Hello, dears!
This past weekend, Mom’s side of the family came up to our farm to celebrate Grandpa and Grandma’s 50th anniversary! It was AMAAAZING, ahhh! We made so many good memories, had so many fun adventures, and ate so much good food. XD I also took hundreds and hundreds of pictures, obviously. đ I got so many pictures that it was hard to pick a small enough amount for this post, but I hope you enjoy this selection of photographs and fun times with family. đ Continue reading
Hey, guys! It’s been quite awhile since Megan and I did our room makeover, and I thought I’d do a post of some of the updates and changes we’ve made since then. (To see the original makeover, click here.)
The two main changes are updating the dresser area and adding a bookshelf. They look so pretty!
This is the bookshelf corner. We repainted an old bamboo bookshelf that my Dad had when he was a boy, and it looks so pretty now. The flower wall hanging is from Hobby Lobby, and I don’t know where Megan got the “laugh” wall hanging. (I told Megan it’s too bad it doesn’t say “read” instead of “laugh.” XD )
Moving on now to the dresser area. We added a mirror, a new plant, two new vases… actually pretty much everything on top of the dresser is new. đ
Now for some random updates around our room.
And last but not least, two pictures of our bedroom in general.
*Happy sigh* I still love our bedroom so much, even now. I hope this gave you some inspiration if you are looking to redecorate your own bedroom! Do you have any redecorating tips to share? What is your favorite part about our bedroom? What is your favorite part or decoration about YOUR bedroom? Do you like interior design?
***Allison***
The kids made this little tree for our mom’s birthday. It wasn’t that hard (well, we made it ourselves!) and it turned out great! I put together a little tutorial for you guys. đ
I hope that wasn’t too confusing. 
Anyway, do you like how it turned out? I think it’s pretty cute! You can click here to see my sister’s post which has a bunch more pictures of us making the tree. Thank you, brothers, for doing a lot of the hard work for us. đ âĽ
Merry Almost-Christmas! (HOW CAN IT BE SO CLOSE ALREADY?!)
***Allison***
Welcome to the long awaited room tour! Goodness gracious this post took a while to get up. I have been wanting to write this for weeks!
Guys, you are going to love the before and after. SQUEEE it’s so pretty!! It looks like a totally different room. Are you ready? Here we go!
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Isn’t that simply amazing? Both of those pictures were taken at the same spot, but they look completely different!
We had 30 year old wallpaper in our room, so we had to take down the wallpaper, plaster over nicks in the walls, sand the plaster, then paint the ceiling, trim, and walls. It was a lot of work – it took a whole week – but it was so worth it! I absolutely love the paint color and the decorations!
A few notes before we proceed to the room tour: I didn’t list the prices for every single thing in our room, just most of the stuff we got recently. Also, the prices are rounded.
Now we can get to the good part! Let us begin with the bed section. First off, I love the bedspreads! They are simple but beautiful, and their simplicity makes them versatile. (If you’re wondering, my bed is on the left and Megan’s is on the right.)
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These lovely pillows tie in our canvasses and handmade quilts with the bedspreads.
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I’m very proud of our upcycled wooden crate. XD It was broken and rough to begin with, so we wood-glued it together, cleaned it, sanded it, and painted it. It works perfectly as a bedside stand!
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Megan and I each decorated a canvas to put above our beds. The first canvas is mine and the second is Megan’s. đ I painted mine with watercolor and gesso and wrote in the words with Sharpie and marker. Since Megan’s canvas had more words, we printed them out in a nice font and transferred them to the canvas using this tutorial. (The pencil rubbing part is the transferring part.) Then Megan Sharpied over the words and added confetti from the paint chips we collected while searching for a paint color.
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We got some really nice ombre curtains from Walmart. They’re opaque enough that we don’t need blinds, but they’re also sheer enough to let in light. And if you’re wondering, that speck in the hanging plant is a little stuffed owl. XD
(Sorry about the really bad lighting here. đŚ )
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The mantel is one of my favorite spots. I adore the fox print especially! We spray painted the flowerpots gold to add a extra pop.
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I also love this next spot. It’s sophisticated yet cozy. The white faux-fur cube is one of my favorite purchases – it’s a comfortable seat and a storage chest!
