Rustic & Vintage Touches for Holiday Dining

As "Our Merry Little Vintage Christmas" theme rolls on, it's time to show you some holiday JOY in our Dining Room...

Like our Mantel and Staircase, we continued the same vintage feel into the Dining Room while adding in a few rustic touches.  Let's take a look at our sideboard....

In the center, I placed our large antique breadboard from Bachmans as a backdrop.  On top, I layered on a rustic barn star and "JOY" wood letters I bought at Michael's and spray painted with Rustoleum's gold metallic spray paint.

I kept the wine tasting station on the sideboard in case we use it for any entertaining.  I decked it out with a vintage metal ampersand, our DIY antique spoon napkin rings, and my favorite- ANTLERS!!!

I still loved using this antique wood caddy as a wine rack, felt perfect with the vintage/ rustic feel!  I added in a few ornaments, pine cones, red holiday ribbon, and vintage number buttons. 

I still think my favorite detail is this antique window's peak.  It is rustic and somewhat gothic, just adds to the authentic look and feel.

Above our sideboard (and yes I know these pictures are terrible, I need to learn techniques for dim lighting) I hung 2 smaller wreaths in each window with ornaments, matching ribbon, and more vintage number buttons.

Above all the windows, I used gold and natural branches.  I hung ornaments from the branches and weaved ribbon around the larger windows. 

I decorated our pendant light with more natural branches and some faux berry branches from JoAnne's.  I hung more ornaments and pine cones here as well.

Lastly, over in the corner we have an antique wire basket where I placed my antique table linens with the mini bread boards I got from Diana at Our Vintage Home Love.  I wrapped the basket with gold ribbon and dropped in some pine cones that I lightly coated with spray paint to make them shine a little more.

 

So, that's it so far in the Dining Room.  I know you might be wondering about the table, well ME TOO!  I haven't come up with a fun table scape or centerpiece just yet, so stay tuned! 

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Well, that wraps up day 4 of Christmas Decor week.  Hope to see you tomorrow for the BIG FINALE!
 I'm sure you know what that means, it's time for THE TREE!!! 

Time to link up!  Come join the party!

A Merry Message Along Our Staircase

Forget the stair banister decorations, I am LOVING the stairs themselves thanks to this merry little message!

After seeing the "T'was the Night Before Christmas" staircase at this year's Holiday Idea House, I knew I had to spruce up our steps with a cute holiday message too!

Their version was made with laminated paper, ribbon, and stencils....

 Hmmm... that sounded somewhat time consuming to me, so I opted to skip stenciling and print out our message on cardstock paper (yep, hit the 'Easy' button).  I started with this vintage french music sheet graphic I found here on The Graphics Fairy. 

I stretched it a little bit to a 12.5"x 5"size and added our "And Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Now" text on seven separate sheets to cover the seven middle stairs in our staircase.

After printing and cutting, Alex measured out the the centered placement for each step.

In order to preserve the paint, we used 3M Command Adhesive Poster Strips opposed to regular tape to adhere the paper to each riser (at least we hope they work as well as they say in commercials we'll be re-painting them in January).

I also decorated our banister.  Instead of green garland, I used dark red velvet ribbon with gold and bronze ornaments.

I also added in gold and natural branches with a few snow covered pine cones.

The staircase is front and center when you enter our home. So this is what you see when you walk through the door...

Feels fun and merry right away!!!
What do you think? I love that it matches the vintage feel of our mantel as well!

Alas, it still isn't nearly as cool as what we did with our stairs last Christmas (but how the heck can we top that?)!
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Time to link this up! Come join the party!

Centsational Girl- December 12th!

Our Merry Little Vintage Christmas Mantel

I'm so happy to share our Christmas mantel today!  It's also the first glimpse at our overall decor theme for this holiday season.  I added in a lot of vintage elements into most of our decor so it has an overall rustic and cozy feel.  Because of that, I ended up calling this year our...

Merry Little Vintage Christmas

(PS- Click here to see how we built this mantel DIY style for under $100 and mounted up the TV!)

When it was time to start decorating for the Christmas season, I was feeling very inspired by a few of the new antiques Alex found for me.

Like the vintage croquet set he found in Traverse City and this antique cast iron coal bucket.  I added some birch firewood to the coal bucket, I love the rustic look of birch logs!

I used my antique metal light bulb covers with gold candles inside on each end of the mantel.

I included oversized jingle bells as decorative ornaments along with these cute glass bulbs with strips of printed book text inside that I picked up at Finch's Boutique over the weekend (made by Dr. Von Berke).

As the centerpiece to the mantel, I used one of the croquet mallets tucked in with green garland, gold branches, and rustic red & gold ribbon.  Sort of fun and unexpected!

On the left side, I put three of the vintage croquet mallets in a tin floor vase along with a metal lantern, birch candle, and a couple croquet balls (Rocco keeps pawing at the croquet balls, at least I know who the culprit is if they go missing).

