Decorating Archives - Yearning to Create

Jack O’Lanterns

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “I’m not real keen on Halloween.” But I do like to decorate for the seasons so pumpkins really work for me because they can be out for Thanksgiving early in October, and hang around for fall decor and Halloween. (Let me just add that I’m so glad our Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October, rather than the fourth Thursday in November because . . . I would just die having to have autumn decor up that long when there is all that beautiful Christmas stuff just waiting to be displayed!!!)

So let me take you on a tour of a few of the fake pumpkins hanging around my house.

My kids made these, some at YW’s and some at a craft class (thanks Shauna!)

It’s just a 2×6 cut out, painted, sanded, etched, stained.

I love how the etched lines POP after the stain is applied. The eyes are nails.

My Visiting Teachers dropped this cute pumpkin off on the last day of October because they hadn’t been able to visit me that month (thanks Shauna!).

He holds leaves and sits by my fireplace, or rather, by what will someday be my fireplace.

Check my fireplace out here.

This little pumpkin is just one of those thin little wooden things you buy and paint yourself – another thing one of my gals made.

Etching and distressing sure works wonders!

This one I made at Relief Society.

You can read more about this little candle holding pumpkin here.

And this here is my kind of pumpkin carving . . .

. . . I worked hard to light the candle and slip it in the open back of this metal Jack O’Lantern!

And there’s no stinky gooey mess to clean up!!!

And there you have it – all the effort I put into decorating for Halloween!!!

Now to find some new hiding places for all that candy that’s about to invade my house!

How to Use Household Items as Wedding Decor

With seven daughters, we often get comments like “Hope you’re saving up for those weddings!” Well I am here to tell you that you can still have a beautiful wedding without spending a fortune. I was able to find some great deals in thrift stores and off the local buy and sell, and with a little paint and effort and imagination, turn some things into wedding worthy items. Add a few borrowed items, and items from around the house and voila, the decorating is done!

Here are a few things I found . . .

First item:

This little bench came from our local Facebook Buy and Sell group. The bottom part was all dark burgundy so all it needed was some paint in the right colour (Grey Morning – leftover from my laundry room). I left the top natural, just the way it was. Her colours were teal, lime and light yellow, with lots of earth tones thrown in too.

See it there peeking out behind the flowers? We placed the bench up on the food table, with the lamp on it to help illuminate the food. Three beverage dispensers were on one side, and the platters of food were on the other. It divided up the 18 foot long table (three six foot tables) very nicely! I had a 19 foot lace tablecloth that was from my little sisters wedding that I just kept packed away because we all figured we would have the next wedding in the family – and we did. Speaking of the tables, notice how one is taller than the other? There was no way we could get those tables even, so we had to put a little block under the leg of the bench and place that brown tile in front of it. The tile was a gift to the bride and groom from their stake president.

Choose your Love – Love your Choice.

The big flower arrangement also came from the Buy and Sell. I just took out the coloured flowers that didn’t match and rearranged what was left.

Our second reception had a slightly different arrangement, with my Willowtree figurine added in, and some Scrabble tile messages – check that out here. The lamps belong to the bride and there were four of them used in various locations at the reception.

Next item:

This little bench seat with the lift up seat also came from the Buy and Sell.

My original plan was to paint it white and antique it, but I literally ran out of time. From the time the ring was on her finger, we only five weeks and six days til the wedding day!!! Lucky for us, the groom asked our permission about a month before that, so we were already working on things before the official engagement. So all we had time to do with the bench was give it a good clean and re-upholster the seat in a matching wedding colour (fabric came from a thrift store!). Our bride said she was perfectly happy with it in its natural colour, and besides, it was going in the hallway!

This is how it ended up looking. The teal blanket came from my living room and the Mr. & Mrs. pillows came from my bedroom (check them out here). The little chest and flowers came from Michaels – always with a 40% or 50% off coupon. The little chest was on the end of season clearance shelves and cost me something like $1.77. My favourite little white ampersand came from Walmart, but I already had that too!

The bench greeted you as you came down the hall. To the left was a spot for gifts, and to the right was the entrance into the reception. I made those spindles from old stair railings. They were perfect for directing “traffic” – just like what you’d see in a bank or movie lineups, only prettier!

The gift area, featuring the first gift, and a handmade quilt by Aunt Diana over the couch. The bench did its job well and maybe I’ll tackle painting it this summer – then for sure it will be ready for our next wedding!!!

