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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Handmade for the Holiday's Christmas in a Deployment Box - "Home for the Holiday"

 Welcome to the final day of the 4th Annual Handmade Holidays Blog Hop! We hope you enjoyed the projects from the last 2 days! A few years ago we were looking online for handmade gift ideas and thought it would be great if there was a resource dedicated JUST to handmade gift ideas. Enter the Handmade Holidays hop! We've gathered over 100 of our creative blogger friends in the craft industry as well as some of our fellow product manufacturers to bring you a plethora of inspiring gift ideas you can make now to give to your friends, family, and colleagues. Pin and bookmark these ideas for this holiday season and to use throughout the year! Each day of the hop features approximately 30 gift projects and you can "hop" from one blog to another to check them all out.

 Grab your favorite beverage and sit back and relax... Here is the gift of "Home for the Holidays" for a "Christmas in a Deployment Box"

1. Get a box from the post office or any box will do.

And find the glued corner joint

Unfold the box.

Cut one side off so there are now 3 panels. Place packing tape or duct tape, I chose white duct tape to go over the vertical folds that are left. (This is for shipping).

2. Print out photos of your Christmas Tree I deleted some of the excess background to keep it from wasting ink. Enlarge it to fill your normal paper. This paper is a shimmer to give the tree some sparkle... lie our overly used is always filled with glitter. Print 3 regular and 3 reverse (all the same size)

Here is the original image:

3. Print out images of your flooring and other home areas you wish to add. I chose our fireplace decorated with Christmas. The flooring is special too. This flooring was designed and installed by my hubby and I . It is special for us so I know this detail will mean something to him.

 Today I am using Scrapbook-Adhesives.com's supplies. Here is an image of my adhesives, there are some I didn't get to use but I do love them all.

4. Find your placement on the box. I have one tree cut out for here for a visual placement. The tree must go on a vertical fold.

5. Trace your original cut out. Then flip it over and trace it on the other 3 of the opposite printouts.

Then stack them all up so the outlines are suppose to be matching, 3 right side up and 3 right side down. This way they match and line up more clearly, Trees can be hard to match up when hand cut with all those little branches.

6. Choose a color of cardstock for your wall color. I used 4 sheets, 3 hole and one to cut into strips to place over the vertical folds and adhere, I used Scrapbook-Adhesives.com's E-Z Runner. This color matches the color of our walls in our living room.

7. Cut out the flooring to fit on the 3 lower folded flaps and adhere them with Scrapbook-Adhesives.com's E-Z Runner. Like I said before this flooring was a project the hubby and I worked on together and we love how it turned out. It's a nice detail to add by using photos of our own floor.

8. Cut out your accessories like the fireplace and wall art. I used Scrapbook-Adhesives.com's 3D Foam Squares to pop it off the surface a bit. Don't go crazy. Remember it needs to fold up. Keep this one off the vertical folds.

9. Now lets get rolling on our POP UP tree! I am excited about this one! Place one of your 6 trees you cut out in your cutter, WE WILL NOT BE CUTTING! We will be folding. I lined up the bottoms flush with my cutter's guide and then shifted the trees from left to right till the very top of the star was along the edge I was using to help me fold it.

Once lined up I gently worked the cardstock up words until I got a nice fold right down the center point, the top of the star.

Repeat for the rest of your trees. Notice that one side is wider then the other. That is okay because the bottoms and tops will match up I promise.

Using some of Scrapbook-Adhesive.com's Crafty Power Tape I adhered one side of a tree to the same sized side (reverse print out).

Repeat this until you have them all connected and it looks like this.

10. Presents!!!! The real gift of this is giving some our our "Home for the Holidays" this box is for a deployed spouse who won't be here for Christmas. This gives him images of our actual home. The presents are just rectangles with 1/4" fold at the bottom to adhere them to the floor of the box. They have a cute little bow on the tops of them. This still allows it to fold up.

One of the best things about these presents is we have written things we love about our Daddy on the backs. There are 25 gifts so he can read one a day in December till Christmas. You don't have to do the Advent if you don't have the time to send it that far in advance to your service member or college student.

11) Use Scrapbook-Adhesives.com Creative Photo Corners in gold, to "frame" your wallet photos on the wall. I have soccer ones in there because we are sending them to him, however before I mail this it will have our new family wallet photos in the box. Nice thing about the photo corners... you can easily switch out your photos.

12. Write your message. Our's is private and will be written with the kid's help once we can sit down. So it's not pictured here.

13. How to fold it up, it's ready to ship! Make sure all your presents are flattened up and slowly close the right section checking on your presents as you close it. When you get to the tree. I laid it down flat and the side of the box goes right down the middle of the tree.

Then fold the left side with the wallets on it over to the right. Do it slowly checking on your gifts and the tree. Tape, label and ship! Mark on the outside of the box 'OPEN CAREFULLY HERE" with an arrow to the side that can be unsealed. My hubby get's our packages and mail in about 2.5 weeks. So if you want to do this for your's plan ahead for the shipping or leave out the advent part.

My hubby get's our packages and mail in about 2.5 weeks. So if you want to do this for your's plan ahead for the shipping or leave out the advent part.

Let's take a look once again:

The beauty of this is it could lay flat and hung on the wall of their quarters or it could have the floor folded up 90 degrees and sit on a dresser or even a windowsill! Little space for a little bit of "Home for the Holidays".

God bless all our service men and women who can not be with their loved ones this season of joy, love and happiness.


 Are you ready for lots more creative handmade gift ideas and projects?? Follow along on our blog hop! Simply click on each of the links below to be taken to that post with additional information and photos on how to create a handmade gift project. Have fun and pin away! Clearsnap  Westcott  Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L  Ellison Educational Equipment  ICE Resin  Neat and Tangled  Therm O Web  Walnut Hollow  Elizabeth Craft Designs  Rowland Technologies  Graphic 45  Hydrangea Hippo   Pink and Main  The Buckle Boutique  Tami Mayberry Art & Design - Tami Mayberry  Jamie Dougherty - Jamie Dougherty Designs  Elizabeth Craft Designs - Raquel Mason  Meagan - The Charming Farmer  Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L - Angela Ploegman   Carolyn Dube - A Colorful Journey  Pink and Main - Mistyana Wright  The Buckle Boutique - Niki Wilson  It’s Sew Lorine - Lorine Mason   ‎ Therm O Web - Andy Knowlton  L. Grace Lauer - Uniquely Grace  Clearsnap - Meihsia Liu Oh Snap Lizzie - Lizzie Sanchez Graphic 45 - Katie Zoey Ho Charity Wings ICE Resin - Tatiana Allen Polly Carlson - Pieces by Polly Ellison Educational Equipment - Jan Hobbins  RoseRedd Paper Studio - Rochelle Washington a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow our Handmade Holidays Gift Ideas Pinterest board for even more inspiration!

Follow Jennifer Priest of RainMaker Media Works + Hydrangea Hippo's board Handmade Holidays on Pinterest.  

A huge thank you to our sponsors for this hop - please visit their blogs & websites below and follow them. And be sure to come back tomorrow for another 30+ amazing Handmade Gift Ideas!

 

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