I always like to have a seasonal message along our mantel and this year I made it myself!  I cut out oval shapes from white card stock and used a stencil to create the letters.  Then, I just hung each letter from twine with ornament hooks and added in more ornaments in bronze & gold colors.

On each side, I have the linen-like stockings I made weighted by my torn book stacks wrapped with gold ribbon (click here for the DIY stocking tutorial).

Here's an overall glance again.

So, what do you think of our Merry Little Vintage Christmas Mantel???

I know I am a fan!  It feels just so cute and cozy!  It only gets even better when it becomes WARM and cozy....

(Sigh) I just love the warmth that Christmas brings to our home!

See you tomorrow for our Banister and Stairwell (Merry Little Vintage) Christmas Decor!

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Linking this post up!  Come visit the party!

Southern Hospitality



Christmas Kickoff! DIY Red Linen Stripe Christmas Stockings

It's time to kickoff a full week of Holiday Decor! Weeee-Hooooo...errr... I mean HO HO HO!!!

 I have been feverishly working on all of our Christmas decorations for the past week (or two?) and I am soooo excited to show it all off!  I thought with all the Holiday Linky Parties going on that I would break up the posts by 'decor' category and have a holiday post each day this week.  So, I hope you're feeling jolly because there is going to be a ho-ho-ho lotta Christmas this week on Hammers and High Heels!
 On Dasher to the first project....

I made our own Christmas Stockings!
I feel so Martha (Stewart) right now! Take a look at my cute striped linen-like stockings...

I love the more rustic/ vintage feel of these stockings compared to our brighter (and fuzzier) stockings we used last year.  I was inspired to make them after finding these vintage linen stockings on Dreamy Whites.

Aren't they beautiful?  I just had to have something like them for our own home, and I they were super easy to make!  I was even able to use some left over linen like fabric that was just sitting by my sewing machine.

Here's how I made them...

I started by tracing the shape of my old stockings onto two layers of the fabric. I did two stockings in the larger size for Alex and I, then two smaller ones for our pups Rocco & Sadie.  Once I had the pattern mapped out, I pinned both layers of fabric together so it would be ready for cutting & sewing.

 Next, I cut out the stocking shapes and they were ready for sewing.

I hopped on my sewing machine (no pictures, sorry!) and sewed along all sides except the top opening.

 Here is a look at the stockings after sewing and ironing.

 Then, it was time to make the red stripe designs!  I used fabric paint, foam brushes, and blue painters tape for this step.

 I lined up the painters tape to create the stripe design on each stocking.  I planned to make one thick stripe on the larger stockings and two thinner stripes on the smaller ones.

I mixed my red fabric paint with a little black paint to make a darker red color that would coordinate with our holiday decor.  Then I used a foam brush and applied the fabric paint to the stockings.

 Fabric painting complete!

Once the paint was dry, I removed the blue painters tape.

Here they are!  Some of the lines weren't perfect, but I think it adds to the rustic/ handcrafted look!

I folded a cuff at the top of the larger stockings and hung them my our mantel.  I even got to use my torn book stack/ stocking holders!!!! 

I am so happy with the character these handmade stockings added to our mantel decor!  Hmmm, are you curious about the rest of the mantel???  I hope so because that is going to be revealed in tomorrow's Holiday Decor post!

Hope to see you again tomorrow!
Make sure you are joining all the great Holiday Linky Parties like these.....

Centsational Girl- December 12th!

Head Over Heels Friday: The Best News We've Heard This Year

"May I have your attention please, I have an important annoucement to make, all of you, stop what you are doing and listen....

CANNONBALL!!!!!"

Ron Burgundy quote from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

IT'S OFFICIAL FOLKS! THE TORNADO DAMAGE REPAIRS ARE DONE!!!!

Our contractor just came by our house with the last invoice and to review all the final interior work. Towards the end of his visit, this is how the conversation went...

"Carla, Alex, you're all set" ~Kevin (our contractor from Dry Tech)

"So...that's it? We are done after this then, no more paperwork, invoices, insurance follow-ups, no more steps after this?" ~ Carla

"Yes, last invoice, check, everything is now complete" ~Kevin

I couldn't believe it!  I actually wasn't even expecting this to be the end, I figured there was something else we would have to do or follow up with.  Honestly, yes having a hole in our house wasn't fun at all, but the worst part of all this was dealing with all the people, follow-ups, paperwork, timing etc- and it had been going on for the last 6 months!  Well, we are free finally, FREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I'm totally Head Over Heels for that!

Now, I can promise you won't be hearing anymore complaints/ posts related to the May tornado ever again!!! Hooray!!!!  We will still have some 'afters' coming soon of the redone rooms!

Oh, and our house is now filled with many leather bound books and smells of rich mahogany (another Anchorman reference for good measure).

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Have a great weekend everybody!  I'll still be crazy busy finishing up our Christmas decorations for all the linky parties next week.  If you are local make sure you swing by Finch's Holiday Boutique & check out my handmade creations for sale!