Natural Homemade Living

A fun little project you can complete in about an hour is a colorful Easter wreath! They also make great gifts!  What you need: 1 straw wreath (leave the plastic wrap on) or Styrofoam circle, mine is 12"  24-30 plastic eggs  Ribbon for bow or pre-made bow Small stuffed animal   Hot glue gun/glue Decorations of your choice  Floral moss or natural straw  Craft wire Directions: I start with making a wreath hanger. Cut a piece of craft wire about 12 inches long. Wrap it around the top of the wreath and twist it several times on the back of the wreath, form a small circle and twist at the bottom of the circle.  Turn the wreath over keeping the hanger on the top while you're working. Leave a space at the bottom for a bow and a small stuffed animal. Heat your hot glue and start by placing a generous amount of hot glue on an egg. Hold the egg onto the wreath for a few seconds until it sticks. I start by placing my eggs on the top and worked ...

Mantle decorating after the holidays.  I’m always anxious to pack away my Christmas decorations even though I love them. Once they are packed away I realize how much I treasure my space. We recently moved which required some downsizing. The entire moving and downsizing process has also helped me to be more intentional about the items I surround myself with. If you have followed our blog you know that my sister and I don’t like extra “stuff” sitting around. Rather than buying something new I decided to leave my trees on the mantle. They light up at night and look so pretty that I wanted to enjoy them for a little while longer. Our philosophy when decorating is to use the items you love and keep it simple. Love and peace, Tammi

Simple Summer Mantle  Keeping it simple is an easy technique when decorating your home. I’m not fond of the cluttered look so I picked my favorite items to use for my mantle. I love my Magnolia Market baskets, cherry blossoms and metal vase. My candles are set on a timer for the evening hours because I always want the “light on”. Happy decorating! Love and peace, Tammi

Pink And Gold Party Table I love this party table display! We recently celebrated my great-grandaughter's first birthday! My granddaughter displayed these beautiful treats at the princess birthday party. The treats were delicious and included cotton candy flavored cake pops sprinkled with edible gold glitter, blondies, Madeline's drizzled with white chocolate, vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting and colorful straws cut and placed in the cupcakes for added decoration. She added an adorable fabric streamer for the Birthday Princess Chair! Add to your memory making days with pretty party decor! Love and peace, Tammi The Princess Birthday Chair

Over the past year I've been working on making front door wreaths for each holiday. I'm close to having them all done but I still needed a Valentine's Day wreath. I am still finding Christmas ornaments on clearance and I thought they would be perfect for a Valentine's Day wreath. Lucky for me, I found red, silver, white and pink shatterproof ornaments. I'm sure you can guess what happened next, I bought 6 boxes of beautiful, shatterproof ornaments for $1.49 for a box of 16! It's always exciting to save some money and I love to create my own unique home decor or you could make a cute little wreath for a gift! Supplies : 60-75 ornaments (depends on the size of your heart and the size of the ornaments) 1 wire hanger or heavy wire hot glue ribbon to use for a hanger Directions : My ornaments had secure tops so I did not need to hot glue them to the ornaments. However, if your tops are not secure or feel loose, I would recommend hot gluing them to the orna...

Simply Homemade DIY St Patrick's Day Wreath If you're a little short on time but you want a new festive St Patrick's Day wreath to hang on your front door, try this simple DIY wreath. Follow the instructions from one of our previous posts for the DIY coffee filter wreath Simply DIY Coffee Filter Wreath and add your own touches for the green shamrocks. I hot glued some sparkly shamrocks for a sweet little St Patrick's Day wreath. Add your own touches or apply some green watercolor paint and using a paint brush just brush quickly over the edges of your wreath for a little extra green! Happy St Patrick's Day! Be blessed! Love and peace, ~ Simply Tammi

DIY Valentine's Day Wreath Project Last year my DIY projects consisted of making holiday wreaths for the front door. Here is a refresher for the DIY Valentine's Day wreath. Now is a great time to find Christmas ornaments on clearance and who doesn't like to save a few dollars? The Christmas colors are perfect for a Valentine's Day wreath. For this project you will want to buy shatterproof ornaments rather than glass ornaments. This little wreath also makes a great gift! After making all of those wreaths last year, I discovered a great way to store them. I use a clothes hanger for each wreath. Place your wreath over the top of a clothes hanger and hang them in my extra closet. It saves space and you don't have to find shelf space or worry that your wreath will be damaged in a box. Supplies : 60-75 ornaments (depends on the size of your heart and the size of the ornaments) 1 wire hanger or heavy wire to shape in a heart Hot glue gun and hot glue Ribbon...