Funny story: My littlest sister was writing a wish list while we went shopping, and she wrote “fuse cyoob” for the fuzzy cube seat. Isn’t that adorable? You have to love little kid spelling. XD
(Horrible pictures again, I know. )
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Moving on to the dresser… The bunting banner I made myself (remember this tutorial?), and I also hand-decorated the gold rocks around our room. We spray painted smooth river rocks gold, then I either hand lettered words on them with Sharpie, or dotted them with white paint. They turned out really well!
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And lastly but not leastly, we needed some new rugs since we took our big blue carpet away. Behold!
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And thus concludes my room tour! I hope you enjoyed it! Are you going to redecorate your room anytime soon? Have you redecorated recently? What was your favorite part of our “new” room?
***Allison***
P. S. WordCrafters 2 is coming right along! Nicole just recently finished her chapter – read it here. Hmm, Katri seems more and more suspicious, isn’t she? I had no idea!
Okay, I guess I’ll need to explain the title… đ PFA stands for “Posts from the Forgotten Abyss” and it’s a new series I’m starting where I drag back a post from long ago that I like, and that no one had really noticed, and repost it, along with a new photo or tidbit so the post is not entirely the same. It’s kind of like Photos from of Old. (Which I will post more of probably in spring.) So! Today’s post I thought seemed appropriate for winter, and since we, sadly, do not have any snow, here’s a way to make your own!
But first, here is the new part of the post: bunny slides! I took some videos of Lily and Willow sliding down a little sliding board that we’ve had for years, and I turned parts of the videos into pictures – they’re so cute and funny!
A pile of fluff is going down!
âLily is going to be so mad at me for taking a picture of her in this highly undignified pose. XD
Wasn’t that hilarious? XD Okay, now I am about to transport you back about one year… hang on!
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These really look like snowflakes (well, giant, oversized ones) because of the color of hot glue. They are very easy to make and just take a few supplies. Let’s get started!
You will need:
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Hot glue gun (with hot glue)
Parchment paper
Sharpie (optional)
snowflake pattern to trace (optional)
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There are several different ways to do this. You can either
1. Draw a snowflake directly onto the parchment paper (the sharpie lines will show up on the finished snowflake)
2. Print out a simple snowflake drawing from your computer and place it under the parchment paper
3. Just use hot glue to make a snowflake freehand.
What ever way you do it, the basic idea is to make a snowflake by squirting out hot glue onto parchment paper and letting it dry.
Since it is hot glue, it won’t take long to dry (YAY!).  If you want, you can sprinkle some glitter over the snowflake before it dries.  When you’re sure the hot glue is dry enough, carefully peel it off the parchment paper. You may need to remove those annoying hot glue strings too.
To activate the cling, turn it upside down in the palm of your hand and run it under water. Gently shake the water off, but don’t dry it off. Press the snowflake to a window.
The water helps it stick to begin with, but even when the water dries, the snowflake stays on. You can also make little swirls, dots, and other snowy doodles to go along with your snowflakes.
Make a whole blizzard!
***Allison***
P. S. You get one point if you remembered the snowflake post. XD What do you think of this new series?
For Christmas, Megan and I asked for some home dÊcor items and Hobby Lobby gift cards (I ⼠Hobby Lobby!)so we could redecorate our room. (We share a bedroom.) We decided to theme it with birds. We did get some dÊcor items and several Hobby Lobby gift cards, so we did redecorate our room! And so I shall show you a tour of our newly decorated room. Do come in!
One of my favorite new decorations are these beautiful birds-on-a-wire wall decals that I got from Hobby Lobby.
It came with a few mirrored birds as well as a bunch of bird silhouettes. (Ack! ‘Silhouette’ is really hard to spell. XD) It was fun to take pictures of the mirrored birds.
Since there were so many of the silhouettes, I scattered a few around the room in different places.
You know how wall decals come in a sticker sheet? I found a way to get double the amount of stickers, at least as long as there is an outline around the sticker. You just peel of the real sticker, in my case the bird silhouette, and cut around the remaining outline on the sticker sheet. Here is a picture where I first took off the silhouette sticker of the cut out bird, then the bird out of the sticker sheet, and peeled off the thin black outline.
The downside is that the outlines are hard to apply because they are so flimsy, but once you get them up, they look nice:
Here are some more pretty decals I got at Hobby Lobby. 
We put these in one corner of our “book nook.”
We have started collecting bird figurines for our shelf. We also made these neat clay transfers. You basically print out a picture (it works best to use a laser printer), smooth it out onto a sheet of clay, and bake it between two ceramic tiles.
