December Before and After: Poinsettias!

Hello! Can you believe it? The final Before and After Party of the year? It’s blowing my mind how fast the year went. As I get older they just go faster and faster. Not sure I’m happy about that. :)

This month I’m sharing some simple before and afters of a lovely little holiday plant you may have heard of…the poinsettia.

I have long loved this holiday plant, but have NEVER purchased one for our home. I have a friend who gets a few every year, and I have always been jealous of her bright red beautiful flowers.

You see, we’ve had cats as long as I’ve lived, and I had always heard poinsettias were toxic for animals. And then…35 years into life, I found out earlier this year that it’s a myth. I gotta say, I felt a bit cheated for all those years I didn’t get any for fear my cats would keel over.

When I found that out, I knew I would have to get some this holiday season, and then the stars aligned when the dear Tamara contacted me and and a few other bloggers.

Tamara and her husband own a greenhouse in Vancouver, BC, Canada and grow 180,000 poinsettias yearly. Wowza!!

How awesome is that? Needless to say, she’s an expert on the subject of poinsettias.

I was thrilled when the folks at Ball Horticulture in Chicago provided me with a few poinsettias to use this holiday season:

I got two Polar Bear Whites, one Mars Pink and one Christmas Season Red. They were hand delivered to my door and I was giddy when they arrived!

I had grand plans to incorporate them into some vignettes, but to tell you the truth, they’re too big and beautiful to fit well into the spaces I have to work with. I ended up just using them alone here and there and I gotta tell you, I think that does them justice. :)

I’m not really a pink girl, but the Mars Pink plant is SO pretty. I put her (yes, her) in a simple white pot near the Christmas tree:

That white pot used to have a fern in it – the ferns were doing fine, but the cats would NOT STOP eating them. It was driving me mad, so I only have one left and it’s where they can’t get to it. Grrr…

I wanted to house each one in something a bit different, but use what I already had around the house. I found an awesome ceramic container at Goodwill a few months ago and thought the Polar Bear White would look fab in it…and it does:

It looks like it was meant to be in my office! LOVE the white leaves with the blue ceramic! This is one that will stay up all year (if I can keep them alive!!).

The Christmas Red one is my absolute fave though – I am all about the contrast of the deep red leaves with a white pot from IKEA:

I LOVE the look of the traditional poinsettia mixed with the modern white container.

I loved the pop of red in the kitchen so much, I decided to use it on the table too. I wanted to cut the flowers to use in the centerpiece, but when I did the first one, it wilted like crazy. Then my friend Beth mentioned that you have to sear them with a candle flame. I had no idea!

She said:

“Searing will stop the milk sap from leaking out of the plant while still allowing the stems to absorb water. When you break off a poinsettia leaf or stem hold the area excreting sap over a candle flame until it bubbles and sears the area. It will turn black in the areas where you do this, but it won’t detract from your decorating. You will know if you seared the stems correctly based on their post perk or droop. If your poinsettias begin to wilt in your vase, try searing the stem once again and return them to water. Also, you shouldn’t see a milky stream in the water. The water should remain clear.”

Did you know that? I had no idea! I did it just how she described and so far so good! I placed a couple cuts in each little bottle I keep in the kitchen centerpiece:

I love how full and pretty these are – you don’t need many to make a BIG statement. Now my little caddy that holds our sugar and syrup is all business in the front:

Party in the back:

;) I couldn’t resist.

The pops of red on the counter and table look so great with my little wreaths that I hang from the backs of the chairs:

I used to go hog wild with the Christmas decor in the kitchen. I’ve been toning it down a little every year, but it looks just as festive:

Little pops of Christmas are just as powerful, believe me! :)

I can’t get enough of red this time of year. Love it!!

So there’s my before and after for this month – the beautiful poinsettias in their plain Jane containers before:

And the afters!:

I didn’t even replant them by the way, just dropped them in. Easy peasy SQUEEZY.

Fun little facts about poinsettias:

* Did you know they HATE cold? I found that so interesting, considering we mainly see them in the winter.

* You can keep them all year round. Check out this article for a bunch of great tips. One of the ladies I used to work with would tend to the poinsettias we got every season and keep them alive all year!

* I know I already mentioned it, but I think it’s worth reminding that they are NOT toxic. (See this article for more info.) Our cat has already nibbled a few times (even though they are supposed to taste AWFUL, he’s so weird), and he’s just fine. I hear the taste deters any animal (or human) from trying them more than once. ;) If you have any hesitation about it, just keep them up high away from your animals and kiddos.

I for one, am THRILLED that we get to welcome these pretties into our home every Christmas season now!

Do you buy a poinsettia every year? Any luck keeping them going all year?

Now I can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to! Link up your posts below, and If you could, I’d love it if you would link back to this post and/or use this pretty button:

Disclosure: I was given four poinsettia plants for this post. All photos and opinions expressed are my own.

 

Before & After Party: Ghosts in the Trees!

