Enjoy the cozy charm of a cottage style Christmas with these fun and festive ideas.

Crafty Red & White Christmas Ornaments

Create these cheery red-and-white themed ornaments using thrifted class balls and scraps of on-hand sewing and craft materials.

Decorate a Mini-Tree with Vintage Earrings

Mini trees are popular for small spaces and small children. Instead of using expensive or breakable ornaments, try this fun trick of using vintage clip-on earrings instead.

Cottage style is the perfect partner to a charming, homey Christmas. I sincerely hope you enjoy yours!

Happy Holidays!

Make your Halloween cottage-style fun with this cauldron full of fun recipes, decorating and crafts.

Halloween Chandelier Shades

Nothing says Halloween like a chandelier dripping with spiderwebs, so what better way to celebrate than create these cute spider-web patterned chandelier shades.

Halloween Boo Banner

This charming, vintage style banner is easy to make and fun to display using the free downloadable letter templates and regular paper in your printer.

Pumpkin Carving Design Ideas

Carving pumpkins is one of the few Halloween crafts that I get really excited about. It's fun, it's family-friendly, and it's a great way to play with artistic ideas. Here's a few I've come up with.

How To Carve A Pumpkin

Of course, a good carving starts with good tools and materials. For basic pumpkin carving instructions, check out this tutorial.

Indian Medallion Pumpkin

Inspired by Indian block print fabric, the medallion on this pumpkin is easy to carve freehand with just a linoleum cutter. As always, no pattern required.

Monogrammed Pumpkin

We monogram sheets and sweaters, why not pumpkins? Give Halloween a typographical twist and personalize a pumpkin for yourself or a friend with this easy, freehand technique.

Don't let your love of cottage style keep you from a fun Halloween. Just jump in with a cottage spin and enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

I promised I'd let you know as soon as I found out whether I'm having a boy or a girl....well, I found out today.

It's a girl! She's not due to make an appearance until October, but at least now I know.

Finally, I can shop!!! :-)

Thank you everyone for your sweet thoughts and wishes on my last post. It's so sweet of you all and I really appreciate it. And I am very excited to start working on the nursery as soon as I find out girl or boy. In the meantime, I'm feeling a need to nest in my master bedroom.

I haven't done much with my bedroom since we moved in, and as a default I've been using all white bedding this year. It's fresh and clean, but it's leaving me feeling a little drab.

So I did some yardwork for my Mom to raise a little cash, went on a fabric hunting expedition and found this great combination of florals. I brought home a couple of samples and draped them over the bed to see how they would look. The darker one would be the quilt and the lighter one ruffly shams.

I love how they make the Battenburg shams look. I thought I was tired of them, but next to the florals they look so pretty I fell in love with them again. And the best part is that when I went back, the fabric was 35% off, so by using stuff from my stash and getting fabric on sale, the whole project will only cost $100.

For those of you who are curious, I did also finally decide to refinish the bed. I know it's gorgeous and expensive oak. (Well, it wasn't to me, I got it secondhand. But it was when it was new.) But I want a lighter look. I mocked up a couple of options. They're rough, but basically I'm deciding between a weathered pickled finish or painted white and antiqued. Plus I'm also going to paint the room a purplish gray color. As always, opinions are welcome! :-)

I suppose it's a little nuts to work on my bedroom when I have a little one on the way, but I just know how much it will mean to me, and the baby will love the room they get no matter what! How's that for practical?

Hi everybody!

There's something I have been wanting to talk to you all about. I know that some of you noticed that there was a couple of months or so where I dropped off the face of the earth and didn't post. Then I just sort of started posting again and didn't mention being absent.

Well, there's a reason for that! I was nauseous for a few months there, so nauseous that I couldn't be at my computer for more than a few minutes without getting seasick. And then I wasn't nauseous, but I wasn't quite ready to talk about it yet.

But now I am.

And yes, if you've already guessed: I'm expecting! Tee hee! Our little bundle of joy is expected in mid-October. Of course, I'm dying to start on the new nursery, but I'm waiting until next month when I find out whether we're having a girl or a boy. I'll let you know.

Yay!