Easy ribbon candle mat

I've seen various examples of gorgeous ribbon loop wreaths throughout the blogosphere and since, I have to be honest here, my attention span does not extend to making a wreath, I thought I would make something smaller with ribbon loops.

The technique is pretty simple - find a few coordinating ribbons and cut into similar lengths, depending how big you want the loops to be.


Then, you begin sewing the loops together, one next to the other, forming a long chain:


Once the chain is long enough for your project, take a paper plate and begin attaching the ribbon chain to the edge. I cut off the raised edge off my plate so I would have a flat circle to work with and started at the outer edge, then layered inward. I left the center circle bare for my candle:


I love that you can do this craft for any theme, all you need to do is change the ribbons, I have a feeling I will be making a few Christmas candle mats next month!

Small changes

As I mentioned in my last post, my husband just got back from a week's worth of business that took him out of town. I took the opportunity to change things around before he could say no make a few changes and see if he'd like them when he got home.

Our main bathroom (i.e. not the master bathroom) has had a jungle theme curtain for a couple of years. I didn't take a picture but it matched these hooks.
Now that my oldest is a cool dude who's into dinosaurs and not so much into jungle animals, I asked him if he would miss the jungle curtain. He said no, and I jumped for joy calmly changed it with a neutral hued one my mom got for me.

The animal hooks went, too, replaced by these gorgeous oil-rubbed bronze pretties.
And yes, I'm eyeing that shower rod, too, because there's an oil-rubbed bronze rod to match the hooks, but I'm on a budget, people! The hooks were $8.99.

Our mantel is tricky to work with because it's propped up against a foam wall. Yes, the brainiac who lived here before decided foam, lovely FLAMMABLE foam, was a good thing to install above the fireplace. Anyway, the mantel can't hold much weight, so I can't really go crazy on there.
We got this IKEA print and we love it, but the whole thing was looking a little too emo for me. I'm 38. I can't do emo anymore.

So on another trip to IKEA, I picked up these candle holders and a little tray I spray painted with Caramel Latte, a pretty neutral with a bit of shimmer, and here's the result after I repurposed some of our rock accents and found a trio of bronze balls (hee) at Ross.
I kept things in the general color scheme but added some more texture.

I love the contrast between the rocks and the candle holders.
All in all, happy with the result, and it was all for under $12.

I had whipped up these curtains for our master bedroom but they did not go AT ALL, so I parked them in the playroom, where we had red/green striped curtains that didn't really go with anything in there.
Our kitty Willie-Boo seems to like them!

Then I figured our sofa needed a bit of cheering up, and asked my mom to transform the aforementioned red/green striped curtains.
I love our burgundy sofa and it's served us well over these past 6 years, so it deserved a bit of accessorizing.

Voila! Mom made some pillow covers that brighten up our sofa.

What's amazing is, the cats aren't scratching them and the boys are, more or less, leaving them along. Color me shocked.

A tale of two lanterns

I love the look of these lanterns from Pottery Barn:but the price ($35 for the medium size, which is the one I wanted) put me off getting it.

IKEA, however, had a similar lantern in a similar size for $6.99.

Furthermore, they also had it in blue, which is my older son's favorite color, and given that it was going in the boys' bathroom, I figured it was absolutely perfect.

Here is our new bathroom accent, styled like the Pottery Barn picture with a yummy sea scented candle and some cheapie rocks from the dollar store.

Looking good!

Candlestick, take 1

Because I am sure I will be posting about more candlesticks I've dolled up, but let's start with this one. My lovely, colorful friend here began its new life as a ratty and scratched brass candlestick. I got it at Goodwill for $1.99 because I knew I could make it happy again.

Some glossy red spray paint was all it took to transform it into a rich, beautiful candlestick. I topped Red with a pretty autumn candle ring - because both colors are so saturated, neither orange nor red overpower the other. For the candle, I chose a pretty, sparkly white pillar, although an ivory pillar would work just as well.

And there you have it, a gorgeous fall accent!