kim

A Simple Valentine’s Day Dessert Table

Hi everyone! If you’ve read my previous post you’ll know that Valentine’s Day is my wedding anniversary. While it’s a great time to celebrate, it’s not one of those “holidays” that I necessarily decorate for. However, if we happen to be home, and not escaped to some tropical local, I may set a bit of a dessert table. Notice I didn’t say dinner table! Because we better be going out for that!

So I thought I’d share a little simple dessert table I put together. I did go ahead and make my favourite banana bread, simply because we had rotten bananas and it’s brown…which to my hubby reads..healthy..er! I also made some little vanilla cupcakes (from a box..I know!) with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with some little candied hearts. I even managed to make some pom poms from dollar store tissue paper. I went all out for this!

While I’m a creative at heart, I like to make things as simply and easily (aka, lazy) as possible so buffet style is the way to go. Laying down some dessert plates, cutlery and napkins for everyone to serve themselves works for me. I already had the little teacup candles made and adding some extra little fairy lights makes everything look more festive. Can I just say that the tulips were taking a nap while I was photographing this. The next day they were standing up straight!

This was so simple to do. If you wanted to make it even easier, you could go to the bakery (which is what I tend to do) and pick up a few of your favourite desserts, put them on a pedestal or pretty plate and voila!

I hope you got something out of this post, even if it was only permission to go to the bakery and buy your dessert…it is Valentine’s Day after all, who the heck wants to spend the day baking? Thanks for dropping by my friends.

DIY Tea Cup Candle Tutorial

12:07 am by kim 3 Comments

Hi everyone! Just sitting here wondering where the heck January went! I have to admit that the first few weeks of the year I had little energy and it was difficult to get back into the swing of things. However, February always energizes and reminds me that spring is indeed coming. It’s also my wedding anniversary month and the hubby and I will be celebrating our 30th this year! Not sure where those thirty years went either! Our anniversary is actually on Valentine’s Day, (makes it easy for the hubby to remember!) I thought that these little vintage tea cup candles would make a lovely little addition to a little Valentine’s Day desert table I made up for the occasion. I hope you’ll try them, they are super easy to do!

DIY Tea Cup Candle Tutorial

Materials:

Tea cups, you can use what you have at home or you can easily find them at a thrift store for a couple of dollars.
Wax, you can buy your own from a craft store, or do what I did and use melt down candles. I used an old candle from IKEA and it was super cheap.
Wax adhesive, you can find this at a craft store like Michael’s or you can find it here.
Candle wicks with metal bottom. Also can be found at your local craft store or here.
An empty can large enough to hold your candle and contain the wax.
A pot to place the can inside.
Wooden Skewers, I found mine at the dollar store.

Optional Materials:

Essential oils or wax candle scents. I don’t like to use scented candles for the kitchen or around food. I do love using them for other living spaces though.
Crayons or wax colour melts. Yes! you can use wax crayons if you’re looking to tint your candles.

(Material list contains affiliate links for your convenience!)

I start off by putting a little bit of wax adhesive on the bottom of the metal end of the wick. These wicks come with the little metal plate and have a thin wax covering that makes them a little stiff so they’ll stay in place easier.

The metal end is then attached to the bottom of the inside of the tea cup. This helps it to stay in place when you pour in the wax. I then wrap the wick around my skewer to help hold it straight and in place.

In the meantime, I have my candle sitting inside the tin can. I have the tin can placed in a pot filled half way up with water and the temp set to medium. Once the candle is melted you can use the skewer to remove the old wick. If you wanted to tint your wax you can add a crayon or wax tint melts now. Stir with the skewer. This is also when you can add your scent if you’d like one.

With a bit of aluminum foil under the cup and saucer, pour the melted wax into the cup until it’s as high as you’d like.

Once the wax is dry, you may notice that it has shrunk a bit. You can pour more melted wax to level it out again.

How cute are these? They can be used anywhere! I would use the scented ones on the bedside table or by the tub when you’re bathing. They’d make a great little gift as well.

Thanks for dropping by! I’d love to know if you tried these and how they turned out.

