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Thursday, December 18, 2014

A Lauer Christmas Home Tour - Cardinals, Candy canes & Burlap - Kitchen, Bath and Dinning Room - Part 2

Good morning readers!

I am thrilled to be adding the Part 2 to this series, A Lauer Christmas Home Tour. One fantastic thing about his is I get to share my new home with my family and friends who have not been able to see it since we now live so far away. 


Today I am honored to be a part of a second Parade of Christmas Home Tours! This home tour has been well organized and generously hosted by Up To Date Interiors. Thank you Kathryn for allowing me to be a part of your special on Bloggers Best homes. 





Now let us get started, grab a cup of tea or coffee and take a few min to come on in, and let me show you around. Enjoy, and please subscribe or find me on my social media and follow, share, pin or comment your thoughts. Thank you for your support!

The Dinning Room

I just love the arches that cross between the dinning room and our back living room. We have two, one very large one with a 10' arch and a smaller one with a 3.5' wide arch. When we bought the house I knew I wanted to put our Christmas Tree there! It was perfect, we only had one tall tree but we had high ceilings in this new home of ours. So this would be a perfect spot to nestle the tree into and with the arch it makes the tree seem taller as it reaches up to the center of the arch.


The decor in the dinning room is a mix between the red and white in the kitchen and the red, gold and burlap in the back living room. 



The center piece is a Better Homes and Garden's candle holder filled with Dollar Tree Ornaments. 



I just love apothecary jars and this one full of sweet candy cane goodness is not exception. It gets decorated for every season or holiday.


Cardinals

Cardinals have a special place in my heart. Luckily they are found everywhere at Christmas time. My Grandfather used to sit in his bed, ill and unable to go outside, and watch the cardinals feed on the bird feeder outside his window. He has left this world now and is up in heaven with his maker. Though it's been over 5 years since his passing, the last days I was able to spend with him was during Christmas when he would tell me all the local cardinal's names as they came to feast outside his window. Cardinals were his favorite and this time of year seeing them everywhere brings him a little closer to me once again. 


In the image above there are also some handmade ornaments a glittered angel, a Christmas Mouse that I made as a child, and in the bottom right corner we have several book page ornaments my kids made this year at a workshop I taught at the local book store. Here are some more links to some other Book page art projects I have worked on this year. The second link is a great tutorial to this fun Kid Craft Ornament
If you want to see more of my Holiday Book Page art and ornaments please check out these links.
2014 Book Page Holiday Creations:

The Powder Room

I always love little surprises when people visit my home and they remember the details. Like decorating the powder room. It's a relatively small space so it doesn't need much to make an impact. 


Some extra flowers and ribbon, a few bows, a Santa hat and some wonderful paper snowflakes my nine year old daughter made for me.


Wrap the lid to the tank like a fancy present. 




The Kitchen


The kitchen is one of my favorite spots during the holidays! I love to bake and cook for entertaining friends and family. A few years ago I stumbled into a Dollar Tree to get something really quick and it happened to be the week they put out all their Christmas items. If you have never shopped there the seasonal items sell out very quickly. As I peeked at all the goodies (yes some on their own look very cheap) I started to see a theme. Something very easy to do, costing very little for an entire room decor and something very sweet (wink). 



I purchased all the rolls of white ribbon with red sequin stripes, red glittered bows, candy ornaments 2/$1.00, bags of 12 plastic candy canes and other tid bits that coordinated including the towel, the gift bags at the top of the cabinets and the white mesh.


The plastic Candy Canes were glued together with hot glue into the shape of a heart and decorated with a larger wrapped candy ornament.



Thank you so much for spending your precious time with me during this holiday season. I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Please leave your comments below, pin, share and follow if you like what you see.

To see Part 1 to this post check it out here:  A Lauer Christmas Home Tour - Oh, Holy Night - Entry way, Banister and Front Room - Part 1



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Facebook: Uniquely Grace
Twitter: Grace Lauer Artist @gracelauer
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Monday, December 15, 2014

Guardian Warrior Angel Christmas Tree Topper - OOAK Male Clay Sculpted figure

I am so excited to finally show you all this creation. A year ago I was in the middle of moving across country when an old friend of mine contacted me with his idea. Due to the move I was unable to create this piece for him last year and now this Guardian Angel of the Lord sits atop his Christmas tree this holiday season!




He is constructed with polymer clay and a wire armature. The armature began looking like this...


His face is hand painted and he has red leather accents. I always have to use some sort of recycled goods in my work so under his clothing can be found a soda bottle with the bottom cut out to create a slender cone to help secure him over the top of the tree.


His wings are based with the same wire armature so they are secured from the inside out. They are covered in 3 kinds of feathers, white goose, white ostrich and marabou feathers. There are over 60 goose feathers in the wings and all are hand trimmed into the shapes you see below. 