Well hello! I hope you had a wonderful weekend! I got SO much done around here. DIY-wise anyway. You can’t walk through the house without stepping on a toy or a piece of clothing – but the projects went very well! ;)

It’s time for the October Before and After Party, and I’m also linking this up to Kate’s fall craft party tomorrow! Linking a party up to a party --  not sure that’s even allowed.

Breaking the law! Breaking the law! (90’s flashback anyone?) ;)

Anyway, I’ve got a super quick, super cheap, SUPER FUN Halloween project for you today – it’s adorable. And the kids will LOVE it.

I had this idea last Christmas, and I doubt I’m the first to come up with it. But, really, am I ever? I doubt it. Too much awesomeness out there.

I bought a package of small Dollar Tree ornaments last year just for this project, and the rest of the stuff I had on hand:

I used some scraps of batting (I knew they would come in handy someday!), and some muslin. If you don’t have these – you can easily skip the batting, and the muslin is SO cheap.

I just wrapped a piece of batting around the ornament, and made a hole so the top could stick out. Then I covered that with the muslin:

Later I snipped a hole in the muslin as well, so I could hang them.

Like I said, the batting is not necessary – I just thought it would make the ghosts a little more chunky chunky. (Which is never a bad thing.)

I used some Halloween ribbon I had to tie a “neck” around the ghost:

I ran out of that after the first few, so I just used some twine for the rest.

Then…you take a cutie patootie I could just squish him Bub and have him draw faces on them:

So cute I could squish them faces!:

The faces were so precious, I just couldn’t bear to leave them outside in case it rained. So these stayed in, and we made more (without faces) for outside.

I taught the Bub how to use my camera the other day, and now I have to fight him for it every time I bring it out. (GREAT idea, really. Gah.)

He’s caught some surprisingly great photos though!:

 

We hung them with twine throughout the trees:

We loved them so much, I dug a few more little ornaments out of the Christmas bins to make a few more. :) They hold up great to the weather too – we’ve had a ton of rain and they are doing great.

They are SO CUTE swaying in the wind. They make me smile so BIG when we drive up to the house.

I’m thinking about adding some felt faces to them, or maybe some googley eyes. Wouldn’t that be adorable?

So here’s my (FREE to me!) Halloween/fall craft before and after! From cheapy Christmas ornaments:

To cutie friendly ghosts swinging in the trees:

I can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to! Any fall goodness this month? And don’t forget the craft party at Kate’s place on Tuesday!

If you would, please link this post to the post you are linking up – I really appreciate it! You can copy and paste this button in as well if you’d like!:

September Before and After: A New Light

Well HEY! Hope you had a great weekend! We did a lot of bumming around and being productive – a little of both extremes. :)

Tonight’s before and after is brought to you by the continued science fair that is our kitchen. I showed you the mess the water damage has created, and last Friday, the madness continued.

We had noticed a few weeks ago that the framing around our back door was rotting away. We thought it would be a quick fix, and our handyman did too. That is until he started removing trim and found massive amounts of water damage – separate from the mess in the rest of the kitchen:

That’s a hole in our kitchen floor. For a brief moment in time we had a fabulous source of natural light in the basement. ;) I try to look at the bright side.

I told him to just tear out the floors cause they were going anyway -- thank GOODNESS we discovered this before replacing the floors!! (And no, there’s still no movement on that – hopefully this week.)

The folks who built our deck made it too high – so for six years the water has been flowing into the door frame every time it rained. That eventually ate away at the trim, the subfloor and the threshold.

Anyhoo, our awesome handyman worked from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and got it fixed up and did a few little changes that will keep this from happening again. LOVE HIM.

So…there’s been a little change I’ve been wanting to make to the kitchen for a while now, and this weekend I decided to do it. Because I needed to do something to the space that would make me feel in control again.

Or maybe I just wanted a pretty new light. Who knows. ;)

Recently something has been bugging me about light over the kitchen table:

I love it! But it felt too light…I don’t know, just not substantial enough. Once I realized what it was that was buggin’ me, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I just wanted something that was a bit more dramatic to fill that “space” in the room.

Enter the Portfolio light from Lowes:

I think it was $140? It was LUUURVE at first sight. I think I gasped just a bit when I saw it in the store, cause I knew it would look so good over our table.

I installed it the other night (with very little daylight to spare – I forget the sun sets so much earlier already!) and I couldn’t be happier with it:

It adds a little contemporary flare to the space:

I love it combined with our antique claw foot table. :)

I think what I love most is that it sends all of the light down to the table – it is SO much brighter under there now:

And of course I have it on a dimmer switch so it looks fab down low or up high. I love it!!

I thought about spraying it black for about two hot seconds, but I think we have enough black going on. (And at night it looks black anyway.) I’m working on some ways to bring some more color into this side of the kitchen, but for now, I love how this has changed it up a bit:

And look how calm our kitchen looks from this side (although you can see where I covered the torn out flooring by the door with the rug).