-Kim

DIY Wood Bead Garland

2:40 pm by kim 6 Comments

DIY Wood Bead Garland

Hello everyone! I wanted to share my latest thrift find with you and how I made my own wood bead garland. At least once a week I’ll frequent a few of my favourite spots for thrifting and every now and then I’ll find something that catches my eye. I’m pretty choosy about what I bring into the house so it has to be something worth putting up with the extra clutter for! When I saw a bag of these beads and realized they were wood, I was giving myself a high five. That is until I found more bags just like them, and then I was running through the store with all I could carry cradled in my arms to find a cart! Yep, I was in the “found junk I like” zone!

I’ve seen these wood bead garlands all around my favourite blogs and IG accounts and always wanted one but here in the north, they can be pretty pricy. So when I found these wood beads at such a reasonable price I knew just what to do with them.

These beads are about 1.5 inches wide and I used a little over one bag to make a garland approximately five feet long. I simply strung them together using some jute twine and tied knots on either end to keep them in place. They can be made to any length depending upon the size, amount of balls, where you’d like to display them and the type of impact you want to make. I’ve also seen them with tassels on the end, painted as well as mixed with other materials like felt balls. The sky’s the limit! I made mine pretty simply so that they could be displayed across a table as well as fill bowls and baskets.

I’m so thrilled with my wooden bead garland. It makes such a great coffee table accent and would add amazing texture anywhere. Needless to say I’ve got a few orders to make some more!

I’m all for doing a great DIY…if it’s cheaper to do so! With some of the prices I’ve seen to buy these already made, I think this would be a great project to DIY. If you’d like to try and make your own wood bead garland you could check out your local craft stores for the beads, I’ve also provided a link for something similar here.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you’ll share if your try this!

-Kim

Winter Whites in the Living Room

7:00 am by kim 14 Comments

Winter Whites in the living room

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’ve all had a great time with family and friends over the holidays. I took the opportunity to spend a few days in my pj’s and loved every minute of it! It’s been difficult to get out of the party, sofa and netflix mode and back into the work mode though. I thought I’d share how I’ve transitioned from holiday decor to winter whites in the living room.

As much as I love decorating for Christmas, I love taking it all down and simplifying come the new new year. I managed to get my tree and most of the decor down on New Year’s Day, with just a few things left to do in the dining room and guest room. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to leave it all behind so I like to transition myself out of the holidays and I’ll keep a few wintery pieces around.

I’ve kept the pom pom wreath up along with the preserved boxwood wreaths.

Bringing back my fiddle leaf fig adds a little green in the corner and the birch pieces look great as wintery white accents.

The addition of faux fur cushions and white wool throws make me feel like I’m in a wintery chalet. Especially when the candles are lit and the fire is going in the evenings!

I think pinecones are great as wintery accents and I placed some tiny ones in a little marble bowl and I left the large sugarcones on the end tables. Although there’s a lot of white in the room, the different textures help add warmth and coziness to the space. Which really helps when you’re looking at another couple of months of cold, snow and ice!

Thanks so much for following along with me these past few months while I got this new blog up and running, I appreciate each one of you! I’m looking forward to sharing some new DIY’s and makeover projects with you all in the new year!

Blessings,

-Kim

A Rustic Christmas Table Setting

6:00 am by kim 2 Comments

A Rustic Christmas Table Setting

Hello everyone! Welcome into the dining room while I share my rustic Christmas Table Setting. It’s simple, easy and festive.

I found the inspiration for my table in my wooden slice chargers. I used them last Christmas too, they’re too good not to use as much as possible! You can find last year’s post here.

Everything that I used to set the table were things that I had on hand already. The only new purchase was this gorgeous gold cutlery, an early Christmas gift to myself! I love adding a bit of glam and shine to the rustic look of the wood to balance out the whole setting.

I used an old piece of wood up the centre of the table and added candles of different heights. Then I covered the wood with some fresh cedar and boxwood. I added a few Christmas balls and a long string of fairy lights. So simple and easy to do but it makes a big impact!

With the leftover boxwood, I wired together some stems to make these little wreaths for each setting.

I also made a couple of boxwood wreaths using six inch embroidery hoops and a glue gun. These were hung on the armoire handles.

