Happy HoliDIYs

If you caught my last post, hailing the little details of my Christmas mantel, then you saw some of the last month's proudest accomplishments.  Dan and I found ourselves heading into this Christmas season stockingless.  And even if we'd had stockings, it would have been a hopeless case, for we had no stocking holders. But now, oh, now we do.

I'm fairly proud of how these came together, mostly because it was not something I saw on Pinterest first.  Nothing really drives me to be creative than being...well, required to be creative.  I would have been totaly okay with buying some stocking holders, but we couldn't find any.  I didn't see any at World Market, Target,  WalMart...the Dollar Tree had some, but I'm not sure they would have been able to hold up a paper snowflake, much less a stuffed stocking.  So when push came to shove, I decided to make my own stocking holders. Take that. 

Merry Christmas Mantle

If you do not already know this, know it now: I love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday. I have unashamedly been listening to Christmas music since just after Halloween. (No, I do not hate Thanksgiving.  I sing "Happy Holidays" with gusto on that day, and pass the Turkey with joy.)

Even more specifically, I love decorating for Christmas.

DIY Dropcloth Curtains

***Welcome Pinners!! Thanks for showing some interest and pinning this! If you decided to try out this project for your home, please email me a picture or leave a link to your blog in the comments, I'd love to see it! Also, if you're interested in purchasing a set of panels like these, I'm interested in making them for you. :) Click on the "Comments & Contact" tab and shoot me an email! Thanks for dropping by!***

Before anything happens, let's address the yellow elephant in the room.

Horrible pictures. 

I know, I know. I'm like a bad picture menace.  And those that are in this post are particularly awful.  I'm so sorry.  I am a big Apple fan...but an iPhone camera can only do so much. If you stick with me for, oh, nine or ten years, I'll be able to afford a nice DSLR camera and provide you with decent quality photos.  As for now, please just accept my most sincere apologies, and know that the quality of my pictures are as embarrassing to me as they must be disappointing to you. *Sigh.* 

Moving on. Don't you wish there really were a yellow elephant in your room? Me too. 

Moving on again. When Dan and I first moved into this house with all of its big beautiful beautiful windows...I immediately felt a desperate desire to cover them up.  I blame that on my mother.  There are two things that can always be expected of her: 1.) She will always turn down the music and, 2.) she will always close the curtains.  I can't blame her.  She values both her ability to hear and her privacy.  What are you gonna do? 

Either way, we had all of these big beautiful windows and were in need of some curtains.  For months, we settled for screws in the walls that held up several of Dan's old curtains from his apartment.  It looked awful. I don't have any pictures, but just believe me.  The curtains weren't so bad in and of themselves, but they were pretty much the exact color of the couches and so the whole living room was like this big den of dusty blue.  For a girl that thrives on contrast, it made me sad. 

And so I made myself some new curtains. Out of a dropcloth. Hoo-ray. 

D.I.Y. Newspaper Table Tray

When we first bought our house and began thinking about renovating and making big changes, I became acutely aware of the "past" of our home.  I was thinking through color schemes and decorations and floor layouts...and it caused me to think of the people who must have stood in about the same places and who must have made the same kinds of decisions.  Evidence of those people and their lives kept popping up as we dug deeper into our home; we found old toys, some pictures, and even a memento of a baby's baptism. 

My favorite finding of our home's past was a collection of old newspapers stuffed between the studs in the walls, most of them from the 40's, when the house was built.  I started trying to think of a way to display the clippings, in order to sort of honor the home and let it stay connected to its past in spite of all the renovations.  I wanted to do it in a way that wasn't super obvious (so framing them wasn't an option) but that was cute and functional (as I believe most decor should be). After a bit of hemming and hawing, and some inspiration from this blogger who posted on my Pinterest challenge post  (of which there is a better picture on this post) I came up with this project. May I introduce my D.I.Y. Table Tray.  Come on down after the jump for a little how-to.

