It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like…Summer!

As most of you know by now, I absolutely love to decorate and redecorate our home…I truly am in my “Happy Place” when I’m able to switch out to a new fresh look.  Such has been the case for the last couple of weeks when I diligently worked on putting my Easter decorations away and redecorating with some summer decor accents.  At first, I had told myself that I was going to use ALL of my red and white gingham decor pieces–the ones I had used for our Family Reunion. I came up with that idea after one of my YouTube subscribers has asked me how I set up my kitchen island for buffets or dinner parties.  That brought to mind the red and white gingham, mason jar, and gerber daisy decor and hence my decision to switch back over to that for summertime.  I did change that family reunion decor up a bit when I decorated though, I ended up using just a touch of red and white gingham and throwing in pops of yellow and red here and there. Come along with me as I walk you through all that I created.  Let me start by sharing a YouTube video that I created and where I show and tell about how I came up with the Family Reunion decor and accent pieces, talk about how I might set up my island for a buffet, and I demonstrate how to make a quick and easy centerpiece. 🙂

I was now ready to start the redecorating frenzy–And trust me, it is a frenzied event when I go to switch my decor out.  Thank goodness for Chris and his muscles and good knees, as he helps me by carrying bins up from the basement. The very first place I started to redecorate was out at the mailbox on the Monday right after Easter. 🙂 Here are a few pictures of my mailbox design, and then I’ll share my YouTube video in which I show you how I put said design together. 🙂

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Next, I moved onto the other outdoor decor.  I switched out the wreath on the front lamp post, changed out my flags, switched out the gazing ball for a red one, and recreated the Little Red Wagon arrangement, finishing up by replacing the front door wreath:

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Here is the little red wagon in the evening hours:

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And here is my YouTube video where take you for a little walk down the front sidewalk and then I demonstrate how I decorated my red wagon:

All righty, now that the outside was all switched out, I proceeded into the house and started redecorating in there.  The very first thing that I worked on in there was the centerpiece that sits on the kitchen island, and to make a copious amount of bows to be used on our staircase.   Here is a video where I share how I put that together along with showing you items that I purchased from CraftOutlet.com.; it also includes a bow tutorial.

My next task was a pretty large one, it was time to change over some and create other new centerpieces.  So the first thing that I did was go around and collect all of the Easter centerpieces and arrangements and congregate them onto my hub, the kitchen island.  Here are all of the arrangements that I had made for Easter:

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I was sad to have to deconstruct these beauties, I had worked hard on them. 🙂  Here is a video where I show you how I took these apart and packed them away and how I created my new centerpieces for the summertime.

Here are some pictures of the family room, kitchen, kitchen eating area, and powder room redecorated for summertime:

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Here is a video where I show you how I put together this ^^ sweet little arrangement:

Now it was time to move on into the Living and Dining rooms–I didn’t do too, too much in there because I decided that I would leave my “generic” decor with the green accents in there for summer.  I did recreate my dining room lantern centerpiece and I created a new little arrangement in a mercury glass mason jar..first pictures of those arrangements and the other living/dining room decor, and then a video showing you how I created both arrangements. 🙂

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And, I was finally finished…This process took me a couple of weeks to complete.  Here is a video where I give an entire house tour showing you all of the redecorated spaces up close and in detail (and I even venture upstairs and do a quick little tour up there as well):

All righty, that does it for now…As y’all can see, I’ve been a busy lady over here in Virginia.  We are ready to go (decorating wise) for summer, and it has been feeling like summer as of late too, temperatures have already been in the 80’s and 90’s! Yikes!! Welcome to summertime in Virginia…100 degrees with 100 percent humidity….Not even kidding about that…lol. 😉

Here are a couple of more shots of the house after dark, Chris did such a fabulous job on the outdoor lighting!