Thanks so much for joining me again.If you’d like to see more of these posts, you can sign up to subscribe and receive them straight into your inbox. I hope everyone has a great week in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the last week before Christmas!

-Kim

I’ll be linking up at The Nester

Canadian Bloggers Christmas Home Tour 2016

6:00 am by kim 28 Comments

A Festive and Cozy Christmas Tour

Welcome everybody and thank you for joining me and 28 other talented bloggers and friends for the Canadian Bloggers Christmas Tour! This is my second year being part of this great group of bloggers hosted by the lovely Christina from The Diy Mommy. This is also home tour number two of the season for me. If you missed last year’s tour, you can find that here, and if you’ve missed my recent Christmas tour you can find that here.

Our first stop is the master bedroom. My house is pretty small and my master is no exception, It fits my kingsize bed and my two sewing-machine-tables-turned-nightstands perfectly though.

I kept the Christmas decor in the bedroom simple, easy and cozy. A boxwood wreath, some winter themed bedding, a few little baubles and some natural decor items were all I added to give it a festive feel.

I found this winter themed bedding in October and knew I needed it for my Christmas decor. It will last until February!

Next stop is the living room with a view into the breakfast nook. My decor centered around the toile fabric on the cushions. I found this fabric years ago at a garage sale and have used it as curtains before. I think it looks great as cushion covers. The pink pointsettia fit right in, I loove the colour!

The pom poms on this throw fit in with the felt pom pom garland on the mantel and in the breakfast nook perfectly.

I love the colour and whimsy these little felt pom pom garlands add.

I made this little bunny years ago and he has a lot of sentimental value. He can be found under the tree every year.

From the living room you can see into my breakfast nook. I’ve decorated it with a few gingerbread houses.

This is what it looked like for my last tour when it was decorated for Christmas brunch.

This is what the tree looks like at night. It’s a cozy spot to sit in the evening by the light of the tree and with the fireplace going.

Thanks so much for joining me! Please make sure to visit all of the 28 other beautiful home tours featured this week. You can find all of the links at the bottom of this post. I hope you can find some inspiration to help make your own home festive and cozy!

Monday

northern style exposure
The Learner Observer
The Uncommon Law
Heather In Heels
Clean and Scentsible
THE SWEETEST DIGS

Tuesday

Amidst the Chaos
Brooklyn Berry Designs
lemon Thistle
Suburble
Life is a Party
PMQ for two

Wednesday

Love Create Celebrate
Satori Design for Living
A Pop of Pretty
So Much Better With Age
VinYet ETC
Woman in Real Life

Thursday

The DIY Mommy
Fresh Crush
Time With Thea
A Pretty Life
Home To Heather
Nalles House

Friday

This Little Estate
Craftberry Bush
The Happy Housie
Kimpowerstyle
Elliven Studio

I’ll be linking up to The Nester

Joyful Holiday Home Tour 2016

6:00 am by kim 17 Comments

Joyful Holiday Home Tour 2016

Welcome to the Joyful Holiday Home Tour ! I’m so excited to join along with seven other talented bloggers to share our homes all done up for Christmas. This is one of two tours I’m a part of this year. I’ll also be joining in with The Canadian Bloggers Christmas Home Tour as well, so stay tuned for more! If you’re following the tour in order, you just came from Natalie from My Vintage Porch’s home. I loved every bit of her gorgeous farmhouse style! If you missed it you can see it here you will be glad you did! OK then, grab a cup of whatever you fancy, settle in and lets get started! In this tour I’ll be sharing a few spaces, one of them being my guest room that I have been working on over the past five weeks. I call it my “mini makeover” as it’s been a fairly simple and easy project. Since I’ve chosen this tour to reveal the guest room makeover, we’ll start here.

When my eldest daughter left home, the room looked very stark and empty. I decided that I needed to freshen up the space and add a few touches to make it homey and lived in again. So I spent a few weeks working on little projects that would make it warm and inviting. The buffalo check and ticking pillows were some of my sewing projects for this room, along with the tea towel bedskirt. If you missed the tea towel bedskirt post you can find it here.

