficult time finding the right teapot for the job. I envisioned something really modern and made of natural wood, maybe square cast iron teapot encased in some kind of sturdy wood, but it appears that I’ll have to design that one if I want it so I opted for this Staub La Theiere instead.

The color is about right and I really like the spout. Plus, I imagine it’s very sturdy. It looks … substantial.

Lovely Crocheted Purple Chri… CrochetingAtTw… $22.00	MAGNOLIA CHRISTMAS WREATH-Pu… butlerstephani… $52.00	Crochet Baby Blanket / Afgha… HandmadeByHall… $45.00
Set of Three Barn Wood Chris… ArcadianCottag… $40.00	large hand dyed silk scarf … wearsilk $29.00	Salvaged wood Christmas tree… reclaimednj $45.00
Vintage Christmas PURPLE Mer… Avaricia $9.99	15 Natural Pear Wood Slices … StitchAndGrain $10.00	Paper Stars – Eggplant Purpl… gardenmis $5.00
purple christmas tags, rusti… 0namesleft $7.20	Rustic wood Christmas gift t… AKLaser $6.00	Wood Christmas Tree Ornament… TimberGreenWoo… $14.95

As for the party, I picked out some stockings, a wreath, and a baby blanked to set some ambiance around the room. Next, I opted for some natural wood trees in different styles for centerpieces and a beautiful, large purple scarf decorated with purple mercury glass ornaments as a table runner. At each place setting: a variety of purple stars, white and purple gift tags, and wood gift tags along with a carved wooden christmas ornament each guest can take home.

I’m loving all of the creative, non-traditional Christmas trees that are out in blogland right now. Before my parent’s gave me their old tree, I was dreaming up ways that I would decorate for Christmas without a tree. There’s so many fun materials that you can mold, stack, or bend into a tree shape, so I rounded up all of the ones from the blogosphere that caught my eye.

This one from Martha Stewart’s site. I’d love to even just do this outside or on the front door. Is it too late to hang lights? I feel like the last three weeks got away from me. How’d that happen?

These reclaimed wood trees I love! They are from Wood Wool Stool and they cost 25 Euros so about $33. So cute!

Here in Austin there are loads of people decorating their agave plants. It’s so cute and festive. On my drive to work, I pass a ton of these that people have decorated. Creative and fun! This one captured by Gardening Gone Wild is perfect (via Pinterest)!

This fun toile and dryer sheet tree is from Myric at Petite Passions and featured on The Artsy Girl Connection. This one is tiny but it’d be awesome to do a large scale of!

This one from  Home Life via Hello Little One is an awesome way to use all of those cards you get for Christmas. You could even just take the cards from the previous year and put them up. Then see how much other families have changed in a year. Creative and sentimental.

What unique, non-traditional trees have you seen out there? I’d love to know! Hope today is a great start to your week!

Before I dive into this “how to”, I have to ask…What do you watch/listen to while you craft? I watch Glee. It’s fun, easy to listen to, and I don’t have to keep my eyes on the TV the whole time. Anywho…

I grabbed a whole bunch of frasier fir tree trimmings in the fresh tree section at Home Depot. Did you know that they just pile up all of the tree trimmings and you can grab as much as you like? Isn’t that cool? I’ve also heard that you can do this at most places where they trim the fresh trees for you. The nice guys at Home Depot put it through their netting for me so it created and easy way to carry it all back to my car.

I grabbed a bunch of the bottoms that were cut off the trees. That’s how I made the “M <3 B” part. You could use those for so many things. Coasters, ornaments, bunting, etc. I’m still on the fence if I like my final design or not, but hey there’s always next year!

Alright, here goes….

Along with my pile of tree trimmings, the supplies I grabbed were: floral wire, hot glue, red fabric, grapevine wreath for $3 at Hobby Lobby (I used a coupon), and scissors.

I also grabbed my tree trimmers, some of the branches were too thick for kitchen shears.

Next, I just grabbed each branch and laid it on my wreath.

 I used the floral wire to secure it to the wreath. I used a lot because you could barely see it. You can see it here at the tip of my scissors.

 After I had the whole wreath wrapped, I secured it more. Then I grabbed my scissors and tree trimmers and trimmed away.

 I love that it looks rustic and woodsy. It’s not perfect but it only cost me $3!!!

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend!

I was so inspired by the art Emily Henderson made for the HGTV Holiday Special. I thought the vintage map art with Joy to the World on it was beautiful. I wanted one of my own!

But, remember when I said I was on a budget. Yep, that still applied. So, no awesome expensive vintage map for me. In my search, I started off at Half Price Books and dug through every single on of their travel maps. I came up short after finding the perfect map that someone had unfortunately cut part of it. Sad. I decided to buy this map off of Amazon for $6 and with shipping it was around $10.

Here’s the supplies:

I bought some stencils from Hobby Lobby with a 50% off coupon making them $5. Everything else I already had. The Q-Tips came in extra handy!

Next, I laid out the stencils. I decided to go with “Peace on Earth” instead of “Joy to the World” because I could only find stencils that were 5″. The stencil pack I bought only had one stencil for each letter. Oops. I improvised by laying them out just to get an idea of how it looked. And, I just used the latitude and longitude lines as guides. It worked! Yep, that says “Peach on RT”…totally works…

I used a very small amount of painter’s tape just to hold the stencils in place. Then, I painted three layers until I couldn’t see the map through the letters anymore. But that’s probably because I used super cheap acrylic paint.

Try to keep your cute, mischevious pup from threatening to walk all over your fresh paint. (Hi, Jackie-O!)

After I peeled off the stencils, there were spots where the paint bled through. This is where my awesome Q-tips and paper towels came in handy. It was actually pretty easy to just clean up the lines.

I decided to go with painting the “on” freehand because I didn’t think I liked the look of the other letters. I’m so glad I did. I love it! It’s now my favorite Christmas decoration!

Stay tuned for my hanging solution!