And I guess we’re done now. I hope you enjoyed it! Do you like Hobby Lobby? (Hint: the answer is YES! XP)
***Allison***
My sister Megan’s birthday was yesterday! She chose to have a woodland themed party with hedgehogs as the “life of the party.” (Hee-hee!) I thought I’d go through the decorations for the party and how we made a few of them. (Megan didn’t especially want to do all the decorations, so I got to make most of them – hooray!)
The colors of the theme were green and brown. For the decorations, I hung up twirled green and brown streamers and green balloons.
I also drew and cut out some forest floor type things like toadstools, grasses, and pebbles. It would have been better to make the toadstools out of red paper, but we didn’t have any. đ
Meet Mr. Hedgehog, the gift guy. I designed him; Megan painted him. Megan also had the great idea to use him to show the guests where to put gifts.
The table was really fun to decorate. We got the tablecloth, plates, napkins, and cups at Party City (which was FUN, by the way!). My mom made the cute cake, I made the hedgehogs, and Megan made the labels for the “Dew Drops” (water) and “Twigs” (pretzel sticks). I found the ideas for twigs, dew drops (which was originally named “Morning Dew”), and hedgehogs from Pinterest.
Here’s a tutorial on how to make this cute little hedgehog for snacking on. (Poor guy!)
For one hedgehog you will need
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A pear
Whole, black olives
Grapes
Toothpicks
Whole cloves
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First, peel the top of the pear for the hedgehog’s head.
You can try sticking a whole olive on the tip of the pear, but it worked best for me to cut the olive in half.
Stick two whole cloves above the nose for eyes.
Now make him prickly! Skewer a grape onto a toothpick, then stick the toothpick into the unpeeled part of the pear. I put the skewered grapes on in rows.  I started with a row next to the head, then progressed all the way back to give him the proper rounded shape.
Such a prickly little guy!
Now for the party favors. I like to make things out of polymer clay, so I made clay hedgehogs for favors, along with little bags to put them in. At the end of the party, the guests each got to “adopt a hedgehog.”
So there are a few ideas for a woodland party. I hope I’ve given you some inspiration! (And thanks for letting me decorate for you Megan!)
***Allison***
My sister Megan and I switched room’s with my younger sister Carmen. We got a bigger room and… we got to decorate it! We might paint the room later, but for now we have flowered wallpaper.
This is my little corner:
Megan and I both made stars to hang near our beds.
I also made this little circle-doodley thing, because I love to doodle. I think I’ve seen something like it on Pinterest, but I didn’t pin it.
I hung my arm-knit scarves on my bed post. They are color coordinated, of course, because I just LOVE it when everything is color coordinated. ⺠And I did pin this to my Pinterest board here. You should seriously make one of these.
A buttoned initial. (I ⼠buttons!)
My dad hung a quilt I made a few years ago over our dresser, and it doubles as a decoration and a bulletin board.
Can you tell what my favorite color is from these pictures?
So, yeah, I’m really enjoying my new room.
***Allison***
These really look like snowflakes (well, giant, oversized ones) because of the color of hot glue. They are very easy to make and just take a few supplies. Let’s get started!
You will need:
*********************************
Hot glue gun (with hot glue)
Parchment paper
Sharpie (optional)
snowflake pattern to trace (optional)
*************************************
There are several different ways to do this. You can either
1. Draw a snowflake directly onto the parchment paper (the sharpie lines will show up on the finished snowflake)
2. Print out a simple snowflake drawing from your computer and place it under the parchment paper
3. Just use hot glue to make a snowflake freehand.
What ever way you do it, the basic idea is to make a snowflake by squirting out hot glue onto parchment paper and letting it dry.
Since it is hot glue, it won’t take long to dry (YAY!).  If you want, you can sprinkle some glitter over the snowflake before it dries.  When you’re sure the hot glue is dry enough, carefully peel it off the parchment paper. You may need to remove those annoying hot glue strings too.
To activate the cling, turn it upside down in the palm of your hand and run it under water. Gently shake the water off, but don’t dry it off. Press the snowflake to a window.
The water helps it stick to begin with, but even when the water dries, the snowflake stays on. You can also make little swirls, dots, and other snowy doodles to go along with your snowflakes.
Make a whole blizzard!
***Allison***
Allison Marie 