New Year, Resolutions, And A Winner!

Happy New Year! After the excitement and busyness of the holidays, it's nice to get back into a routine. And first, as promised, I'm going to announce the winner of the assortment of six lace zippers.

The winner is Faith!

Faith, I will leave a comment on my previous post to notify you. Please email me with your mailing address and I'll get these cute zippers sent to you! Congratulations!

Now back to that routine. I haven't made too many crafty resolutions (and no regular resolutions!) this year. I do want to:

• Organize my overdyed floss better.
• Stitch every day.
• Quit looking at my phone during stitching time. I know, I know. That one sounds familiar.
• Go back to my WIP rotation.
• Try try try to stitch from stash.
• Finish something already.

OK, that's a lot of resolutions. But they're all pretty sensible and doable. That phone one though. Ugh. Why is it so important to keep checking my phone? It isn't. Do I need something like this to put my phone in while I stitch?

 

 Ha ha ha! Just a thought.

I have been stitching! I worked on "Bluebird Garden" by Artful Offerings.

Significant progress was made on his tail and into that blue checker-y area.

I also worked on "Life Tree" by Rovaris.

This is one of my favorite projects. I'm stitching it one over one on 25 count Lugana in the color Potato. I lightly tea-dyed it. Very lightly, just to give it an antique look. When this is done, I know exactly how I'm going to finish it, AND exactly where it's going to go.

I also did a little finishing since my last post.

This chart is by Little House Needleworks from the Farmhouse Series. It's "Horsin' Around". I finished the first in this series as a little pillow, but wanted to do something different with this one. I used the exact same materials that I used in the first one and will continue to use the same fabric and trims for all of the charts in this series.

With all of the Christmas decorations gone, the house looks a little..... bare? blank? stark? So I tried to liven things up a bit with some wintery decor.

I have found that the secret to decorating the three-tier tray is to not overthink it. I have a container that has all of the Christmas and winter decorations for the tray. As I put the Christmas things away, I took out the winter pieces. I think I arranged this in about ten minutes. Another tip: elevate small items by hiding small boxes (like the boxes that jewelry comes in) under fabric.

Thank you for visiting today! I hope you like the craftiness that I have to offer. Please consider following my blog if you haven't already. I hope that you have the happiest of new years. Come back and visit again. 

Winter Time Three Tier Tray

The three tier tray has been transformed for the winter season. Everything is looking especially snowy, icy, and silvery.

Making a return appearance are the sweet little deer, a few pine cones, and some evergreen trees that adorned the Christmas version of the tray.

I added some tiny winter-themed stitched pieces in frames. Don't you love the tiny doll-house size bunnies?

Each tray is lined with "Christmas tree snow". That's what the package said. To me, it looks like a cross between felt and batting. Underneath the "snow" is a great place to hide some battery operated lights.

The little light-up house was an after Christmas find at Joann's. A white ceramic flower pot holds silver jingle bells. The snowflakes on the outside of the trays are felt and were cut from a spool of them.

Crystal and silvery picks filled in spaces. The whole thing looks especially pretty lit up at night.

And there you have it! The three tier tray in all its winter glory! Inspiration came from Priscilla at Priscilla's Blog, as well as other tray decorators on Pinterest and Instagram. What will be next? I think probably an Easter-themed one. I do have a lot of little Easter things that will be perfect for this tray. I'll probably keep the winter theme going until about the end of January.

So what do you think? I haven't done much winter decorating in the past, but I think this is pretty cute. It brightens up a space in what can be some very dreary months.

Thanks for visiting today! Please come back again to see what I'm up to. I appreciate comments and please consider subscribing. Have a great week!