DIY decorating with an old picture frame for border and family photos Happy New Year everyone! I made only one resolution for 2015, to do better. I know it may seem like a rather broad concept but I know myself and I don't do well with specific goals in my personal life. I decided that every day there is at least one thing I can do better. Some days it might be small things like taking out the garbage before it overflows and the coffee grounds spill all over the floor , hang up my coat, eat more veggies, read more books, make more homemade jam...you get it, right? Then there will be those days that I will have an opportunity to make a difference in a life. It may seem like a small gesture but all of us need more kindness in our day. Maybe smile at a stranger, share a Bible verse, share a meal, tell someone thank you. Who knows? So that's it...do better every day. My new year starts with organizing, cleaning out and of course more DIY projects! I finished a project yester...

Vintage quilt for a tablecloth  I'm not too fancy at my house but I love vintage and one of a kind decor. My aunt recently visited with a great idea for a unique setting for the dining room table, use a quilt instead of a tablecloth. I loved it!! For the holidays I am using a vintage quilt from Mom. Even though we are a family of "spillers" (every meal someone spills something) I figure everything can be washed. But if you do get nervous about spilling, etc., you may not want to use the vintage quilt, maybe something less sentimental, like from the store. Mom gave me a set of her white china so I am using that, then of course I always use the ball jars for drinking glasses because I like to mix the fancy with the not-so-fancy. I always use cloth napkins so the girls folded them in the shape of a rosette. This is really simple. Start with a square cloth napkin and lay it flat so it looks like a diamond shape. Take the point at the bottom of the napkin and bring it to t...

Happy Fall everyone! It has been a busy month but I am finally enjoying my clean kitchen. It has actually stayed clean for more than 2 days in a row! Between canning and freezing my favorite summer goodies, my kitchen started looking like a disaster zone. But it was totally worth it! My pantry is now filled with jams, jellies, butters, dilly beans, pickled peppers and apple sauce. One more trip to the apple orchard and I think I will give my canner a break until next year. My freezer is looking full with the addition of corn, pesto, peaches, apples, roasted tomatoes and herbs. Stay tuned for some simply wonderful canning and freezer recipes. I decided to take a break from the kitchen and decorated my mantle for fall. This is an easy little DIY project and you can use items you may already have. I used some of my pumpkins from last year and painted all of my old pumpkins white. You can dress them up with some pearls or sparkly bling after they are painted. I wove a strip of burlap ...

After our long, cold winter I decided I wanted lots of color on my deck this summer. I started by sewing bright, new cushions for our patio set. (I'll be posting simple directions for those later). I had some left over material and Mom graciously offered her vintage bistro set for my DIY project! The seats and backs were attached with screws so I removed the screws and threw away top layer of the old fabric. I left the layer underneath that was previously on the cushions because it is easier to recover and I didn't need to replace the wood seats, backs or foam. I used the circles as my pattern for my new outdoor material. I added 2 inches of material and cut out a circle for the seat pattern. I used a staple gun to attach them to the wood seats. I attached the covered seats to the chairs using new screws rather than the old rusty screws. I followed the same process for the backs of the chairs. If you find a used bistro set and need a fresh look you can also spray pai...

After I have a new face on my fireplace so I decided to change the whole look. before I have been planning to change my paint color too so I experimented with a new color, Pebble Gray, on the fireplace wall. I love the soft gray colors that are so popular now. I put the finishing touches on the mantel and surround by rubbing (my favorite) Annie Sloan dark soft wax with a soft cloth over the wood. It turned out perfectly! I was hoping for a darker, vintage, oak color and that's exactly what I got! I especially the darker shades in the grain of the wood.  I searched through my accessories but I didn't have anything that would complete my vision so I purchased a recycled glass vase and candle holders at World Market and a new mirror at Target. My sister and I sent numerous texts, pictures and talked several times about the placement of the new items. We didn't Skype this time, because I don't need any more mirrors falling off the mantel! I wanted to keep the...