He holds a broad sword with the scripture of Luke 2: 8-20.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Here is one more over all look at this OOAK (one of a kind) Guardian Warrior Angel Christmas Tree Topper.


My friend is very pleased with him as am I, especially since I have not carved a human figure since high school... which was long enough ago I won't say how long... LOL!

If you enjoyed this piece please comment below, pin or share I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you all for your support.

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Find me on...
Facebook: Uniquely Grace
Twitter: Grace Lauer Artist @gracelauer
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Sunday, December 14, 2014

A Lauer Christmas Home Tour - Oh, Holy Night - Entry way, Banister and Front Room - Part 1

Merry Christmas Everyone!

This year I am doing something a little different. I will be showing you inside my home this holiday season with a series of posts (Second post - Kitchen, Bath and Dinning Room). We all know the true meaning of Christmas is Christ's birth. This room and space is dedicated to our Lord and Savior. This is a photo heavy post so grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea, cuddle up with your warm blanket by the fireplace and welcome into my home.

 

I would love to give a HUGE thank you to Michelle over at Shelstring who organized this Winter Wonderland Holiday Home Tour blog hop.


Click on the link for A Lauer Christmas Home Tour - Part 2 - Kitchen, Bath and Dinning Room

EDIT 12/18 - Today I am honored to be a part of a second Parade of Christmas Home Tours! This home tour has been well organized and generously hosted by Up To Date Interiors. Thank you Kathryn for allowing me to be a part of your special on Bloggers Best homes. 



The Entry Way

Welcome to my home! The holiday spirit is alive in our house the moment you step up to our front door (the outside will be another post) 
. 

Sometimes all it takes a few small items to spruce up what you all ready have. This vintage mirror was already hanging in our entry and I added some flowers and a crystal ornament. It also happens to be in a good position to reflect our tree in the front room.



This year we changed up the exterior decor and my normal door hanging didn't match so I flipped it around and put it on the inside. It makes for a wonderful welcome to the inside entry.


Our stockings are hung with such care on our banister since our new home doesn't have a fireplace. 




My Hubby left these boots at the front door, probably with no thought of it, when he walked out that door almost three months ago to serve overseas. They have not left this spot. I put an angel on them to remind us to pray for his protection and a magnolia flower which represents "life force" and for him to come home to us here in the South.


The Front Room

In the front room we have our "biggest" tree. We loved this tree in our old house as it stood 9' tall in a two story room with a base of 6' diameter at the bottom. However after our move this year we had issues with it actually touching our ceilings here. So our glorious angel was not able to sit atop our nativity themed tree. However she is on display in the room and we still loved how it turned out.



These lil' decor items hanging from my curtain rod on each side of the window were thrown together with mostly Dollar Tree items and some clearance ribbon from a few Christmases ago. The dollar store had these fantastic clip on magnolias that are all over our tree and since we are now living in the south they have replaced our larger white poinsettias.


We love our books around here so we just could not part with packing them up to have more room to decorate so they have little trinkets, flowers and LED candles mixed right on in. Our favorite book and one of many of our book readings Holiday Tradition is the Polar Express, displayed here next to our angel tree topper that would not fit atop the tree this year in our new home.



The bookcase is adorned with little poinsettias and sweet nativity pieces.


I wanted something a bit different this year then in the past and bringing some scrub oak tree branches from outside in was the perfect thing. These were limbs that were dead already and I took some white spray paint and dusted them all over, added them to the galvanized steel pot and some Dollar Tree poinsettias into the branches. 


We don't have a mantel in our new home so this is where I decorate our "mantel". 


One of my favorite parts in this room aside from the tree is my chalkboard sign and my angel announcing the coming of the Christ Child.


This book page tree is one of the items that are hand crafted. I am a window designer for a book store where I make art and home decorations out of books and this is one of my favorite trees I have made. Just had to keep it. 


The second post to this one is found here: A Lauer Christmas Home Tour - Cardinals, Candy canes & Burlap - Kitchen, Bath and Dinning Room - Part 2



If you want to see more of my Holiday Book Page art and ornaments please check out these links.
2014 Book Page Holiday Creations:
I hope you enjoyed this part of my home tour. Another post with the Living Room, Bathroom, Kitchen, Dining room and Outdoor Decor will be posted up later this week. I hope you return and join me again. Have a happy holidays and a...



I am so honored to be highlighted in this blog hop right along side of these fantastic homes. Please take a moment to relax and view this beautiful Parade of homes with all sorts of styles and colors. Merry Christmas!

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I would love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below, pin an image you like or share with a friend. Thank you for your support and I hope you enjoyed this post.

Find me on...
Facebook: Uniquely Grace
Twitter: Grace Lauer Artist @gracelauer
Instagram: @gracelauer_henna_artist
Pinterest: L. Grace Lauer
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