Proof

Here's proof that being good all year really pays off, and that I have a pretty great hubby.

Here's proof that I have the best mother in law EVER! (For many other reasons too, but she always finds the coolest vintage Florida Souvenir stuff for my collection each Christmas.)

And the goofy golden Christmas elf agrees too!

Had To Share This

Received this via email. It was too good to not share, so I wanted to take a quick minute to post it. Hope you're all having the merriest of Christmas' :)

Christmas Wishes

I probably won't be online tomorrow, so let me take the time now to tell you that I hope you all have the loveliest Christmas ever!

Christmas Lights Abound!

Mr. ShowMe and I like to drive around the area and look at Christmas displays this time of year. I thought I'd share some of them with you.

 

 

I hope you're having a great holiday. Merry Christmas Eve :)
Thanks for stopping by!

Thrifting Finds

Mr. ShowMe and I made it to our favorite thrift store this past weekend. We were thrilled to see the 50% off signs as we pulled into the parking lot. I came away with quite a haul! Even my goofy golden Chistmas elf was impressed. You can see him surveying everything in this picture. 

The fancy bowl in the picture is a great last minute Christmas present for my hard to buy for Mother in law. She loves old fancy plates and bowls. Mr. ShowMe spotted it up high on a shelf as we were checking out. It isn't marked, but it's quite lovely, and I'm sure she will love it.

We found their fabric stash this time. Not sure how we've missed it in the past! I found a large piece of heavy weight red fabric that will be great for purses, a large piece of vintage lace that is soft enough for some great scarves or perhaps some gypsy bag embellishments. I also got a smaller piece of lace, that I'm not sure what I'll use it for, but at eighty cents it was just too fabulous to leave behind!

I know that's quite a pile of watches and you're probably wondering why on earth I would need that many. Well, you'll just have to keep wondering for a bit longer. I do have a craft project for them, but I couldn't do it any justice if I tried to describe it to you, plus I don't want to spoil the surprise. I probably won't get to work on it until after Christmas, as I'm running out of days to get everything done as it is, but I promise as soon as I get it made I'll be sharing it.

The rest of the jewelry will all be disassembled and used in pieces here and there. That's so much cheaper than buying it all new at the craft stores. I'm always needing "pearls" and chains for things. And see those orangy red ring things? They're wooden rings. They have the prettiest flowers painted on them in orange and gold. I'm not sure what I'll do with them. I just knew if I left them behind it would haunt me. So rather than that, I coughed up the twenty-five cents a piece for them and will store them with my beads until the perfect project comes along. :)

I hope you're enjoying the holiday season. Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful week :)

DIY Christmas Jewelry

I like dressing for the season as much as the next gal, but I don't like spending a lot money on costume jewelry that I'll only wear one month out of the year. I've accumulated a small assortment of Christmas jewelry over the years, but it was all either given to me, purchased the week after Christmas at a deep discount, or handmade. 

My favorite piece would have to be the antique style clothespin pin that my now all grown up daughter made for me back when she was in daycare. 

I've had to reglue his googly eyes a few times over the years, but he's still in one piece and he always brings compliments and makes me smile.

One of my favorite post Christmas deep discount purchases would be my Berenstain bear pin. Who doesn't like a bear all dressed up for the holidays?

There's the angel pins and bracelet. I love angels, don't you?

I'll let you in on a secret. I think the one on the left is actually a tooth fairy, but she has wings and a crown that could be considered a halo, so I wear her as a Christmas angel.

But here are the things I most wanted to share with you. These are some of the things I've made over the years.

A braided paper bow sold as a package decoration just needed a pin back hot glued to it and I have a cute pin that really pops on a black sweater. That's how I wore it today. 

Those gold plastic hearts encased in glittery tulle and topped with a skinny red satin ribbon bow are ornaments for a miniature Christmas tree, they just needed fish hook earring wires and ta-da! Instant Christmas earrings. They're as light as a feather and super festive looking. 

Those three items, the tree, Rudolph and Santa are button covers. Remember them? I'm not sure what they were sold as, but I just glued button cover findings to the backs. Is it just me, or does that reindeer look angry? 

I had a bracelet on a stretchy cord that I bought at one of those "trading companies" that are all over the place in our area. It had a mix of beads and charms. I went to put it on one day in December last year when the cord popped and  beads and charms went everywhere. I gathered up all the pieces and the next day sat down to restring it, when I had an idea. I took a short piece of chain and some jump rings and made a pair of earrings instead.

 I kind of stretched this one out so you could see what  I did. I added a snowman and a charm on a jump ring at the top of the chain, then two tiny bells and a tree charm at the end of the chain.

Here's the pair together. I kind of like the quirkiness of them that that aren't exactly the same. They each have a snowman at the top. But they aren't identical, and a Santa hat hangs at the end of one, with a tree on the other. 

So next time you're looking at Christmas decorations in a store, consider what you could use to make jewelry with. Do you have Christmas jewelry that you wear each December?

I hope you're having a good week!

