Your last chance is this weekend...

We had so much fun this past Friday evening and Saturday afternoon with our Holiday Open House!  There were quite a few people on Friday night (surprisingly!)...we really thought Saturday would be the busier day, but we were quite pleasantly surprised.

We are really looking forward to seeing more people this next weekend, and we'll have a warm home and sweet treats to share as you browse the holiday items.  I thought I would post a few of my favorites that you can purchase this weekend.

Along with these home decor items, we have quite a few great hostess and girlfriend gifts.  We all bring bottles of wine to holiday parties, but let's dress it up this year with a sweater & hat or (better yet) a Santa suit!!   Or, we have the most fun collection of glass rings and bottle cork, all with a Christmas-ball theme.  And don't forget about the fun KnitWit Animal Hats!

So, let's start with my favorite!  This HUGE wreath is so cool simply because it is so festive and unusual.  It has a Burberry-style ribbon throughout as it follows the 12 ornaments, each representing one of the 12 Days of Christmas (the vintage style of the images creates the most amazing pieces).  There is also a matching canvas print with a partridge in a pear tree.  You really can't appreciate this wreath unless you see it in person, as it is over 3 feet tall and wide with the most realistic silk flowers sprinkled all around.  This is a real WOW wreath.

12 Days of Christmas Wreath

Copper and Wine Wreath with Pine Cones

Vintage Candy Cane Wreath with lights

Moss-Covered Reindeer

 I feel in love with these moss covered reindeer in the showroom.  They are so much fun...you can add ribbon or tinsle collars, and change them every year.  The best part is the come off the bases so you can store them away easily.  They are so adorable...I love them next to my fireplace where I can see them every time we sit down to watch our favorite shows and movies.

Pillows & Poinsettias

For those of us who really look for unusual items, this is it!  These poinsettias are amazing, with several different (and enormous) sizes available, and they fold up so small you won't have any storage issues.  We have both white and red to make a real statement (but I'm secretly hoping no one will buy them so I can have them all to myself!)  I have a few in a tall basket and they look amazing...I promise no one else will have these, so you will have

Peppermint Wreath, Trees & Balls

We hope to see you this Friday evening and Saturday afternoon for some warm apple cider, some scrumptous holiday cookies and wonderful decor & gifts.

                                                       

Holiday Open House

It's beginning to look a lot like the holiday season...ALREADY!  I kid you not, the day after Halloween a local strip-mall had already hung their annual holiday lights of shimmering, falling snowflakes.  I will give them the benefit of the doubt simply because we have already had over a foot of snow this year, but still it seems a bit early for lights!  (I keep looking for Santa to make an appearance at the mall before Thanksgiving.)

Between the holiday lights and my favorite peppermint hot chocolate that is now being served up at local breweries, I am REALLY getting in the mood for our first, annual Festive Nest Open House Sale.  I thought I would give you a few "sneak peeks" at to what you will find here (assuming they aren't already gone after the first day).

One of my favorite items we have this season are knit winter pilot hats from KnitWits.  Below are just a few of the styles we will have at our Open House later this month.



Carson's favorite is the Black Lab



We have a large selection of hat styles, but we will only have a couple of each...

These hats are so cute!  My kids went wild when they saw them....Braeden has the Yeti (and I just can't get enough of him in it), and Carson has Lucky the Lab, in honor of his Percy.  Quite a few of the kiddos at their school can be seen on the playground in these hats, but I have yet to see them in any store around here.  I know you will love them when you get a chance to see them in person! 

Finding unique hostess gifts is easy here!

We also have quite a large selection of hostess gifts, including the cutest wine bottle "hats & scarves" along with a wine bottle Santa outfit.  These really add a festive spirit to a very typical gift.  Think of how many parties you go to where guests bring a bottle of wine (as a hostess, I get at least 4-5 bottles a party).  I honestly have to say I am never that impressed with the bottle bags or wrappings and I simply hate to wine bottles in those bags.  These bottle outfits are so unique and fun....we simply couldn't do without them!

Another fun group at the open house this season is the home decor.  We will have a wide selection of wreaths and accessories that are so sweet and delicous, I am sure you will just "eat them up".

The best part (in my opinion) of going to the merchandise marts around the country are the previews of the styles to come to the market within the year.  This past season, we saw so many red-and-white themes at all the markets.  I adore the candy cane theme so much that my wrapping paper for the season is all red with white bows!  Below are just a sampling of what we have in store for you all!

