Christmas Vignettes from my Mom

I wanted to share some of my mom's touches of Christmas she has spread throughout the house. She has such a great design eye and everything was so festive and fun. I love how she brought out my grandmother's ceramic pieces she made when I was a little girl. My grandmother never finished this Santa but that's how I remember him and in my eyes, he is perfect!! Mom and I have a large collection of Wendy Addison glittered pieces and a few knock off artists' glittered pieces too. We love them all!

Here is my grandmother's nativity scene she made. The mantle is the perfect spot!

Mom, Andrea, and I have a thing for old glass cloches. My mom's collection has grown since I was last home. I love her snowy combination in this one below.

Merry Christmas,

♥

tia & andrea

Oh how I love this ;)

Countdown to Christmas

I was so excited to find this advent calendar that my girl Janae and I made before I moved from Chicago. I couldn't find it last year as it was hidden away in a random box from the move. We had so much fun making these! Boy do I miss our craft nights!

These were so easy to make. We purchased a metal tray from Goodwill and spray painted it black. We used random size and shape containers to make it interesting and covered them in different papers and embellishments. We both used a lot of leopard print since we both love some leopard!! Then we hot glued magnets to the backs of each container and voila....a magnetic advent calendar! You can fill each container with candies or little notes and turn it into a scavenger hunt for your children. The possibilities are endless!!

Happy creating!!!
Tia and Andrea

Some life lessons...

Well..."they" are at it again. For a long time I stayed away from church. I was struggling with my first son's diabetes diagnosis (which unless you have experienced that, you can't begin to imagine how one would feel) and very angry that in my mind, God put this on us. And another reason I stayed out of church was because of all the hypocrites. Someone very important in my life once told me, "if you go sit in your garage, does that make you a car?". Meaning....just because you go to church every Sunday, does that make you a Christian? I have met so many hypocrites in my life that I can't even count them. They go around preaching scripture, posting it on their Facebook status yet doing things to others that are not very Christian like. And some are using their fan pages to show their fans just how insecure they are. To be such an unGodly person to sink so low as to post about me, making fun of my 2 sons' diabetes and the cause that I work so hard for, is one of the saddest things I've witnessed. Well, I choose not to go down that road again. As the quote below says "Never look down on somebody unless you are helping them up."

I am not a lucky person.....I am a blessed person. I choose not to be a hypocrite. If only the haters would spend more time focusing on their family and their own business instead of being so infatuated with me and what I'm doing, maybe they would be in a better place.

xoxo,

tia

Fabulous Chandelier

I am in love with vintage French drying racks but they take up so much space. So since we needed (well, not really needed...you could say I wanted) a new chandelier for our morning room, I thought....why not incorporate a French drying rack with a chandelier?

This thing holds 40 bottles and let me tell you it is very heavy!! I highly recommend having a professional hang this if you decide to duplicate this design. We used a heavy gauge wire to secure the drying rack through the chandelier chain. It is definitely a show stopper and conversation piece and I absolutely love it!!

Have a great day and keep shining ;)
Tia