Thanks for stopping by :)

Barrette Holders

I was sorting through a box of what-nots the other day. (I'm such a pack rat!) It was a box of things from my daughter's bedroom from when she was a little girl. I ran across the barrette holder that I made for her room many moons ago. I realized in all my web surfing of crafts and the like, I haven't seen anything similar, so I thought I'd share it with you. It's super simple, super cheap, and something you could really personalize.

Just get a doll sized hat at a craft store and braid a length of yarn for a pony-tail. I used brown yarn and just made one super long pony-tail, but you could use yellow yarn to mimic blonde hair, burgandy for red, or even your barrette's wearer's favorite color. It might even be fun to use some of the curly or fuzzy yarns available now. 

You could use a cowboy hat if your wearer's a little cow girl, or felt hat adorned with feathers if she's a little fashionista. It just needs to be a hat that will lay flat against the wall. You could make them with two pig tails, or even leave the yarn loose, though that would be a bit more tedious to glue in.

Once you decide what you're going to do with the yarn, just glue it in to the hat and also glue a ribbon loop at the top to hang it from. I added the same ribbon as trim to the hat with a bow, and tied a bow using the same ribbon at the bottom of the braid.

It used to hang full of barrettes, but these few are all I have left from her barrette wearing days. 


Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful week :)

Thanksgiving Thrifting

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. I wanted to take a minute to brag about share some recent thrift store finds with you. I took off work the day before Thanksgiving to get a jump start on cooking, but earlier in the day Mr. ShowMe and I went to a few thrift stores. I don't usually find much, but I had some good scores that day. At our first stop I found this fabulous bead box filled with charms, beads, and findings.

 See that price? That's right, $7.90, oh yeah, and everything was 25% off that day, so the net was just under $6! What a deal. There were art glass and porcelain beads in it.

And these super cute shoe charms.

The findings alone in there were worth the price that I paid for the whole thing! What a deal!

At our next stop I found these fabric bundles for $.50 and $1.00. For a total of $3.00 I got all of this fabric.

Those two end pieces will make lovely purses and I'm always needing solids to coordinate with prints and to use for linings.

We even scored for Elwood, our Border Collie with this can of tennis balls for $1.00

I consider that a score for Elwood since he's our fetcher and he was down to just one broken tennis ball. Our Australian Shepherd, Jake doesn't really like to fetch. He will do it if you cheer him along every step of the way, but he mostly likes to just take the tennis balls outside and hide them. In fact, he likes doing that with anything he deems important. His bubby's tennis balls, empty two liter Diet Coke bottles that he can snag from the trash when no one's looking, once Mr. ShowMe's cell phone (Yikes!), rawhides, squeaky toys... We just never know what we're going to find when we go in the back yard to check his hiding spots. So while we mostly had Elwood in mind when we picked up the tennis balls, I'm sure Jake will get some enjoyment from them too.

On Friday Mr. ShowMe and I traveled to a neighboring town to attend a huge craft show, (yeah, he's a pretty good hubby, I think I'll keep him!). Since we were in a different town we decided to check out their thrift stores. At one stop I found this.

I wouldn't normally pay $4.50 for piece of fabric at a thrift store, but this is 4 yards and the weight is sufficient for not just purses, but other things too, so I knew I could put it to good use. But the pièce de résistance is that sweet little Florida souvenir plate for a whole quarter! I haven't found any new Florida plates to add to my collection for a long time now!

So beside all the good food on thanksgiving, I've had some fun thrifting over the holiday weekend too. Did you get to do anything fun other than eat and visit with family?

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you find yourself surrounded by loved ones on this Thanksgiving day.

Happy Thanksgiving :)

I Made A Blog Button!

Actually I we made two blog buttons! I we followed Bethany's instructions from In This {Crazy} Life that she shared at a link party. It was easy! Ok, Mr ShowMe had to help, but still.. I made the button image, I just needed some help with the image hosting part and finding the right link to the image. I already had a Flickr account, so instead of using Photobucket like Bethany did, I just put it there, and that gave me a little trouble... but we he figured it out. After making the easy one, I made a grabable one too!

I'm not sure about the collage. The button might be too small for that many images. I was trying to capture the variety of the things we make, but I may change the actual image in the future. Now that I know how to make the button, changing the image will be easy-peasy!

I'll have to add a Buttons page to my blog and put them there, but first I wanted to show them off.

<a href="http://showmecrafting.blogspot.com/" target="”_blank”"><img src="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6227/6374139701_4cd49a3825_m.jpg"/></a>

Color Post 3 - Aqua / Turquoise

 

I've been seeing a lot of pictures lately with pops of aqua or turquoise. 

 

They've really been catching my eye. Red is still my favorite color, but I must say that aqua is a close second. Maybe it reminds me of fun 50's decor that I like so much. 

Or perhaps it's the connection to the ocean that I don't get to visit often enough. 

But whatever it is, I really love the look of a room with flashes of aqua or turquoise.

 





I've got a bathroom in my house in desperate need of a makeover. Maybe I could introduce a little aqua there. And speaking of red, I think I really like the two paired together. Hmmm... What if I made this shower curtain that I absolutely LOVE in a pretty shade of aqua,

accessorized with bright red towels and perhaps a rug, and added some artwork for the walls that pulls in both colors? Looks like my to-do list just got a little longer!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you're having a lovely weekend :)