Last item:

I didn’t take a before shot of this radish picture in an ugly reddish brown frame that I found in a thrift store – but trust me, it wasn’t a pretty picture! I dismantled the picture and tossed the poor radish. Painted it, using my leftover Grey Morning paint again, then sanded and distressed the edges. We printed a favourite photo in black and white, and that was it. The perfect picture to hang over their favors table. We wanted a matted picture so the bride could write a message on it.

Here’s the wedding favors table. The table came from my dad – he used to have it in his storage room and they were shocked that we made it wedding worthy! The table runner and baby’s breath came from the thrift store. The green, yellow and blue baskets were already owned by the bride, and the wreath and holder were from my dining room – check the wreath out here.

The finished frame – so much better than radishes! The happy couple now have this hanging in their apartment, without the words though. Pictures are a great way to decorate – prints are very inexpensive and it’s amazing what you can do with old frames and spray paint.

Hope this has given you some ideas! If only I knew what colour schemes our next six weddings will be!!! In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes open for any other treasures that could become wedding worthy!

Scrabble Tiles for Wedding Decorating

I saw this idea on Pinterest using Scrabble tiles as a wedding decor.

Check out the image I pinned here.

Elle liked the idea and so we decided to do it at her wedding.

Our church Cultural Hall has four little white shelves on the walls – they’re for holding hymn books. To decorate them we used a mason jar with a gold chair sash tucked inside it with the edges hanging out. The four bouquets from the bride and bridesmaids worked perfectly in the jars, and the Scrabble tiles sent out perfect little loving messages. We left the unlit tealight candle out in front and turned them on before the reception started and tucked it into the mason jar.

With the candle in place – they were adorable!

We made two sets of Time and Eternity and two of Together Forever.

(Yes, we had to borrow another Scrabble game!)

J-L, our photographer, played around with the tiles and took some cute ring shots too!

At our second reception, we didn’t have the little white shelves on the walls, so we simply put our Scrabble tiles on white routered pieces of wood and placed them in various places . . .

. . . photo display table,

. . . wedding favors table,

. . . food table.

This display was on our long food table, separating the drinks from the food.

We loved our Scrabble messages! And so did the guests – we received some rave reviews on such a simple little added touch!

Our Time to Shine – Daughter #2 Graduates from High School

Here are some photos of our Grad decorations with beautiful people in the pictures too!
(See the no-people pre-Grad decoration pictures here, including the banquet tables.)

This is my second daughter Min and her date Clay – don’t they look fantastic!!!

Now, at this point of the evening, I was getting very frustrated because my camera batteries died, and my freshly charged ones didn’t work for more than a minute. My guy went off to buy more, and they kept dying too. Grrr! So the next few pictures are fuzzy because my camera died right as I was taking them.

The hanging frames were fun to pose in. Unfortunately, because of my camera troubles, we didn’t get a single shot of them with the photo booth props on the other side of the stage.

Remember the sneak peak I gave you back here? Well this is what we did with it.

And as for Min’s “shiner”, you’d never know she had one.

This is how her eye looked before big sister started doing her makeup for grad . . .

We were able to borrow some corrective cover-up based on the colour that her bruise was that day, and it worked perfectly! Thanks Barb!!!

The Star Archway.

Beautiful girls in their beautiful dresses hanging out with the blue moon. It’s a little hazy here because this was during the dance when they DJ was sending “fog” out onto the dance floor.

The proud parents!

Min had the honour of being her class Valedictorian.

Our seven beautiful daughters! One of them got a little creative with photo editing!

Back to the decorations . . .

Love the casual yet classy stance by the 2012.

The fabric on the walls did a great job of hiding all sorts of uglies – like the huge mats under the basketball hoop.

And the bicycle built for two!
For sure a much cuter picture with people in it!!!

It was their time to shine, and they sure did!

Decorating for Grad – Our Time to Shine

I was one of six parents on the Decorating Committee for our High School Graduation this past weekend. Our job is to transform the gymnasium into something that resembles the theme the grads chose. That was one tiring week of decorating, not to mention the meetings and mental work before that!!!Their theme greeted you at the doorway. (I’m showing a few decorations here. This is Friday morning, a few hours before everything started – and we’re almost finished decorating. My next post will be after grad, with actual people in the pictures!)

Big silver sparkly numbers made from MDF. They stand about five feet tall and the kids could move them around and pose with them.

This picture shows the star lanterns hanging from the ceiling. They were pretty and had a remote control to activate the LED light inside – pretty smart!!!

All set up for the banquet. That was a late night of setting tables – didn’t get home til almost 11:00pm. The grads on the decorating committee chose the colours of teal and silver – very pretty.

Notice the huge star archway on the stage made from balloons. It’s the perfect size for a couple to stand under. To the left we had frames hanging for photo shoots, and to the right, we had all sorts of props for fun photo booth pictures against the black curtains.

