quick diy advent calendar

P's birthday was a few days before Thanksgiving and this year I had no idea what to give him. Then  it hit me, why not take him out to dinner at Peter Luger, something that was on our list for years. I made a reservation and crafted a gift card but still needed a good idea how to wrap it in a cute way. Because I was able to get a reservation for December 1st I thought giving him the dinner as part of an advent calendar would be fun. With only a couple of day lefts to finish the advent calendar I went to The Container Store for some inspiration and quickly found the kraft paper coffee bags. Initially I wanted to write numbers on them but then I found these tree gift tags and an idea was born. The bags were so easy to make, I just used doubled sided tape to add the trees to the bags. All in all it took maybe half an hour to finish the calendar. As the bags are pretty sturdy I will be able to reuse them in the next years, they would also make cute gift wrapping for smaller items or cookies. Most of the bags are filled with chocolate, some contain messages on these dry erase bubble magnets and some contain wooden animals. I thought the animals would go very well with the woodsy theme of the calendar and look cute if they were added one by one to the "forest on the mantle. 

Do you have an advent calendar or made one for a special person in your life?

PS. In case you are wondering but this post has not been sponsored by The Container Store, I was on crutches and was only able to visit one store so I needed to choose wisely ;)

PPS. No need to worry P does not read the blog and I won't spoil it for him with this post...

happy halloween

Happy Halloween! I am not that big of a fan of Halloween decorating but in the fall I like having pumpkins on my front steps and this year I added some Halloween decor that I found at the Dollar Tree. Those stores are usually a treasure trove when it comes to buying cheap items to decorate for the holidays. The crow already lost some feathers, I think a neighborhood cat thought it was real and tried to wrestle with it. One morning our stoop was covered in black feathers and on top of that a bird pooped on the crow as well. At least I took the photos before this happened. Are you guys going all out with decorating for Halloween or are you not even acknowledge it? Whatever your plans are for today/tonight, have fun!

happy easter!

Have a happy Easter my lovelies! Wouldn't this Hugo Guinness print look great in a kitchen? Too bad the Easter Bunny only brings eggs ;)

frohe weihnachten - merry christmas - joyeux noël

I hope all of you are enjoying the holidays! Initially I had planned to blog as usual in between the holidays but I feel like I need a couple of days off. Maybe I'll be back at the end of the week with a recap post of 2012...

Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten! Joyeux Noël!

 

modern christmas trees

We have decorated our Christmas tree last weekend and it looks like it does every year. I always use the same ornaments in silver and white, although every year I buy some extra ones. There can't be too many ornaments in the tree if you ask me. I love the look and mostly the smell of a real tree in the house but on the other hand when thinking about it, it is a little weird to drag a dead tree into the house and decorate it with baubles. That's why I searched the depths of the internet to great looking reusable trees that sometimes already look great on their own and some you can decorate like your regular real or fake tree. I can't even decide which one would be my favorite. Maybe I need a tree for every room in the house...

What does your tree look like? And what do you use to decorate it?

1. silver sparkle tree - chiasso 2. recycled cardboard tree - classico 

3. black christmas tree - treetopia 4. x-mas tree - sandra lindner 

5. superstar holiday tree - modernica 6. possibilitree 7. black christmas tree - ferm living 

8. print out tree - hp 9. giles miller christmas tree 10. jane's wall collection tree

decorating for christmas - poinsettias

So far we haven't decorated much for the holidays because our downstairs is still a big construction zone. On Saturday P started to put away things that weren't needed anymore as well as folding all the empty boxes (bathtub, IKEA, tiles etc.) while I painted the bathrooms. On our trip to the Home Depot, where we needed to grab some painting supplies we also grabbed a Christmas tree and a three pack of white poinsettias. The poinsettias were an impulse buy, I have never bought one before. I thought they might look nice on our dining room table and make the space look less construction zone and more like a livable space. They are planted in three old glass vases I had floating around. I used marble chips on the bottom of each vase and filled the rest with potting soil, both were leftover from some gardening project years ago. The little merry x-mas cut out was hanging on a present my parents gave me some time ago. We now have three live plants in the house, I really hope I won't forget watering them...

What are you doing to prepare your home for the holidays?

PS. Happy Hanukkah to everyone who celebrates it! :)

PPS. Can you spot where I missed cleaning up before taking my photos?

PPPS.  Fun fact in German poinsettias are called Wheinachtsstern meaning Christmasstar.