This side tells the real story of the past week:

This is what happens when your pile spot (your island) is in the office. ;)

So here’s my before and after for this month –- the previous chandelier on the left, the new pendant on the right:

Typically your fixture should hang about 28 to 32 inches above your table and I always end up cutting my wires too short when I install. ALWAYS.  This one hangs 32 above the table, which I’m now happy about because any lower would have been directly in the eye line (for me anyway). As it is we can see under it well.

I found an old photo of the light after I installed it last year and it’s fun to see the changes since then:

Including the addition of a cute (rascally) dog. ;) And the removal of a floor. Gah.

So let’s see your projects! Link them UP!

I’d appreciate it GREATLY if you could link back to this post or at least my blog in your post. You can use this button if you’d like:

Before and After Party: Buh Bye Pleather

So….you remember that one time, when I was redoing my office? Yeah. It’s taken a while. I’m just so easily distracted, really.

A few weeks ago one of my very best bloggy friends came up to help me out with a project. Traci from Beneath My Heart came to town and I could NOT have done it without her help. That’s what we told her hubby anyway. ;)

I wanted to reupholster the chair in my office:

I got it from Bombay Company years ago, and it’s a great chair, just not the look I’m going for in this space. I wanted to reuse it if at all possible.

My plan all along was actually to make a slipcover for it. But when we sat down to check it out, we realized a slipcover wouldn’t work with the pleather – it would slip and slide all over the place.

So we decided to take it apart and just cover each part individually:

Because this was in no-spend July, we used some fabric I bought months ago to make a bed skirt for our bed. That never happened. :)

I think we had plenty:

;)

We covered the seat like I’ve shown you a few times:

Then we stopped to tickle a Bub:

OH my goodness, I think the Bub loved Traci more than I do…and that’s a lot. :) He still talks about her.

The original plan was to tuft the back of the chair (it was already tufted), so we took the back portion off:

And then put a dog on it:

He wasn’t helpful. Really.

We left the pleather on the rest of it and just covered it, much like the seat:

We used a staple gun for all of the recovering, which was a bit of a pain. The staples were too shallow and wouldn’t grab the wood. We had to do each staple at least twice.

That part was SUPER FUN!

Then we took a nap:

Trace loved the new sofa. ;)

The next day, we put the chair back together and started the skirt. I knew I wanted it skirted because of all of the legs on the desk -- I thought having the chair legs hidden may help to break up all the legginess (word?) a bit.

Traci showed me a bahhhhrilliant way to fake a custom skirt. We hemmed up little corner pieces and then just stapled them along each leg:

When were done, this is what it looked like:

Then Traci had to go, and she left me to fend for myself. We all cried. OK, not really, but my eyes welled up. A lot. :)

It only took three weeks, but I finally finished it up. You all know how efficient I am, so this should not surprise you.

We had hemmed up more fabric, and then I cut it to fit along the sides and just hot glued them on, leaving the corners exposed a bit:

Yes, hot glue baby. It works. It does the job. You can’t tell. It’s not perfect. (Never is.)

Once I trimmed up the fabric, I needed to cover the raw edges, but I didn’t have anything that would work. I was determined to make this happen without spending anything, so I went to some extra fabric I’ve been using in the space:

I cut the blue stripe out of the fabric, then used my hemming tape to fold it over and make a “trim.”

I had to do the same for the back:

By the way, we didn’t end up tufting the back of the chair because 1.) it was going to be a pain in to booty and 2.) the fabric looked like it would tear if we poked through it too much and 3.) it was going to be a pain. :)

Once the trim was in place, it covered all the glue gun sins perfectly:

I came up with a nifty little way to hide where the pieces came together on the back – I just took some of my DIY trim and hot glued it around the edges of the blue banding:

And I LOVE how it turned out!!:

You can see I threw together a little pillow, with my cutie little sewing machine I showed you here. Traci was not a fan of my little Pixie machine. Pixie’s a little slow going, and you have to be patient with her…but she gets the job done.

Just like me and this office. ;)

Like I said, it’s not perfect, not even close. But I’m totally OK with that, if you haven’t noticed.

So here’s some before and afters for ya – a WAY before of the chair in the other corner, as it was before:

Geez, that seems like forever ago! OH, that’s right…it was forever ago. I swear I’ll finish this room soon. :)

And now:

Can you even believe it’s the same chair? Nuts!

You’ll notice from the first pic (up on top) that I changed up the orientation of the desk. The chair was hidden behind the desk before, and I wanted to show it off! I just feel like this way works better in the space.

But who knows if it will stay this way. I’m still not 100 percent sure anything in the room will stay where it is. :)

Here’s a before of the corner where the desk and chair sit:

And as it is now:

And…NO. I still have not painted the board and batten. It WILL happen this week – it. will. happen.

If I say it out loud it will come true, yes? ;)

Really though, I will have this space done this month, I’m sure of it. It’s about time. I’m painting tomorrow…swear.

So there’s my before and after for this month! I can’t wait to see yours!

Link them up folks, and remember to use the html from your specific post, and not your blog. This will be open for a week, so you’ve got plenty of time to add your post!

Have fun!