christmasfied

our home is looking cozy and christmasy.

this is our first christmas in this house and it was so fun to decorate. 

i love pulling out all of our boxes and spreading christmas cheer throughout the house. :) 

the kids love to help decorate the tree with us.
we have a tradition of putting on a christmas movie and decorating the tree together.
i usually get a little stressed out at some point but try to hold it together. ;)

i love our family tree.
we put tons of vintage tinsel and all of our ornaments on that one tree.
i love my fancy, girly ornaments right next to a homemade kid one. :)

we decorated the weekend after thanksgiving and i spent the better part of the weekend adding stuff all around the house.
it's not perfect for sure, but it's happy and christmasy and makes our home feel so cozy. :)

avery made this lego nativity to set out. :) 

love his creativity. 

we have loved doing the jesse tree this year....i found the free printable ornaments and jesse tree study guide for free on ann voskamp's blog.

bottle brush trees are so sweet, right?
plus vintage fake snow and little vintage silver deer...such a sweet little vignette.

i may be slightly obsessssed with my antique ornament tree.
i'm thinking it would be weird to have it up all year long.....

antique ornaments are one of the only things that i collect and i loooovvveee them.
vintage tinsel....vintage ornaments....all stuffed into a milk glass vase.

christmas cards displayed on the piano.
ignore that chandelier hanging in the way....seriously we need to raise that sucker up.
we've only lived here since march.

that's when avery and finley were four and two....and avery kept pinching finley's nipples while i was trying to create a christmas card photo shoot.
ha. it was so frustrating at the time. makes me laugh now.

vintage christmas apron.
red plaid mug i picked up at the thrift for 99 cent.
i'm so trendy with my plaid.

we did a little easy christmas crafting on our bazillion snow days last week.

more vintage of course.

dining room....i love decorating these shelves.

the shelves are just barn wood that AJ attached to the wall with heavy duty brackets.
they are one of my favorite things in our house.

the little tree is just one that i had on hand.
i spray painted it silver this year to give it a midcentury feel.

advent calendar...the kids open a window each morning and read the verse.
simple and sweet.

even the bathroom shelf got a little christmas love in the form of a big ol' strand of vintage tinsel shoved in there.

avery's room and the stairs to the playroom got some lights as well.
not fancy, but super fun and exciting for the kids.

so that's our bits of christmas cheer!

merry christmas, friends! :)

{linking up to the nester's christmas tour of homes}.

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reason #792 to shop at thrift stores

you can come up with cutie pie outfits like this:

i found these adorbs kelly's kids pants at the thrift store for two bucks.
they retail for around $36.
boom. stickin' it to the man.
and seriously, anything with a big ruffle at the bottom is perfection.
so stinkin' cute.

ruby had an extra black shirt in her closet so i dug through my fabric stash and found some red fabric to use.
i googled an arkansas shape, printed it out on card stock and used that for my pattern.

then i just sewed the shape right onto her shirt.
i didn't iron it or use interfacing or fray check.
i like to live on the edge like that.
also, i don't have time to make this a big drawn-out project.
i like the way the edges fray a bit on the shape after you wash it.

so this whole outfit cost me $2 and i think it's pretty darn cute.
and ruby loves it.

while i had all the materials out, i quickly made another shape to make a fun arkansas hoop art for my booth. :)

that black & white jersey material is an old t-shirt that i cut up.
i also used it for ruby's head band.

i love doing craft projects....especially when they turn out how i wanted. :)

and yes, this totally fueled my thrift store shopping even more.  :)

happy monday, y'all......what are you creating lately??

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Thrifted Thursday {with a link up}

hi y'all. :)


i have loved having a flea market booth for the last 9 months.

with my crazy busy life, full up of taking care of four kiddos and all that comes with that, i was a bit nervous to add anything extra to my plate.

it has turned out to be exactly what i hoped it would be....easy, fun & profitable.
yay. :)

the only hard part has been that it is on the complete opposite side of town from where i live.
that wouldn't be a huge deal, but i literally have nothing else going on over there so it just feels like i'm driving out to half of forever to get there.
always had to make a special trip.
every time i drove out there, i would pray that God would open something up closer to me.

so a few weeks ago i was standing outside talking to my neighbor friend about all this and she told me that she saw a sign for a new place opening up.
!!!!!!!!!
yay! just what i'd been praying for! :)

anyhow, i got right over there and signed up.
i cleaned out my old booth a few days later.
it was hard to leave that place since they had been so good to me but i am so excited about the new place.
it's really close so i should be able to just stop by when i'm out and about. :)

sooooo, if you're in northwest arkansas, it's called fayetteville's funky yardsale, and it will be open august 15. :)
i think it will be a great place to shop...it's huge and there are some great vendors that i know of already. :) yay.