Brand New Fall Decor

As Dan and I continue to settle into our house, taking my time on the little details is becoming increasingly important to me. Since we moved in, I have been making a conscious effort to fight that little voice that has been screaming, "DECORATE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW RIGHT AWAY!!" And do you know why I fight that voice? Because that voice is the one that I can blame for my far too large, totally uncoordinated, paid-too-much-for, didn't-really-even-match-or-work--in-my-space-when-I-brought-it-home collection of weird, punched tin "wall art" that was big time trending when I moved in to my first apartment. Anybody else been there? Anybody else caved in to that awful pressure that is a new, empty space?

I learned my lesson. With our house, I'm trying to be thoughtful. I'm giving things time. I'm thinking of decorating our house as a lifestyle of projects instead of a one time event.

(It's been a big help in saving money...If I'm out, I don't buy decorative things just because I like them. I have a rule that a decorative purchase has to have been premeditated...I need to have had some previous notion that a certain space needed a certain thing. If I can't look at something and know exactly where it would go and that it would definitely work, then I don't get it. It's so good for me.

Sorry for that tangent...)

Anyway, in light of that commitment to slow, thoughtful decorating, I am really excited to share with you a few things that have been coming together! Keep reading after the jump to get a little more up close and personal with the decor in the Hig house.

DIY CHAMP!

We have been super busy the last two weeks trying to get everything in the kitchen "done enough" so that we can put our appliances in next Thursday. That means going from bare drywall and subfloor to a mudded, sanded, painted, trimmed, cabinet-ed, floored space...in very little time. Dah.

I say all that as an explanation for this post, which will be really easy and quick on my part.

I'm just going to brag a little.
Because I am a champ.
A DIY champ.

Wedding Photo Sneak Peek

As our wedding becomes more and more of a memory, and less and less of the focus of my daily life, I find myself wistfully desiring that I lived in a bigger city with needier couples so that I could regularly offer myself as a wedding slave. Not a coordinator, caterer, designer...a slave. That's really what you need, after all, when you're trying to put a wedding together - someone to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to your cause and be willing to face long, caffeine-jacked hours of sappy love songs and burns from hot glue guns...

Yes. That is what I want to be. A glue-gunning, Buble-listening, coffee-drinking wedding slave. 

*Sigh.* 

Nonetheless, life moves on, and to ease the pain of post-wedding-distress-disorder one can always look forward to the day when they receive their wedding photos. (I suppose there is also the alternative of spending time with your brand-new husband, but this is a post about wedding photos so...) I got mine not long ago and was so so so so excited to look through them.  I don't want to post them on Facebook until I've been able to share some of the special ones with some special people, but I thought I would offer a little sneak-peek here on the el blog-o. 

Challenge Accepted

Hey all! This post is going to be a special one, because it incorporates a lot of things that I'm super jazzed about.  One of my favorite blogs, Centsational Girl, is hosting a link party inspired by Pinterest! I am going to link up with a post that involves a little DIY furniture remodel I did for my wedding. See? Favorite blog, Pinterest, DIY, paint, wedding...it's bound to be a good time.

Serving Style DIY

Greetings and salutations. I hope you're all having a marvelous Sunday afternoon. I certainly am. There is usually a lot to do on Sundays, but this one is actually kind of mild and peaceful, so much so that my fiancee has drifted off into a rather deep slumber. It's well deserved. The end of this past week has been chock full of work.  Dan has been laboring long and hard over the bathroom at our new house, and when I haven't been at that task with him, I've been working on wedding whatnots. This last month and a half before the big day is when we get to think about all the lovely little details...which break down into all the lovely little DIY projects.  Today I'm going to share with you (in step by step fashion) the latest and greatest of these projects:

You are Formally Invited to DIY

I have been busy. Making some pretties. All kinds of them. If you read the launch post, you caught onto the fact that I recently got engaged. I probably don't have to tell you what that means...