Halloween

Braeden's Gingerbread House Guest

I usually have an annual Christmas Gingerbread House Party where quite a few girls come of over to decorate gingerbread houses with a plethora of candy.  (My girlfriend Stacy even did a University of Oregan house with little, yellow candy ducks.  It was really sweet!)

So this year I decided to change things up a bit and have a Halloween Gingerbread House party.  This past summer at the Atlanta Gift Show, my mom and I found a really cool new "thing" -- The Candy Cottage.  Basically, a big, plastic, gingerbread-like house that you decorate, scrape, wash, store away until the next holiday and then do it all over again.  The best -- my kitchen doesn't get crazy messy for days baking gingerbread that may or may not stay together when decorated by two elementary-age boys.  We girls has a great time decorating the houses on a Friday with a few bottles of wine and a lot of chocolate.  My boys had an even better time the next morning.

The Candy Cottage is just of the really cool items we will have at our upcoming Holiday Open House (Nov. 25-26 & Dec. 2-3).  It is a really cool way to create a family tradition without the fuss of cooking, cutting and gluing gingergread.  

So this upcoming weekend is ANOTHER one of our favorite family traditions -- the annual Singer Pumpkin Carving Party.  You know your party is a hit when you hear little friends ask you children to be invited to the party this year!  (Thank you William!)   We have a house full of kiddos, pumpkins, some parents and a bit of spiked cider, and a whole lot of fun!  One of the most creative decorating items I have this year are the green aquadots I put in my kitchen centerpiece (pictured above).  I had to search and finally found the aquadots at JoAnn Fabric.   I filled the bottom of the vace with the aquadots and added the water.  As they began to expand and fill with water (about an hour or so later), I added the ping-pong ball eyes and a few cockroaches.  The kids get so freaked out when the come to wash their hands in the sink!  It takes the aquadots about an hour to completely fill, so make sure to give it enough time and not over fill the vace (like I did the first time).  You'll end up with green balls all over the floor -- those slippery suckers are a bit hard to catch!

The top vace is filled with flowers and candy corn (yes, I do reuse the candy corn, so don't eat it if you come to our home).  It really makes for a very festive centerpiece, which I change with every season and holiday.

My favorite Halloween decor in the kitchen are the two crows I have perched on my Crate and Barrel fruits.  Easy cheesy...the fruit is always in the center of my huge island, so I just "perched" the crows into the apple and pear with the wire that was already on their feet.  (You can find these crows on Oriental Trading.com.) 

The vaces are filled with white, green & black beans.  I placed a second, smaller vace inside the bigger one before filling the vace.  This gives me a place to put the water and flowers without ruining the beans.  I simply went to my garden and used zinnas, corn stalks and rasberry leaves to fill the vaces -- really festive and unusual!

Whatever decorating style you use for your Halloween events, look around to see what you already have in your house and yard -- you'll be so surprised!

       
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I LOVE Halloween!  This is the day when creativity has no limits - any style, any taste, any colors, any thing.  There are no rules when it comes to decorating for Halloween!

So this year, I have tried to dig for my favorite decor items in celebrating the one time a year when I can put away my pearls and really be a witch!

My kitchen is the heart of our home.  It is very large and always ends up being the center of our ranch-style life, no matter what.  Whether we have guests or spend the day in our favorite, college sweats.  Our days start and end in this heart of a space, so this was where I really focused a great deal of attention in decorating this special holiday.

My personal Halloween style changes every year (this is why I love the holiday).  This year, I am more in a black-white-grey mood.  I started with a few labels on my usual pasta-flour-popcorn jars.  I used photoshop to create the labels once I found the perfect shapes on one of my favorite blogs, The Graphic Fairy.  Karen (a.k.a., the Graphic Fairy) has the most amazing clip-art images!  I found a few that were perfect and added my own text to two of the three. 


 Once I printed and cut out the labels on a slightly grey paper, I attached them to a 2.5" wide black ribbon that I purchased at Hobby Lobby (at 50% off, of course).  I simply cut an additional 8" that I left in the container, replaced the lid, and "voila", the Halloween apothacary shop is open!

Here are a few pics of the end product.

Now, on to the Haunted Gingerbread House decorating!