Evolution of a Table

This hand-made table has become a staple of our home.  I knew I wanted a little table to add some "welcome to our home" feelings, but I really didn't know how FUN it would end up being!  Now that we've had a few holidays and seasons with it, I thought I would put together a little photo tour of how it has grown and changed since we've had it.

 

Here's what we had right after it was built.  We hung our canvas portrait- a wedding gift from a photographer friend- and then eventually added the silhouettes we had done in Disney World on our honeymoon.  I found these perfect little baskets to collect keys and other small things.  The yellow vase is hand made and was one of our wedding centerpieces.  The owl and blue/gold vase were clearance buys from Michael's.  And on the bottom of the shelf are my two autographed Neil Gaiman novels- prized possessions!  

This is what the table looked like for Halloween- my favorite holiday (10 months of the year).  Ooo-eee-ooo!  Eventually I will do a master post on my Halloween decorations and you can get some close-ups of what's on there.

Fall!  Handmade pressed-leaf decorations that I couldn't resist showing off, handmade leaf roses, and lots of reds, orange, and yellows.  This was one of my favorites, even though it is so simple.

Unfortunately, I either didn't take or just can't find any photos of the Christmas decorations I did.  It was a technicolor dream, though.  We went with a "merry and bright" theme upstairs, so it really was a bright splash of color as soon as you entered the house.

And here it is, currently.  The regular, everyday look that we have going.  Still displaying some of my leaf projects, a few wedding photos, and the most important thing of all- a candy dish.  Filled with candy.  Nothing says "Welcome to our home" like a fistful of free candy as soon as you enter.

Preserving Your Wedding Flowers: Christmas Ornament

Here’s one of my post-wedding projects.  After the wedding, we came home with lots of flowers- my bouquet, four table centerpieces and the aisle decor.  I dried some of them, pressed some of them, and let the others sit in the pots to rot.  Whoops.

Well I was finally throwing all these dried up dead flowers away (three weeks after the wedding-don’t judge me, I thought I might need them for something and it turns out I WAS RIGHT) when I remembered something I pinned on Pinterest about a billion years ago.  Lucky me, I’m a craft hoarder, so I had clear glass Christmas bulbs just chilling in my closet.  Out came the bulb, off went the flowers’ heads, and just like that I have an awesome new ornament for the tree.

This thing is really a lot prettier in person.  The colors are awesome.  There’s an entire sunflower’s worth of petals in there (yellow), petals from the irises (blue), whole entire dried up daisies (purple), whole flowers from the snapdragons (pink/orange), and whole adorable little button mums (green).

I’m debating whether or not I want to write something on the glass- maybe the date or the year or something.  But I might just leave it as is and tie a little purple bow around the top.  Either way, I’m very pleased with it- another free project made with materials I already had laying around my house, and hopefully a keepsake that will stick around for many Christmases to come.

If you do this at home: consider spraying the flowers with a spray sealer.  I did this with the other flowers that I dried/pressed and saved, but I didn't do it with these.  I'm not sure that there will be any difference- maybe they will fall apart easier, maybe they will rot or something, or their colors will fade faster.  I'm not sure!  It's just something you want to consider.  I didn't think about it at all until after they were already in the bulb and there's no way to get them out in one piece.  The spray I used for my other flowers (keep an eye out for those in future projects) is a Krylon UV protective acrylic spray made for things like... dried flowers.  Just something to think about!