We had some teal netting and flameless candles and stars as centerpieces. The theme “Our Time to Shine” was printed on the paper that was wrapped around a large candle. They glowed very prettily when the lights were dimmed. Aren’t the napkins adorable!

One of the mom’s made these for each grad and they looked so cute on the tables.

It had a Grad photo on one side, baby picture on the other – a lovely keepsake for the grads. The baby side says:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

That’s my guy up there in the Genie – he’s actually stuck up there. He’s hanging the moon and went up fine but the thing wouldn’t let him come down again. That’s why they got the ladder, and then found the emergency drop lever – glad he didn’t have to maneuver onto the ladder!

We put a little stool behind the moon so when you sit on it, it looks like you’re sitting on the moon. And no, the moon corner is not finished yet!

We used gossamer along the walls to hide the bleachers – making it look much prettier than a gymnasium. We had white Christmas lights in behind, just sitting on the bleachers, adding soft lighting. I must mention that it was disappointing to come back on three mornings and have to re-attach some gossamer that fell during the night!

Some of the grads felt very strongly about not having any plants used in the decorating. They wanted a more vintage look. So there is not one bit of greenery in the whole gym. The old doors and bicycle built for two was our “vintage” corner.

The doors were really cute with snapshots of the Grads throughout the year.

It turned out lovely and represented their theme well. Great job Mary and everyone else who helped!!! (And may I say that I’m glad I don’t have another Grad until 2015! And I’ll probably sign up for the Decorating Committee again – it’s a lot of work but I love seeing the gym transformation!)

(Edited to add: here’s the link for seeing the decorations with dazzling graduates in the pictures.)

Valentine Decorating

I love to decorate for the seasons and holidays, but I don’t do too much (compared to some people!) simply because I don’t have a quonset in my back yard to store it all in when it’s not on display.

LOVE is the TIE that {BINDS} this FAMILY TOGETHER

is my newest Valentine decor item – and I love it!!! I got it from Lazy Daizy Vinyl Lettering.

It’s still the middle of winter so I like to keep those little bits of evergreen, pine cones and berries around for filler. The pine cones came from the forests in my backyard where I grew up so they’re extra dear to me. They have sparkly silver edges because we painted the edges for my sisters wedding. I put the pine cones in her bouquet – check it out here.

On the after Christmas clearance racks I got this evergreen wreath for $0.94.

I haven’t done anything with it yet – it just hangs around looking wintery, but I made it a little more Valentinesyish by adding one of my kids hearts – they made these a few years back at Shauna’s kids craft class.

Ahh! There is my new wicker vase – you can read about it here.

Those LOVE blocks are pretty cool because on the back of the L is an H, and on the back of the V is an M. So if you get tired of LOVE, you can make it say . . . (did ya figure it out?). That was another one of Shauna’s creations from a few years ago.

These message blocks are new this year too. You can read about them here.

And I know I have a few more things too, but they’re still in boxes – not out in a quonset, but in my unfinished family room, waiting to someday have a home!!!

I think a holiday to remember the people we love is such a great idea!

Thoughts at Easter Time

The stores would have us believe that Easter is all about the Easter Bunny and gifts and chocolate. But it really isn’t. It’s all about the atonement, crucifiction and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Which is why I like to include a picture of my Savior in my little corner of Easter decorating.

This teal frame is the other side of my Framed Shamrock. The picture is ancient but it matched the frame nicely and was the perfect size. It actually came from one of my grandma’s old Family Home Evening manuals from 1976, when Spencer W. Kimball was the prophet (do you remember when a new FHE manual would come out every year or am I really dating myself here?). My parents were downsizing to move into an apartment and gave me some of her old manuals and that’s how I found my perfect picture for this year.

I love the little Willow Tree angel gazing up at the picture.

All I did to decorate this year was add a few pastel flowers. It’s so refreshing to have some springy colours around, after all the dullness of winter.

Oh, we must not forget the chocolate!!! We love Easter treats too – they just don’t come from an Easter Bunny. Luckily my baby hasn’t noticed the treats in the cupboard yet!

Okay, these are my stair railings on my plywood stairs – strangely resembling little Easter Egg trees, paint buckets and pop bottles! Anything to keep small people away from the edges.

Those are the spindles there on the right – somehow they just have to get into formation in the grooves of the banister!

So Kat spent awhile evenly spacing the eggs and spreading out the colours. But as soon as Mac woke up and found egg trees, Kat’s work was destroyed. Now they’re in different arrangements all the time. Who knew stair railings could be so much fun!