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~Until next time, y’all take good care! ❤

**In crafting there are no mistakes, just unique creations**

~Arlynn ❤

Christmas Switch-Out: Living & Dining Rooms, Outdoor Decor, and *Bonus* Snow Doggies

Ding, ding, ding!! 😉 I am finally finished with all of my redecorating tasks for this Christmas Season, whew, that was a bit of a marathon this year.  Well, if truth be told, it is every year, but the good thing about the passage of time is that it helps one to forget the difficult parts of tasks and only remember the good feeling that one gets when said tasks are completed. So as I do every year, I had approached this year’s redecorating with the same fervor that I do every year. 🙂

I will give you links to my two YouTube videos where I show and tell you how I completed all of the decorating and in addition, I provide a few tutorials–two lantern centerpieces and one of a centerpiece around my Grandma’s lamp in the dining room.  Here are a few pictures of what is featured in the first video link…”Episode #4″:

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Here are a few pictures of the second link I will provide for you below.  In this I will show you how I decorated the outdoor spaces (in the freezing cold weather…gracious I was shivering while trying to talk…haha).

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All righty…Here are those two links—**Stay tuned though** as I will also share some pictures of the pups in the little snowstorm that we got the other day as well as show you a little video of them romping around a bit. 🙂

 

 

We got about 3 inches of snow the other day, and our 3 pups had a great time playing around in it–and are still having fun going outside and just plopping down in it.  The temperatures have been so cold that the snow is still laying pretty much where it fell.

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They had a blast playing out there, we didn’t get too much snow, but, it was enough to provide some entertainment and a couple of good romps for all three of them–Sophie and Gracie are both 9 years old now, they acted like they were 9 months old…haha…Here is a little video show you the sheer joy a few snowflakes can provide:

All righty, I’ll close out this little post, I have another thing to share with you in the coming days, I made a new cream burlap Valentine’s Day wreath to hang out on our front door and will provide you with the tutorial in my next post. 🙂  Here is a sneak peek at the final product…

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I hope y’all are staying dry and warm, the temperature on my computer says that it is a whopping 8 degrees outside at the moment (very cold for these parts).  Temps are supposed to rise later this week, but, for now…brrrrrrrr…I think I’ll go and cuddle up with one of the Newfs and get me a nice hot cup of tea. 🙂

Until next time, y’all take good care!

**In crafting there are no mistakes, just unique creations…**

~Arlynn ❤

Seasonal Mailbox Decor

I was so excited to move into our new home a few years ago for many reasons not the least of which was where our mailbox was located and that in our neighborhood it seemed to be a *thing* to decorate on and around mailboxes. YaY!!   Of course this idea fell right into my wheelhouse so the creative juices started to flow and I started to plan out how I would be changing my mailbox decor as the Season (or in most cases the months) change.  The first thing that I came up with was that I was going to utilize all of my wooden hanging signs that I’d been collecting for over a decade.  I used to hang them on a bracket off of the front porch of our other home.  Here is a link to where you can find the sign bracket.  I do not use the bracket on my mailbox, but you could use it on your front porch, on a fence, or on any number of other places. Here is a picture of the bracket–that is not my sign though..;)

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Here is a picture of all of my signs save for the wooden heart that is hanging out on my mailbox right now:

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If you’d like to purchase them they can be found at here at PiperClassics.com…

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All of the signs come with little chains attached to the top of them so we screwed little hooks into the underneath wooden portion of our mailbox.  This made the signs super easy to change out.

 

 

 

 

You’ll also notice that our mailbox has a trough that juts out of the back; that is a pretty spiffy little addition and it provides me with another receptacle with which to decorate. 🙂

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I found this solar mason jar to sit in that trough at Home Depot, gosh it does look pretty in the evening hours.

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For a little while, I had two of them sitting in and on the trough…

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I’ll now show you how I change out the mailbox decor as we go through the months and seasons of the year. 🙂

Both of these pictures were both taken the very first January that we resided in our new home:

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There are our Newfoundland doggies Sophie and Samson. ❤

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November: **I received Mr. Turkey this past Christmas, so he’ll take his rightful place on the mailbox next November**IMG_4228

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And then back to January again:IMG_3570

And just the other day, I changed things out for February:IMG_4198

For years and years…actually for decades…when we lived in our other home, our mailbox was located across the street from our house and it was situated immediately next to another mailbox.  Its location didn’t lend itself to festive decorating hence my excitement about being able to decorate this new mailbox.  My hope is that this silly mailbox might provide folks with a warm, welcoming feeling as they enter our driveway; as y’all know, bringing forth a “warm & welcoming” feeling through my decorating is always my goal. 🙂

Until next time, y’all take good care! ❤

**In crafting there are no mistakes, just unique creations**

~Arlynn ❤