Ballard Designs Look Alike For Less

I had been wanting a mirror for my dining room for about 2 years or so. But I'm cheap so I never bought one. I found this mirror several weeks ago at Old Time Pottery. (I know, yet another OTP find. What am I going to do when they close?) This one was priced at $29.99, which seemed too much for my cheap brain. I left it in the store, but I kept thinking about it. Picturing how it would look at the wall. Wondering if I would ever find another one like it. After a week or so of thinking, I finally went back and bought it. Here she is fitting perfectly on my dining room wall between the two little shelves that were already on the wall.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I received a Ballard Designs catalog in the mail last week. While flipping through the glorious pages of overpriced goodies, I came across the image below.

Wow, that looks familiar. Guess the price tag on their version? $199 for the pair. That's $99.50 per mirror. Quite a bit more than my $29.99 find that seems to be a bit of a bargain now.

Yep, I adore that mirror. It really helps to bounce some extra light around the room because the doors to the deck are on the wall directly opposite the mirror. I now think it is well worth the $29.99.

Christmas Mantel Decorations

I was so busy this past weekend with Christmas crafting and decorating like crazy. My poor hubby said the living room looked like a tornado hit. (Like the close call we had here.) I had glitter, beads, ornaments, wreaths, garland, and all sorts of things strewn about the room as I tried to decide what to put where. It was more fun this year because I decided to splurge a little and purchase a few new decorations. I had barely purchased any Christmas decorations in the 5 years we have been married besides a few ornaments so the few decor items I had were gifts or hand me downs. Here's what I came up with for the fireplace.

Having a blazing fire going helps make it seem even more cozier. I loooove our fireplace. Hubby complains that they are such an inefficient way to heat a room because they send most of the heat up the chimney and just suck in cold air through all the little gaps in your house. But who cares when you can snuggle up next to something so warm and beautiful.

On the bottom left of the fireplace I added this little reindeer guy. I picked him up at Old Time Pottery (which is soon to close, grrrr) and gave him a coat of heirloom white paint. He used to be silver, but he just blended in too much to the fireplace so I painted him to make him pop out a little more. The greenery in the vase is some pieces I picked up at several places including Target and Old Time Pottery.

Along the top of the mantel I draped a glittery garland that I have had for several years. I think I picked it up at 90% off at Michael's maybe. I added some little ornament and glittering white picks along with a couple strands of beads that I bought at Old Time Pottery.

The big white star was originally gold, but it was a bit too bright for my taste. I think it looks much better in Heirloom White, don't you think? The star was yet another Old Time find for $6.99. The "Believe" sign I picked up at Gordman's a few years ago.

I stuck some more flowers and greenery into another vase. I filled in the base with the extra ornaments leftover from my ornament wreath project.  A couple candles I had hanging around added a little more glow to the arrangement.

The "NOEL" candleholders are a set I purchased this year at Wal-Mart for $5. They came with those battery operated tealight candles that flicker to look like real burning candles. I like that I can just flip a switch and not worry about keeping an eye on them like real candle flames. I have a cat that has already burned her whiskers off once from sniffing a candle so it never hurts to play it safe.

The final section of my fireplace arrangement is this grouping of three little trees. The large, white tree I found at Sears of all places. I walked past it twice while shopping for gifts and I had to come back a few days later to buy it because I kept thinking about it. It was only $6.49 on sale.

The smaller trees on each side I have had for a long time. I remember using them for decorations when I was a little girl. We used to have probably 5 or 6 of them, but many of them were broken over the years. The ornaments are delicate glass and a few are broken on these trees also. I actually saw these exact trees in an issue of Better Homes & Gardens a few years ago. I guess they are vintage or something.

You may have noticed that there are no stockings hung with care waiting for St. Nick to appear. We don't actually have any stockings at our house. We do get stockings at my dad's for Christmas though. My stepmom ordered personalized stockings for all us kids and they are filled with goodies for Christmas morning. Whenever we have kids we will start using stockings although probably not over the fire!

Linking up to the Shabby Chic Cottage

DIY Ribbon Wreath

I saw this ribbon wreath at The Long Thread blog and thought it looked like an easy way to make a pretty wreath. It was not as quick or easy as I thought it would be and my attempt did not turn out quite as nice, but here it is:

If you want to make one similar, just a warning. You will need many yards of ribbon. Probably 25 yards I would guess. I used at least 60, maybe more like 70 pieces of ribbon on mine. Each piece was about 14" long. I would recommend at least 14" length strips of ribbon so that you can easily tie a nice, tight knot around your wreath form. I used a 10" foam form I bought at Dollar Tree.

First step, cut many, many pieces of ribbon. Having a cat to help count can help. Except when the cat drags the ribbon away from you. I probably didn't use the best kind of ribbon. It was a bit slippery and not as wide as I wanted. I happened to find the roll of 100 yards of ribbon for $9 so that is what I ended up using.

Next, start to tie each piece around the wreath form and make a tight knot. It doesn't matter how you tie the ribbon, just keep it consistant. You want the knots to go the same direction. I went right over left and pulled it tight.

Keep tying the knots around and around and pulling them tight against each other to hide the wreath form. When you are done it will look a bit scary. A bit like a Medusa wreath. I was a bit skeptical that mine would ever turn out decent by this point, but I was too far into it to turn back.

The next step is to pull out the scissors and give the ribbon a good trimming. Carefully trim around the wreath and try to keep the ribbon pieces roughly the same length. After probably a good hour of ribbon trimming, it turned out looking much better. My fingers were a bit sore from tying so many knots though!

