COUNTRY COTTAGE HERE I COME

Another weekend, come and gone.  We had beautiful weather here, bright sunny skies, and warm temperatures, so we took advantage of the nice weather, and finished hanging our Christmas lights on the outside of the house.  This house is much larger than our last one, so we were very short of lights.  Good thing for us our new ACE hardware had a really great sale on LED lights.  a sting of 70 lights was only 9.00.  So we bought enough to finish the job.

I still want to buy some pine garland to make swags under my windows like I did at the other house, but that will have to wait until we can get to a Walmart later this month.

Not all the weekend was happy.  I would be remiss if I did not mention the terrible tragedy in Paris on Friday.  There is nothing I can say that has not been already said, but I do want to express my heart-felt sorrow for those who lost their lives, and for the families and friends they left behind.  There are no words for the devastation friends and families of the victims are feeling...  they all are in my prayers.

I am finally able to walk without pain again, so Molly was the recipient of several long walks this weekend.  It was enjoyable to be out with just a light jacket, but my resident weather watcher informs me that all that enjoyable weather is about to depart - perhaps for good. We are heading back into rain, and then some significant snow amounts for the end of the week with much colder temps to go with it.

I am happy about this, because Friday night the town has their parade, and festival of lights.  The whole town switches on, and the downtown is staying open until midnight, with shopping and festivities for everyone.

I started a little decorating inside the house as well.  I have huge windows in my sun room and living room, and so I decided this year I wanted to do something with the windows themselves.  So I bought several rolls of electrical tape and got to work turning my old fogged up windows into gorgeous windows straight out of "Christmas in Connecticut".  Oh, they look so country cottage now!

Here are the two windows in my sun room... aren't they pretty now?  This smaller window needs a wreath or something to hang in it, so I got busy and made a small shabby chic rag wreath that will hang down this window from a wide ribbon.

Here is the wreath before it was done... it is going to look cute in that window beside Chip.

This is the big window in the sun room.  Our Christmas Tree will be in front of this window, but that is a long way off yet.

So if you want to make some of those rag wreaths, they are so easy.  Actually I remember making something like this when I was a kid, only we didn't use material - back then that would have been considered very wasteful.  But we did use the bags that were over your dry cleaning when it came back from the cleaners.  Ours were sort of a blue colour, so my Dad bent a coat hanger until it was round, Mom and I cut the bags up into strips and then into 4 inch long pieces and we tied them on the coat hanger.

It was a gorgeous big blue wreath when we were done.  Mom hung that wreath on her front door for years.

For the rag wreath you can do the same thing - if you want to do a big wreath use a coat hanger ( you can still get them free from the cleaners). For that size wreath I would cut your strips of fabric about 5 inches long - you can always trim the wreath when you are done.

The ring I used was an old macrame ring I had laying around.  It was only about 6 inches across.  I cut my strips about 4 inches, and them trimmed them down a bit after.  Don't cut them too short, or you will have trouble tying them on the the ring.

I am going to do a couple more for my upstair studio windows in a Christmas print... They take no time, and hardly any materials.  Use your scraps of material or if you don't have any of that, go to the thrift store and see what piece of clothing you can buy to cut up.... wash is first though!

My peppermint wreath was a dress I wore in the 1980's -I kept the dress because I always thought maybe I could make something from the material - I'll bet I was thinking a dress for a doll!

Happy Crafting!