(I haven’t posted any house progress pictures lately because no progress is being made! The less than flattering picture above is to remind you that we are still living in a construction zone. But even amidst construction, or lack of, I can still have my corners of prettiness – for my sanity!)

Here’s another Easter corner in the house – I just love this picture of the Salt Lake City Temple!

This magnificent building holds an especially dear place in my heart because I was married here! This is where I was married, and sealed eternally to my sweet guy. It is not a “til death do you part” kind of marriage, but an eternal one – meaning that we truly will be together forever. And our children are sealed to us forever too. Of course they’ll leave us someday and cleave unto their own spouses, but we’re still bound together into the eternities. Isn’t that a glorious plan of our loving Heavenly Father? Families really can be together forever! I find such joy and comfort in knowing this.

In this egg is a carving of our Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before He was betrayed, arrested and crucified. This is where he truly suffered the most as he atoned for all our sins.

I love the words to the hymn “Reverently and Meekly Now” because it’s written in the first person – as if the Savior is talking to us. Verses one and four are my favourites:

Rev’rently and meekly now, let thy head most humbly bow.

Think of me, thou ransomed one; think what I for thee have done.

With my blood that dripped like rain, sweat in agony of pain,

With my body on the tree I have ransomed even thee.

At the throne I intercede; for thee ever do I plead.

I have loved thee as a thy friend, with a love that cannot end.

Be obedient, I implore, prayerful, watchful, evermore,

And be constant unto me, that thy Savior I may be.

And that is what Easter is all about!

Framed Shamrock

St. Patrick’s Day is just a few days away and I’ve done nothing yet to decorate. I don’t do much for St. Patrick’s Day – mostly because we have four kids with birthdays in March (yup, four!), and there is also all the basketball playoffs, and the Relief Society Anniversary Party. So there is no time to celebrate the green day or Pi day. About all I’ve been known to do for St. P’s day is wear green and put some green food colouring in the milk. The girls are always a little startled to be pouring green milk on their cereal in the morning!

Anyway, Krystal at Sassy Sanctuary did this cute shamrock craft and I thought to myself, “I can do something like that!”

So I went to my stash of frames, and bingo – found the perfect little chalkboard frame!!! With moving and building, I hadn’t seen my stash in years. I have no recollection of ever getting this little chalkboard, but it must have been from a dollar store or sale bins at Michael’s or Walmart, cause that’s how I shop!

I roughly painted the outside edge in a beige, being sure to miss lots of spots!!!

I’m not set up for cutting out wood yet, so I decided to let cardboard be my shamrock base. I am set up for cutting with an exacto knife!!! I just traced my pattern onto the cardboard and green paper.

I think the part of this project that took the longest was choosing the green paper – again, from my stash! Then I distressed the edges and mod podged it together.

I used my Burnt Umber oil colour paint to distress the edges of the frame (after lightly sanding of course!)

Just lightly rub it on with a cloth, after rubbing most of it off on paper first!

Wait, what’s this? A blue frame? Well, this is the backside of my chalkboard! I thought it looked pretty usable too for something else – but that’ll be another post someday! Stay tuned!

When I did my top layer of mod podge – after letting the bottom layer get really dry (don’t want any bubbles in my shamrock!) I put a piece of fabric on top of the wet mod podge. Pressed it down firmly and then peeled it off right away.

It gives the top finish a “canvassy” look, which I like better than brush strokes.

The next step was simply to tie the shamock to the frame with some jute and add some words . . .

I love it! And you can be assured that I’ll be changing out that shamrock for other shapes for different holidays.

You often hear people say, “Oh, you’re so lucky!” but I think the more accurate phrase would be, “Oh, you’re so blessed!” Hence my words “Lucky means Blessed”.

The St. Patrick’s Day shelf . . .

. . . add a few hydrangeas, burn candle wicks so they show up, and voila! (Oh, and I just added the hooks to my shelf – check out that screaming deal here!)

Thanks for the inspiration Krystal!

Front Porch

I love to decorate the front porch into the house!!! I don’t have much room here at our rental home, but my new home will have a nice big covered front porch just waiting to be decorated for the seasons – clap, clap, clap!!!

Obviously this was our winter decorating. I’ve always loved lit trees and finally got some for a great price (I was watching the flyers forever!). I love the lights in this picture but the next one is more clear.

This looked even better after I added a long piece of evergreen greenery (from the dollar store). It was all intertwined around the bases of everything and hid the ugly bottoms and cords. And it looked even better when it had a light dusting of real snow on it!!! The little red snowman scarf tied around my watchdog added a little colour to our bleary winter days. The snowman was made by me and my Lee at my friend’s craft classes. On the back side of it is a scarecrow for autumn decorating. Another piece has the Easter bunny on one side and a Valentine lady. Keep reading to see what the third piece looks like . . .