The slipcover was the biggest project for this room. I had found an ugly brown velvet wingback that was in good shape. When I saw a great denim fabric on for 50 % off I thought it was a great opportunity to try my hand at making a slipcover again. It took me a few days of marathon sewing but was so worth it! You can find that post here.

You’ll notice a couple of my little guys in the pics. There is no way of working in any room without them following me around! I don’t try to stop them anymore because it’s a losing battle. Who could deny that sweet little face?

I found this upholstery webbing for 5o% off at my local fabric store too and thought it would pass for garland on my little rustic tree.

I love adding touches of greenery to my Christmas decorating. It’s so simple but makes everything cozy and festive.

Whitewashing the dresser was my first guest room makeover project and set the tone for the rest of the room. You can find the tutorial here.

The guest room is all ready for my daughter and son in law when they come to visit for the holidays!

From there, we’ll move into the breakfast nook. On Christmas day, we start off with mimosas in champagne flutes and brunch. We usually have scrambled eggs, bacon and one of my faves, banana pancakes, along with a treat or two. My three daughters usually cook and I clean. It works out perfectly. The food is placed on platters and set on the counter in a buffet style and then we sit at our little table to enjoy. We usually fit the five of us around the table but now there are six counting our new son in law. We may have to move to the dining room now! The tablescape is easy and can be done the night before so that the morning is a little less hectic. It also means we can get to opening our gifts much sooner!

We wait until after breakfast to open our gifts, but sometimes somebody can’t wait..thats usually me!

I loved adding a little colour and whimsy to the shelves with these lovely ornaments and felt ball garland.

The next room on our tour is the living room. This is where we spend most of our time. It’s small but I call it “cozy”

I found this toile fabric a few years ago at a garage sale and had used it as curtains in the past. But this year I made a number of pillow and bolster covers with it and I decorated around it. It’s a pinky red so I drew out the pink and found this pinky pompom throw to go with it. I love my pretty in pink living room!

I used natural elements to decorate with. As stated before it’s simple and easy but so festive with adding too much decor to my small space.

Thank you so much for joining me for Part 1 of the tour! Remember to stay tuned for Part 2 of my home tour when I share my master bedroom, dining room and more of the living room in the Canadian Bloggers Christmas HomeTour on Dec. 9th! The next person up on our tour is Rachel from The Porch Light Cottage.

Marci- Lemons to Lovelys

Jordan from JorDecor

Natalie from MyVintagePorch

Rachel from The Porch Light Cottage

Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone

Laura from Meaningful Spaces

Jennifer from Delightfully Noted

I’ll be linking up to The Nester

Guest Room Makeover Week 4-The Slipcover

6:00 am by kim 4 Comments

Hello everyone! It’s been a crazy busy week here and I’ve been working on projects, preparing for the Christmas season. I realize that I said reveal week would be this week but I made a mistake! I had one more project to finish before the reveal. On December 1st I’ll be joining with some amazingly talented bloggers and sharing the first of my two Christmas Home Tours. The guest room makeover will be revealed in the 1st home tour. So stay tuned, you don’t want to miss that!

Guest Room Makeover Week 4 – The Slipcover

I found a wingback chair at a local thrift store for a few dollars a couple of months back. I had planned on trying my hand at painting it but changed my mind when I found this white denim fabric for 50% off. I love using denims for linen as they’re so durable and can handle lots of traffic and washings. It took me a few days of marathon sewing, definitely not for the faint of heart, but I finally finished it. This is my third time making a slipcover and I think it’s my favourite one I’ve done. I’m loving the cute little frill around the bottom and how great it looks in this room! Slipcovers are amazing for covering a multitude of sins and they’re washable.

What do you think? Do you have an old chair that has great bones but is in need of a makeover? Try your hand at a slipcover. If you’d like a tutorial, let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for joining me for this quick guest room makeover update!

You can follow along with the Guest Room makeover progress here:

Week 1 Whitewashing furniture

Week 2 The Jute Rug

Week 3 Tea Towel Bedskirt

And stay tuned for the final reveal…for real!