    I was inspired for my DIY indoor hallway sign project by Destiny at Just Destiny when I saw her on the Nate Berkus show a few years ago. I absolutely love her projects and decorating ideas and I think the indoor hallway signs are adorable. I had to adapt my signs a little because I don't have any long hallways. I decided to make my signs and rather than having them face sideways, I would hang them with the front side showing. They worked perfectly in my house of no halls! I also used smaller plant hangers due to the size of my space. I do have tall ceilings so it worked perfectly but if you are limited on the space above your doors, they look very cute mounted by the side of the door toward the top. Make sure you hang them on the side opposite the door opening or the door will hit the signs when you open it. I have one sign left to make for my pantry, then I have some orders to fill! Materials: wooden plaques (I bought mine at Micheal's) cup hoo...

This little DIY project started because my daughter wanted some Easter egg garland for her fireplace mantle. I found a cute little wreath on Pinterest and thought I would make the eggs and string them on ribbon for Easter garland. So the project began. I enjoy working on DIY projects but this one almost took me to the edge - haha!! It seemed so easy and I thought the eggs were cute but this was a more time consuming than I had planned and so messy that I almost gave up! My family made fun of me for a whole weekend because I would not stop until I got these little eggs done. I admit some of the issues were my own fault and I don't like getting my fingers sticky unless I'm making bread, so it'll be awhile before I work on another project like this! To make matters worse, I made my own liquid starch using cornstarch and water. The first batch was too thin, so I had to add more cornstarch and start over with my messing fingers, dipping and wrapping. Happ...

I am so excited that winter is leaving us! I started spring housecleaning last week and I am still working  on too many projects! My husband painted our powder room (guest bathroom) last weekend so I decided to cover the switch plate and outlet cover. I had originally planned to paint them but I decided to use some of my favorite vintage material scraps and Mod Podge. I thought this would be the perfect material for my Shabby Chic theme. You only need a couple of items for this little project, Mod Podge and material of your choice. I started by placing my covers upside down on the material, then using a scissors, I cut the material around them, leaving about 1/4 inch around the outside. I used an x-acto knife to cut out the sections for the switches. Leave a little extra material so you can tuck the edges inside. Using a small paint brush, apply Mod Podge onto the covers then place the material over the top. Start to smooth the material using your fingers and pr...

DIY shadow box for the twins! Since it's too cold to go outside, we are still decorating and crafting at my house! A couple of us are starting to work on our first quilts! This should be exciting! (Feel free to share any quilting tips). The project of the week was inspired by a previous post from Angie, Simply A Memory Box . This was a simple and quick decorating project (under 15 minutes) that my daughter worked on last week. It's a great time to buy them, or at least in our part of the country they are on sale! A personalized wall display is a fun way to share your treasured items. It's so much fun to display things rather than keeping them stored away in boxes! For this project, Tasha wanted to use the hospital items when the twins arrived. In the box, she arranged the ultrasound pictures, their little caps, bracelets and birth cards. You can line the back of the shadow box with material or paint it if you wish and then choose how you will place the treasures in th...

My daughter recently moved and began decorating on a budget. Since her youngest children are twin girls, she wanted to use their favorite color, pink, for some wall decorations. This is an easy project to complete and it only takes a short time. The first step is to purchase wooden letters, these are 18 inch letters but choose whatever size works for you and remember to use your coupons! We used the first letter of each child's name. Brush paint (we used acrylic paint) onto the letters and around the edges. Wait for the paint to dry. Decide what you will use for the trim around the letters. We used white pearl strands (leftovers from the Christmas tree decorations) and attached them with hot glue. For a little extra bling, you can make fabric flowers or purchase some from your local craft store. These were on clearance so we bought ours this time. If you want to make your own flowers, use the instructions from our previous post,  Simply DIY Fabric Flowers . That's...