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Ornament Wreath and Fave Store Closing

I have to start this post with a bit of sadness. I'm feeling a little bummed because one of my favorite sources for inexpensive home decor is shutting the doors of the store near my house. That store is Old Time Pottery. I learned a few days ago that they are closing several stores and ours happened to be one of them.  In fact, this wreath I'm about to present was made possible with supplies purchased there. They were even cheaper because they have already started their liquidation sales. I will be very sad to see them leave and will miss all the bargain goodies I could find there.  =(

Now on to the regular blogging:

After looking at all the lovely ornament wreaths that all you crafty bloggers out there were creating, I finally had to make one of my own once I read all the tutorials and tips on how to easily make one. And it was pretty easy, just takes a little bit of time. (Not quite as time consuming as the other wreath I made this weekend though, check back tomorrow for that one!)

Here's the finished product hanging happily on my wall.

These wreaths are fairly basic to make, but be prepared for the number of ornaments you will need. A lot is the number. I bought several tubes of cheap ornaments at Dollar Tree. I bought $5 worth of ornaments and each tube had either 10, 12, or 15 ornaments in them. I had a few leftover because the tops broke during the process so I probably used over 50 ornaments which ended up being a bit short.

One tip I read about on several blogs was to hot glue the tops onto the ornaments. Do this. It will take a few extra minutes. Ok probably more like an extra 30 minutes, but it will keep the tops from popping off while you squish the ornaments tight together.

Now for the form for the wreath. Most bloggers have been using wire coat hangers bended into the shape of a circle. I happened to find this little wreath at Old Time Pottery for $1.39. It has a skinny greenery wreath attached to a metal wire wreath form. It was the only one left or I would have snapped up several of these.

I would have bought several because when you removed the greenery and snip the top of the wire you get this:

A perfect circle just waiting for decoration! Plus you have some greenery left over to decorate other stuff with. After gluing all the ornament tops on, I began slipping them over the wire. I alternated between small and large ornaments and mixed the different colors and textures to provide a good mixture. Once I ran out of ornaments I twisted the wire together at the top to close it. Since I ended up running a bit short on ornaments, I added this little bird and greenery pick to the top of the wreath to fill in the gap.

Add a bow at the top and a ribbon for hanging and one ornament wreath coming right up. All for a cost of less than $7 compared to the $20 or more for one purchased already made.

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 Centsational Girl:

 

Snowman Candy Bars

I wanted to share a little project I whipped up a couple years ago that was a big hit at Christmas. I found a printable template online for these adorable snowman candy bar wrappers. I simply printed them out on regular white paper and taped them around white chocolate Hershey's Cookies & Cream candy bars. I added hats cut out of black scrapbook paper, scarves made out of ribbon, and some flowers or holly die cuts to the hat brims. They were super easy to make and everyone thought they were too cute to eat!

I do not have the original link on my computer anymore, but after a bit of googling I came across the graphic posted on Laurie Furnell's blog. I have not tried to download the image so I hope it works. This link goes to her blog where there are so photos of ideas on how to use the wrappers and a link to the graphic to download: Snowman Wrapper

She also has a pretty little angel candy wrapper you can download as well: Angel Candy Wrapper

Cheap Christmas Bird Art

Thanksgiving is over, the tree is up and decorated, and now it's time to start being Christmas crafty. Time to break out the glue gun and glitter. I have a whole list of craft projects I want to try. Several of them are ones I didn't get around to last year. This year I'm determined to make some type of crafty progress each night while watching NCIS and Wheel of Fortune. I would include Smallville in that list, but there are no new episodes until January. (The torture!)

With the help of furry assistant number one, I completed one of those crafts. I think he liked this one because it involves little birds.

Here are two super easy cutesy art projects I whipped together before Vanna revealed the final puzzle.  Best of all they didn't cost me a dime. I was able to pull out all the supplies from that endless scrapbooking stash I have. Both frames were old ones that were gold and blue at one time before they had their coating of Heirloom White paint a few months ago.

The first piece of art is simply cut from a sheet of Christmas scrapbook paper by SEI that I bought at Archiver's. It's one of those two sided papers and the bird is fuzzy which makes is super expensive for a piece of paper, so I think it was $1.79 a sheet. I had a giftcard so it was free for me. I cropped the paper a little too close to his head on the top.

For the second frame I used these SEI wintersong die cuts along with some other die cuts I had left over from last year. They are very pretty and all glittery.

I chose two of the birds from the SEI package while the star and holly branch are ones I had left from last Christmas. The sparkly "Joy" is a Making Memories rub on that I bought 2 or 3 years ago. The paper background is a scrap I had from previous scrapbooking projects.

Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to display them. One project done, a huge list of projects to go!

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Easy Cheesey Italian Chicken

Here's another simple and quick chicken recipe to try. This is one I found online and then modified a bit.

Ingredients:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste
1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano (I used no salt added kind)
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tablespoon pesto

Topping ingredients:
1/3 cup dried bread crumbs
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1-1/2 tablespoons butter melted
1/2 cup shredded mozerella or other italian cheese

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350. Place chicken in ungreased baking dish. I always line mine with foil because I like easy clean up.

2. Combine first list of ingredients together in bowl. (The tomatoes, garlic, onion, and pesto.) Spoon over chicken. Bake in oven for 20-30 minutes until chicken is almost cooked through.

3. While chicken is baking, melt the butter in a bowl. Mix in bread crumbs and parsley.

4. Remove pan from oven and add bread crumb topping mixture.Sprinkle with cheese. Place back in oven for additional 10 minutes.
5. Serve over pasta or with salad and bread. Enjoy!

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