okay...so since this is thrifted thursday, i want to show you a fun little project.

so this really cool frame isn't technically thrifted but my mom brought it back from my grandpa's house earlier this summer.
it's old so that counts. ;)

i knew i wanted to do something fun with it.
then when i had my annual college girls' weekend, my friend jackie, gifted us each with a 1corinthians 13 art print so i knew that would be a great piece to use with this frame.

i had a spray painting party in the front yard and gave the frame a few good coats of teal.

thankfully the print fit perfectly and gave that old from a new life. :)

i love having scripture on the walls and i had been wanting to have this particular verse up for a while.
the kids and i refer to it often. ;)


have y'all been thrifting lately? show us your scores!


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Thrifted Thursday #4!

Hi y'all!

welcome to thrifted thursday, where we share our thrifted {or yard saled or craig's listed or dumpster dived} finds for the week! :)

no thrifting for me this week but i do have a really fun item that is going in my flea market booth {located in All My Treasures in fayetteville, if you're local}.

i showed you that i was making these last week and now i've decided to make up a bunch of them for my booth {or gifts or myself, whatever comes first. ;)}

my neighbor asked what i would charge for them so i decided it would be fun to make  up a dozen or so. :)

i am selling them for $5 to people who ask me or $6 in my booth since the store will get a commission.
i will try to not keep them all for myself.

and now, to up the cuteness level of this post, i give you, ruby jane, prettiest thing in red glitter shoes. :)

what have y'all thrifted this week?

please do link up and share your finds!
i'd love for you to link back here and also check out the other links. :)


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homemade laundry detergent because i'm granola like that

hi y'all! 

hope you had a great weekend. 

i sure the heck did. :)

okay, so i promised you deets on my homemade laundry detergent. 

here's the story morning glory....

i have been wanting to make my own laundry soap for like, ever.

i kept procrastinating because i am such a researcher and wanted to sit down and research all the different options and pick the best/right one. 

welp. i got waylayed by the end cap display at walmart.

it was a big tower o' borax calling my name. 

i'm such a sucker for marketing. 

anywho, i just decided to look up a recipe right there in the walmart aisle and buy whatever it said.

i'm so spontaneous. 

i knew i wanted powder so i just clicked on the first pretty picture of powder detergent i saw and went with that. :)

the stuff sat on the counter for a few days until i could get to it. 

in the meantime, i did sit down and research several recipes online.

i chose powder b/c it seems like less mess and less storage and i like the way it looks in a jar. :)

the recipe i landed on uses all of the ingredients in the pic above.

i did see many recipes that just used borax, bar soap, &; washing soda.

i may try that next time....we'll see how this works out. 

i also saw several recipes with different soaps like zote, ivory, etc.

so you can play around with that part. 

i will probably try zote out next time....which is hopefully a long time from now. :)

there are a bazillion tutuorials for homemade laundry detergent out there but if you want to try what i did, i used: 

76 oz. box borax

55 oz. box washing soda

4 lb. box baking soda {on the laundry aisle}

3 bars fels naptha

1.5 {ish} pounds oxi clean (i used about 1/2 of that 3 lb. tub)

i grated the bars of soap on the finest part of my cheese grater.
this was totally mindless and easy.
i did it while watching dumb television. ;)
maybe not the best use of my brain cells, but oh well.
i wanted it super fine so i put the shreds through my mini chopper.
{this is what i use to chop all onions with and it saves my sanity}.
you don't have to do this step, but i am particular like that. :)
i found that some people just did the grating and some people just put it through their food processor.
whatever you have will be fine, i'm sure....i just wanted it to be nice and fine.

also, every time i put some of the shredded bar soap into my chopper i added a spoon or two of baking soda to keep it from clumping up in there. this worked like a charm.

so this is how it looks all shredded and processed.
i poured the rest of the big box of baking soda into this bowl and mixed that all up.

to mix the whole batch up, i poured this and everything else into a clean kitchen trash bag.
i actually double bagged it just to be safe.
i used a wooden spoon to stir it all up and then i pulled it out of the trash can and rolled it around and mushed it to get it all mixed up.

it honestly was super easy and you only use 1-2 Tbs. per load so it should last me for a while.
which i need since there are six of us crazies in this house. :)

let me know if you try it or if you already do this and have some tips for the rest of us! :)


feel free to pin and share! :)

today's creative blog

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