Finishing school for the semester left me with a lot of free time that had previously been occupied with homework, so since I had so much fun making my Nutcracker ornaments I decided to do a bit more Christmas crafting. I again made something really easy, but I’m quite pleased with the way they turned out.

For the past two years I’ve made my Christmas ornaments - in 2011 my tree was a simple bare branch with some mirrors and home-made felt doves, and in 2012 I pulled out my mini tree and strung a pompom garland and added some white snowflakes. This year I decided to again use my mini tree (although I seriously considered getting myself an adult sized tree – maybe I can find one for a huge discount after Christmas?) and rummaged around my storage locker for my ornament collection which has been steadily growing over the years. I was going to take the easy route and skip the DIYing this year and simply use what I had, but where's the fun in that? All I needed was some inspiration.

One day I was roaming the aisles of my favourite craft store (aka Dollarama) when I spotted some plain wood nutcrackers in a couple of sizes and I knew what I was going to do. I bought a few packages in two sizes as well as a picture hanging kit and brought them home.

My first task was to attach hangers to the top of my nutcrackers. I used the eye screws from the picture hanging kit and screwed them into the top of each nutcracker after first drilling a pilot hole. That was honestly the hardest part of this project.

After adding some temporary string I took my nutcrackers for a swim. Doesn’t the Para Paints Furby Fuzz (PF63) look a little like the Caribbean sea? I could have used a small paintbrush to paint the nutcrackers, but it seemed easier to simply dunk them, and then use the brush to remove the extra paint. Once they were thoroughly coated I hung them up to dry using some chopsticks wedged under some cookbooks which I think was a rather ingenious solution to figuring out how to dry them without the nutcrackers touching anything and ruining the paint.

Once the nutcrackers were dry it was simply a matter of adding some silver string and then hanging them on my tree.

It turns out I rather massively overestimated the number of nutcrackers that could fit on my wee little tree – while I put them all on for this shot I think the tree is better suited to about half as many. I guess I should take that as a sign I really need to get a ‘grown-up’ tree for next Christmas. 

As a member of Para Paints Blog Crew I was supplied the paint in this project free of charge.

I know I normally post my love post on Monday’s but I was a little distracted over the weekend so it got delayed by a day. I wish I could say I was distracted by something good, but I pretty much spend a lot of it marooned on my couch.

It wasn’t all bad though – it gave me the opportunity to catch up on my Christmas movie watching which, along with baking Christmas cookies, turkey and decorating trees, is an integral part of any Christmas in my humble opinion. Here are a few of my favourites:

Do you have any favourite Christmas movies? Do you watch them all December long, or do you save them for the days just before and after the big day?

Remember back in July when I confessed that my dining room a had a small problem? That problem included globs of wallpaper glue, cracks, and a badly patched ceiling.

For my birthday my mom and dad gifted me a repaired dining room, so in late August operation #letsgetplastered begun (yes, this was finished in August and I’m just blogging about it now. I’m a bad blogger). My mom and dad are 'the' original DIYers so they decided that they’d try to fix it themselves first, and if that didn't work we’d call in some hired guns for the job. Those hired guns weren't needed.

First up my mom and I took a trip to Rona to pick up supplies. While there she introduced me to this amazing sanding block she’d seen while shopping in her hometown, and it was so helpful as we started my dining room rehabilitation by hand sanding the walls and ceiling the remove the old wallpaper glue, and try to even our some of the imperfections.

After the sanding was done it was on to a coat of primer, and then onto applying coats of spackling compound in layers to try to even out the walls. Once the last layer of spackle had been sanded it was time for another coat of primer, and then some plain white paint. The whole operation took about a week, and it was a huge success. There are still some imperfections, but it's a thousand times better than it was, and honestly in an almost 100 year old building there isn't a single wall that doesn't have some character.

PPS - RONA doesn't know I'm posting about the sanding blocks - I just loved them.

It's late as I type this on Sunday night (which is technically Monday morning). I've spent all weekend working on my final project for class, and I'm still not done. I expect to see the early hours again tomorrow night.

Before I head off to bed for some much needed shut eye I thought I'd post this image, which by all accounts has flown around the internet many times, but somehow I only discovered it this past weekend.

Her home has been featured a number of times in print, including in Elle Decor and Elle Decor Espana, but I found this image on the website of photographer Joanna Henderson.  Had you seen Christine's home featured somewhere before? What do you think?

Sorry for again going radio silent. Things have been pretty busy chez moi so unfortunately this wee little blog has gotten the short end of the stick of late. I thought I'd do a quick post to update you on some things that I've been doing (and yes, these photos are all from Instagram, so if you follow me there, you've already seen them).