 

advent wreaths

Another thing I love about the time leading up to Christmas are advent wreaths. I like the idea of counting down the weeks until Christmas eve with burning down candles but I have to admit the history of where the tradition came from was a mystery to me. It is all explained in the wiki article I linked to. Last year I bought the Gloria candle holder (No.1) by Muuto at the Design Within Reach Outlet and like that I can use it as a regular candle holder as well as turning it into an advent candle holder, if you put only four candles in it.  Because I like non traditional wreaths or in this case candle holders I made a little round up of my favorites. All of them can be used year round, with the exception of No. 8, and pimped to make them look a little more like Christmas. I especially love No. 4 made out of copper pipes by Iris who writes the German blog Inspirationsquelle. I want to make one myself but I don't know if that will happen this year...

Of course I have another little story accompanying this post and it is about the word wreath. It is one of those words that I have read many times but never heard anyone actually say it out loud for a while after moving to the US, so I made up my own pronunciation in my head. When the time finally came to use wreath in a sentence I totally butchered it and my friend had no idea what I was talking about. Same happened with the words albeit and subpoena ;)

This year I only set up my Gloria candle holder again with four candles but haven't had the time to pimp it. Do you have an advent wreath at home? If you do what does it look like?

1. gloria candle holder by muuto 2. fenomen candle ikea 3. espresso mugs by klarna  

4. diy made out of copper piping by inspirationsquelle 5. string candle holder by ferm living  

6. kubus candle stick by lassen 7. illumina advent by kähler 

8. concrete candle holder by dixie  9. ribbon candle holder by georg jensen

diy advent calendars

To get myself in the spirit of Christmas I thought I will post every day until Christmas, except for the weekends, almost like an advent calendar. I am not sure how many of you got an advent calendar when you grew up from your parents as I am not sure how customary it is in the US. My Mom made a calendar for me when I was a little kid from which she would hang twenty four little packets that contained candies, chocolates and of course licorice every year. Even as an adult I still get the same calendar when I am going home for the holidays, although it will only contain as many packets as days are left until Christmas. This year my Mom got one from my sister and me for her birthday, which was on December 1st. I had the idea but my poor sister had to make the calendar ;) There are so many great DIY ideas for calendars out there, it inspired me to get creative myself next year and make one for P.

I might have mentioned it before but another random fact about me is that I worked in a chocolate factory for a couple of weeks in the summer after finishing high school. I can tell you working in a chocolate factory is nothing like working for Willy Wonka. First assignment was working in the advent calendar production, I was sitting at a conveyor belt where the calendars would pass by me and my job was to stamp each one with the date. After I mastered that I worked myself up to quality control of delicious nougat chocolates. One or the other reject (for example one that had an air bubble in the chocolate covering) might have found its way into my mouth.

Have you ever gotten an advent calendar this year or did you give one to somebody else?

1. printable advent calendar by mr. printables 2. recycled tin can calendar by skip to my lou 3. matchbox advent calendar by draw! pilgrim 4. advent calendar by lovely things 

5. pottery barn calendar from years back 6. toilet paper roll calendar by morning creativity 

7. color dipped glasses advent calendar by brigitte magazine 

8. advent calendar by delia creates

unexpected ikea christmas shopping

Last weekend we had to make an Ikea run to get some Ribba picture frames. (On a side note they are, in my opinion, the best option if you are looking for inexpensive picture frames that don't look cheap at all.) When we got close to the cash registers I noticed that they already started selling Christmas decorations and of course I had to browse the Christmas section. I can't believe the year is already nearing its end...

The following made it into our shopping cart and ultimately home

1. Stråla lights 2. Yrsnö toadstool ornaments 3. Yrsnö star ornaments
4. Yrsnö reindeer ornaments 5. Stråla pendant lamp

The wreaths didn't make it home because for the silver one, which made it into our shopping cart briefly, I had no use even though it would look nice somewhere without the bow or a different colored one. And sadly they didn't have the one on the right on the last picture at the store.

6. Ysrnö shiny wreath 7. Ysrnö willow wreath

Have you already started to shop for Christmas decorations? Or even started decorating for the holidays?

happy halloween!

Happy Halloween!

This is our house yesterday morning after our first snowstorm. The snow is mostly gone now. Still can't believe it really snowed...

o tannenbaum

Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten!

This year we decided not to fly to Germany to spend the holidays with our family so we got our very first christmas tree. Most of our decoration we bought on our last trip to IKEA but we also had a bunch of ornaments from our first attempt to decorate a tree which got foiled after we both came down with the flu. We still need more ornaments maybe even in a bright color but our collection will hopefully grow over the years.

Yes, I do love my hometown...