Decorating for the New Year

If you are like me you enjoy decorating for Christmas, because it adds fun colors and fullness to your home, but dread the after Christmas blahs. To help with those blahs, every year I challenge myself to come up with a new decor arrangement, using decor items I already have on hand. Last year I chose to make a wall of frames in our formal dining room with frames I had been collecting. Check it out on my "Frame Wall" post.

This year I chose my fireplace mantle. Below is a photo of how sad it looked after removing the Christmas decorations.

After going through a variety of my thrifty finds I came up with the arrangement below. The great thing about the arrangement, besides already having all of the items, was that all of these items were found at thrift stores, garage sales, clearance racks, or given to me. So the total cost of this arrangement is only around $10!

My goal for this year is to create an art piece to add to the mantle, but for now I like how it turned out.

Memory Jar

Happy New Year! Life at times moves so fast and since we are unable to slow it down, I love discovering ways to cherish the memories. One blog I enjoy following is Teresa Collins. She just recently shared a wonderful idea of using a memory jar to help cherish and record all of the years memories. I was so excited about this idea that I got started on one for my family right away. With a little bit of time, glue, fabric, vinyl, paper, and pen it is complete.

Here is what I did...

I had picked up this jar at a thrift store (love thrifty finds)a few months back and it was just waiting for me to beautify it and bring it to life. :)

I cleaned off the labels and stickers (Goo Gone works wonders!) and decided I wanted to dress it up a bit with an old clear glass knob that I found junk'in along the way.

Once the glue was dry, I started tearing fabric and cutting ribbon and added it around the knob to dress up the top a bit more.

I felt like the front of the jar needed something too, so I created a design with vinyl to add to the front that says "memories". This will also hopefully help remind my family of the purpose of the jar. :) I had picked up the notepad on one of my trips to Michael's dollar spot. It was a bit too wide to fit into the jar, so I cut it down a bit.

Now it is ready for 2013 memories!