Back We Go

My "free" week turned into another fairly busy one but it was fun so no complaining from me! Somewhere amongst all of the fun I did manage to get all of my Valentine door hangers completed. In order to be able to do another decor post, I had to get more pictures taken and that just wasn't happening while all of the crafting was going on. When ever I make multiples of these hangers, the dining room, sun room and kitchen are all pretty much disasters. There is much paint drying, hot gluing, bow making, etc. going on everywhere. And so, now that I have finally got all of that cleared away, our tour can go on. Let's hit the kitchen.

I'm still enjoying this paper cut that I made a few years ago. I saw the image on a blog called Dear Lillie and since I used to do Scherenschnitte many years ago, I decided to see if I couldn't just trace the image and cut one myself. After some of the really intricate things I used to do, this one was pretty simple.

I realized that the kids and I made many magnets as gifts over the years. Unfortunately, with the stainless frigs we all have these days, there isn't a lot of area where magnets will hold. I only have this one little strip visible on the pantry side so I pack it full of extra, precious pictures and get a chance to still use some of the magnets we've made over the years.

Here is a close up of a few. One year we used the Sweetheart candy boxes. We put the picture in the opening and then ran it through my Xyron with a magnet/laminating cartridge. Fun gifts for family and easy-peasy! The little kids and I made the air-dry clay conversation hearts. The kids cut the shapes with cookie cutters and then used my metal letter stamps to put on words. Another year we simply put pictures on a small heart shaped doily and ran ran it through the Xyron again. The last ones on there are painted wooden hearts. We painted them brown to look like cookies and then the kids "decorated" them with "paint icing". Some of them we glued on to clothespins and used the clip to close bags of our favorite Valentine treat- red hot cinnamon popcorn-before giving them as gifts. Once the popcorn was eaten-which really never takes long at all-the clip went on your frig with a picture.

So that is the kitchen this year. It looks like we might be getting our first real dose of winter tonight so I am heading out to cover just a few things. My bougainvillea is up and growing across the garage door-finally-so I'm hoping to save that from the frost and then my beloved lemon tree. Fingers crossed it doesn't go as low as predicted and all will be safe from Mother Nature. On the up side-it's the perfect day for a fire! I've got more to show you so stay tuned.