simple ghosties

Here are a couple of our Halloween traditions...white chocolate ghosts, and these ghosts I made years ago out of white tissue paper and cheesecloth. I have a few of them floating around the house, and a group of them hanging over the front steps to welcome trick-or-treaters. Two super easy and inexpensive projects!

p.s. I can't wait to show you our costumes this year!

the enchanted forest

Did I ever show you Hannah's and Nina's room since we finished it? It's been done since last November, minus little details here and there, I just kept forgetting to take photos of it. I still need to decorate some of the walls, but haven't decided quite what to put on them yet.

The curtains from IKEA were long enough to cut and have fabric to make matching pillows, and the pom-poms were a snap {and cheap!} to make. Sometimes I wish this was my bedroom!

Check out Vinyl Wall Art for the cutest wall stickers you'll ever find.

easy easter decorating

My Easter decoration box consists of these three caged rabbits (which I found a few years back at Robert's), and that's pretty much it. So I decided to improvise with what I already have around the house to make it more Easter-esque around here. (Do you like that word I made up? Easter-esque?)

I pulled out these little pots of imitation grass, and topped them with plastic eggs, then I dusted off my egg cups and filled them with either sprigs of green or fabric covered eggs (made by hot-gluing strips of fabric around plastic eggs...easy!).

I think my favorite thing to decorate with for holidays is books, so I took the Peter Rabbit books from Olivia's room, along with a couple others that have bunnies on the covers. And there you go! We are ready for the Easter bunny without spending a dime.

pom-pom love

I fell in love with the whole pom-pom idea a few months ago, and decided that when Olivia had her own room I'd make some to hang from her ceiling. So now that she's had her own room for three months, it's about time I get going on it!

You won't believe how easy and inexpensive these are to make. I'm not kidding. You only need 8 sheets of tissue paper, some floral wire, and some clear fishing line.

Lay the tissue paper in a clean stack and start folding it into an accordion, back and forth, width-wise (so that your accordion is shorter in width rather than longer). Trim each side so it's rounded (or you can make it pointy), then secure the middle with some floral wire. Fan it all out, then carefully start peeling the sheets apart from each other, and before you know it you'll have this amazing pom-pom! Tie a length of fishing line to the floral wire in the middle, reshape if you need to, and hang it up.

These are also fun for party decorations...my aunts made a bunch for my grandma's 80th birthday a couple weeks ago, and it made the whole house so festive. Pink is perfect for Valentine's, dontcha think?

crayon hearts

When Ben and Hannah were teeny tiny, we made some of these. We hang them up in the kitchen window every February...but this year they were looking pretty shabby! So Nina and I made some new ones. I couldn't find a pencil sharpener in the house wide enough for a crayon, so we used the vegetable peeler.

I love the cute shadows these make in the afternoon!

Just make sure to put your craft paper (I used a lunch sack) on both the top and bottom of the wax paper before you iron!

Oh and hey, does anyone want to come clean my filthy windows? Please??