-Kim

A Tea Towel Bedskirt-Week 3 of the Guest Room Makeover

6:00 am by kim 6 Comments

A Tea Towel Bedskirt For an Ikea Bed- Week 3 of the Guest Room Makeover

Hello everyone! In week three of my guest room makeover I’ve made a bedskirt for my Ikea bed. The Ikea bed has slats and a normal bedskirt doesn’t fit properly so I came up with a way to get around that. Linen was my fabric of choice but not something the budget allowed. I’d been looking for a project to use this tea towel fabric with and it fit in with the decor and the budget. It was 50% off!

The tea towel fabric comes in a 20″ width which made it easy to work with, I simply had to cut off 6″ along one side. It also comes with a hem on either side of the length which meant I only had one hem to do.

I applied gathering tape to the raw edge which I folded under and then sewed it on. Once the tape is sewn on there are two strings that you pull and it gathers the fabric for you. I used double the length of fabric so it would gather nicely. I sewed together three separate pieces for the three sides of the bed that are seen.

I meant to use the velcro with a taped side but totally forgot. That’s when my old trusty glue gun came in! I applied the velcro under the side of the bed using glue from the glue gun.

The gathering tape attaches nicely to the velcro.

Both my boys Jack and Bubs have joined in for this post. They usually follow me around wherever I go and there is no moving them out of the way! I’m sure you’ll see them in many of my posts.

Thank you again for joining me in the guest room saga! I’m so pleased with how it turned out. Stay tuned for the reveal next week and please subscribe if you’d like to see more of these posts!

-Kim

The 5 Minute Christmas Birch Bucket

6:00 am by kim 5 Comments

The 5 Minute Christmas Birch Bucket

Hi everyone! This week I’m revisiting an oldie but a goodie! Five years ago I created a galvanized bucket full of birch, sugar pinecones, greens and ornaments. You can see that old post here, but be warned, my photography was not the best! Since I’m blogging again, I thought I’d share these updated favourites of mine. I do them every year in some form or another. This year I’m using vintage sap buckets I found at a decor store in the summer. I love the height and narrowness of these buckets and they fit perfectly into my small living room, flanked on either side of my fireplace. The 5 minute Christmas Birch Bucket’s are so easy to put together! Once you have all your ingredient at hand, it will literally take you five minutes to do.

The 5 Minute Birch Bucket Tutorial

Ingredients needed:

Start off with a container of your choice. I’m using this vintage sap bucket, but you can use whatever you like and fits in with your decor.
Birch branches. Using 3 poles in varying heights works best.
2-3 Large Sugar pinecones. If you’re unable to find these, the smaller pinecones will work as well.
Greenery. I love the softness and texture of Cedar. You can choose whatever is available, fresh or faux.
Christmas balls etc. You can use varying colour to match your decor. I’m keeping mine neutral this year with mercury glass.
Ribbon or garland. I used this burlap garland to make a bow.
Fairy lights or branches.
You may need something to help fill in the bottom of your container so the ingredients don’t all fall to the bottom. I’ve used tissue paper to fill in my bucket.

Start by filling the bottom of the bucket with bunches of tissue paper leaving room for the birch branches to fit in behind.
Arrange your birch branches at the back of the bucket.
Arrange the tissue paper in such a way that your sugar cones will sit up high in the bucket. You can place 2 or 3 in depending on their size.
Place in your greenery, this can be done in whatever way looks good to you.
If you’r using branch lights you can add them now. If you’re using fairy lights I leave those till the end.This is the basis of your bucket. You can add whatever you’d like now. But the sky’s the limit. In the past, I’ve used cinnamon sticks, faux poinsettias etc.

These two are slightly different. I’ve added a burlap bow to the one above and I added some faux flowers to the bucket below.

Thanks so much for dropping by. I hope you try one of these, They’re super easy! You can add whatever you like to make it your own. If you try your hand at one of these, let me know how it turned out!

-Kim

kim

DIY Tea Cup Candle Tutorial

Materials:

Optional Materials:

DIY Wood Bead Garland

Winter Whites in the living room

Guest Room Makeover Week 4 – The Slipcover

The 5 Minute Christmas Birch Bucket

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