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. 

Click on the link for A Lauer Christmas Home Tour Part 1 - Oh Holy Night, Front Room and Inside Entry

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:

• Poinsettia Book Page Ornament for your Christmas Tree
• Child Book Page Ornament Tutorial  <== KID CRAFT ORNAMENT TUTORIAL
• Glass Book Page Square Shaker Ornament 
• Book Page Snowman
• Angel Wing Christmas Tree Ornament
• Table Top Christmas Trees
• Golden Star Book Page Christmas Tree Ornament

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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Hand Painted Holiday - Wooden Halloween Raven

I was spending some time today in a small local second hand boutique in town. In a corner of a store they had this unique wooden blackbird with wire feet. I could hear him now "squawk, take me home". I picked him up, my fingers rolled down his back and I inspected the distressing and the few flaws of a life or two lived before in someone else's care. He was simply beautiful just the way he was, sleek and simple. But, I felt something missing if he was to fit into my home. He needed a fresh start, a start with a new look and a makeover idea popped into my head.

With the fantastic VOC free, Non-Toxic paints I have been using lately I thought it would be fun to put some in an empty henna cone and use the fine tip to draw with the chalk paint, Alamo White from Shabby Paints. This sweet and simple black bird was transformed into Wolfrum the Raven overnight.

Wolfrum now sports some fantastic detailing from his head to his tail feathers.

A simple heart on this tail feathers states he will be adored every Halloween as he makes his aperance in our home for the season.

Thank you so much for reading and viewing this post. Please leave a comment below letting me know your thoughts on this project.

Santa Baby Snowman - Book Pages

PHOTO POST! I have a lot of these this time of year... to much to do so little time! I am sure you feel the same way. Santa Baby Book Page Snowman! This adorable guy stands about 12" tall and is so cute! Who doesn't love a Snowman dressed like a Santa?

Certified Helmar Educator

Dollar Store Holiday Decor - It's a Candy Can Christmas in the Kitchen

 Good Morning! Today is Dollar store Decor Day! Check out all these goodies I found at my local Dollar Tree.

 I added some candy canes and large glittered candy ornaments to this centerpiece.

These pot holders were at the Dollar Store too and I made hearts with the fake candy canes and added the glittered candy as a bow. 

Just added a glittered bow and some candy ornaments to these glass jars. 

Look at these cute towels and the heart candy ornament hanging in the middle. 

Here is the whole kitchen. I used their ribbons to hang from the tops of the cabinets with a glittered bow and some of the candy ornaments too. Topping them all off with the wrapping paper in the center of the cabinets.

Here is a close up of the cabinet decor.

 The inside of the top of the cabinets. These are Command Strips Hooks, small ones for the Christmas lights strands.

Thanks for looking! Please leave a comment below or follow my blog on the right hand column. ----->

Certified Helmar Educator

Helmar 450 Quick Dry and Decorating on a Dollar for Easter/Spring

Hello everyone,

I hope your weekend it going well. I have so much to do I apologize for there being a week in between posts.

Here is an Large Robins nest project I created for a window display. It is made from Ostrich Eggs and the nest is put together with Helmar 450 Quick Dry.

I just love this stuff. I used moss, feathers and floral stems to glue down onto a plate shaped basket from the $1 store.

I can see this as a great center piece!

 Pin It

Better Late then Never - Christmas Book Page Trees

Better late then never! Here are some images of some book page trees I made this year for the Christmas Season. Enjoy!

These of course were put together with Helmar Adhesives and went together with ease. I used Helmar 450 Quick Dry all over a paper mache tree form to hold the book pages on and I applied Helmar Gemstone Glue with a brush to adhere all the glitter. 

Making the Holiday Colorful with Helmar and Faber-Castell

Making the Holiday Colorful with Faber-Castell

Good Day everyone!
Today I am so excited to share with you my experience working with some of the wonderful products by Faber-Castell and Helmar together. This decoration you just lay on the branch of your tree. If you make it out of cardstock it can be hung by adding a ribbon or cord onto the back.




But first here is a fun fact about Faber-Castell ... 2011 is a milestone year for Faber-Castell USA as they celebrate the 250th Anniversary of Faber-Castell and 35 years of Creativity for Kids! TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS!!!! WHO DOES THAT? Faber-Castell does, that's who! Can you imagine being part of such a great business/company that you have the opportunity to celebrate 250 year anniversary? Kudos to you Faber-Castell and by the way your products rock! I love working with them!

To see a tutorial of how to make this please visit Making the Holiday Colorful with Faber-Castell Helmar's blog. There you will find inspiration daily and some wonderful projects and product.