Last Saturday it was definitely time for winter to leave and spring to arrive. But, again, most of my stuff is packed, so what could I decorate with? My friend Shirley brought me this adorable orange sign a few weeks ago – it really speaks my language – she knows me well!!!

And I love the Simple Life board because Simplify is my theme word! On the back side of this board is our nation’s flag so I switch to that for all the holidays. Don’t fret – I’ll put the Easter Bunny board up soon! My animals came out of hibernation and my baby is enthralled with the cocker spaniel – she squeals and points at it every time we go in or out! It needed some greenery but it’s too soon for real plants, so, I went into the garage to survey the mound of boxes. I spotted one on the top at the back of the garage that looked promising. So I climbed onto the freezer, over the treadmill, onto the piano and was able to reach this box that was indeed filled with fake flowers!!! Bingo!!! Pulled out the tulips and whatever the blue things are, and voila – it’ll do for now!!! But then my problem was, how do I make them stand there. So I scrounged around and found a waterbottle that had a destroyed lid by the end of basketball season – but I didn’t need a lid now, did I? So I stuffed in the flowers, filled it with water so they wouldn’t die (haha – for weight so it wouldn’t blow over!) and wedged it between the wall and my watchdogs hinder. And so far the wind has not blown it over!!!

So spring has arrived in two places now – the calendar and my front porch!!!

“If you’re not selling chocolate . . . get the heck off my porch!”

Lighted Picture Frame Centerpieces

My oldest daughter got married a few months ago and this is what we made for her centerpieces . . .

In our search to find the perfect centerpiece, we had a few parameters we had to meet:

– The tables were round so we didn’t want anything too big or tall – we wanted guests to be able to see everyone sitting at the table with them.

– We wanted something that would give off a little light, to add some warmth to the late October day.

– We wanted something flowery yet personal.

– We wanted something that we could do ourselves!!!

While searching for ideas on Pinterest {how did one plan a wedding before Pinterest? lol} we found the idea for our perfect centerpieces by Martha Stewart – just needed some tweaking to make it our own. Sorry, the link doesn’t work anymore, but the picture is still on my Pinterest Wedding board.

So how did we make them? Get wooden picture frames in multiples of three (Ikea, Dollar stores) in your choice of size and paint them. I painted three frames each a different colour so we could determine which we liked best. We ended up using a chocolate brown paint and the helpful groom did all the painting. Lightly sanding the edges finished it nicely.

The pictures are simply printed off the computer onto vellum paper (it’s translucent and we wanted the candle to glow through). Just have the glass and vellum in your frame, no backing cardboard – unless you aren’t using a candle.

To assemble them, we simply taped them together with a piece of duct tape. Use a colour of tape that won’t show through any cracks that might be there – we used black. We transported them flat and did the final assembly while setting up. We lay the third piece of tape half over one edge and then stood the frames up and pressed from the top and bottom to adhere it to the other frame.

Now – very important – we used battery operated tea light candles – no real flame (but I know you’re all smart enough to know that already). We used flowers to cover the tops of our frames, which is why we didn’t need to paint the inside of the frames. Martha may have done it differently, but this worked for us! I cut triangles of cardboard (out of cereal boxes) in the right size to nicely sit on top of the frames. I glued leaves to all the edges of the cardboard first so no Rice Krispie pictures would show through the flowers! To attach the flowers, I actually poked the two biggest ones through the cardboard and glued them in place. They provided an anchor for me to hot glue all the other flowers up against.

We set our tealight on a block of wood to make it a little higher inside the frames. We chose to make wood bases because we already had the wood. We just needed to cut it and router the edges and then paint, sand and distress the edges.

The bride painting bases, while watching a movie. Not sure why she has a jug of milk there! The family room was a mess of projects for a long time and that plastic was always nearby for painting jobs!

The little doily was the finishing touch! We also tried tying jute around the bottom, about a third of the way up, and it looked cute, but for the wedding, we liked it better without it.

On the head table we used 5×7 frames, and all the rest were 4×6. We used different photo combinations in each as well so no two centerpieces were the same.

The same picture – lit and unlit.Before the first reception – the centerpieces aren’t even glowing yet and we still have some florescent lights on. When all the lights were on the way we planned, the centerpieces looked lovely glowing on every table.The second reception – and again, the centerpieces aren’t glowing yet. But it was so pretty!!!

Another thing I like about these centerpieces is that they pack away so nicely when you open up one side and lay them flat.

They were perfect!!!