A Gold Polka Dot Accent Wall!

If you follow us on Instagram, you might have seen a little somthin' happening around these parts, that we all get pretty excited about...

wallpaper post // basement post

Yup, it's about to get Christmasy up in here! :)
The kids got to decorating their tree with Cason in the basement on Sunday, and have been talking Christmas ever since; I love it!

I know that there are two types of people who are going to see this.
Type #1 - "YAY! Christmas decorations, music and cheer! I'm so happy it's almost here!"
Type #2 - "Seriously? Why don't these crazies wait till at least after Thanksgiving... I mean, that's a holiday too, jeesh!"

Ha! I've already seen the backlash from other bloggers' posts about trees and Christmas decor, so I guess it's just inevitable... right? Some people do Christmas really early, while others have traditions of decorating trees the day after Thanksgiving.
For us... we just start pulling out Christmas whenever we feel like it. There's never a specific date or time, but I DO tend to do things earlier than most, so I can share all (or as much as I can) of my ideas with our readers before THEY start really decorating... does this make sense? I guess it just comes with the "job", and to be honest, I actually love Christmas decor up during Thanksgiving. It always makes it feel more cozy, and just means that in the end, I get to relax and enjoy all my hard work and pretty stuff for that much longer!

This year, one of my first projects for Christmas decorating upstairs, has been to tackle something that I've been wanting to do for a while now. It's sort of crazy, super fun and totally me...
A GOLD POLKA DOT accent wall! whoohoo!

Our beadboard wall in the living room served as the perfect "grid" for free handing these polka dots. I had no patience for making perfectly straight lines or digging through tools out in the garage to find a laser level (or to discover after looking for 30 minutes that we don't even own one... because honestly at this very moment, I have no idea if we actually do or not), so I just eyeballed the polka dots placement.

Obviously I chose gold for this project, but you can go with any color you want, we've made every shade available for purchase, so go nuts! These 3 inch polka dot decals come in a 40 count set over in our House of Smiths Design Shop.

Scattered Herringbone Decal in our Shop + DIY Framed Art

I'm stoked to finally be sharing this new decal that we have in our House of Smiths Design Shop now; the Scattered Herringbone in large and small! Today I'm going to share this super awesome, easy DIY framed art tutorial with you guys, that I made using our small herringbone decals, AND a discount code for our shop...

but first, I have to show you how Jen's wall looks!

We covered an accent wall in her master bedroom with the large scattered herringbone decals, and it turned out so fun! It took about 18 sheets, two different ladders and even Cason's help/height...but we got it done!

If you were following along with us on Instagram, then you know we posted a teaser about working on a project with Jen for her amazing 30 day bedroom makeover a few weeks back, and we couldn't show you our fun decal wall reveal until now, because we had to wait until her bedroom was all finished.

I'm happy to report that Jen won the room makeover contest and I couldn't be happier for her, you gotta go check it out!

Okay, now onto our DIY framed art tutorial.

Large or small, when you order a sheet of the scattered herringbone decal, it will come just like this. In a rectangular shape, with three layers. Backing paper, vinyl and transfer tape. I've left the transfer tape off the gold decal so you can see what it looks like without, but the white has it.

When you get your decal(s), you'll want to trim around it, like in image #1. This will help you to see exactly where your placement will be when you apply everything. I used a large Ribba Ikea frame for my wall art, and it was too small to fit two full decals, so I just cut one of my decals down the middle.

You WILL have to cut straight through the middle of some vinyl, as I'm showing in image #3; don't sweat it! That's what's so great about this design, you can mix up the layout however you want, it's totally random and you WILL have to piece things together, so get creative!

Spring Shelf Decorating + Spring Fling Link Party!

Just as I promised, our Spring shelf decor is finally all done and ready for us to share today!

Don't get me wrong, the holidays are great, but I'm extremely excited to finally have decor on these shelves that can stay up longer than just a few weeks!

:)

I wanted to keep everything really simple and clean, but full of Spring colors that I knew would pop really well against our white planked wall.

I found these moss covered "rocks" (that are really made from light foam forms) at ZGallerie on clearance, so I picked those up and put them into a $3.00 basket that I found at Home Again consignment.

bird - DownEast Home, pedestal - Down to Earth, basket - Home Again Consignment, moss rocks - ZGallerie, pennant garland idea - Margie Aslett

These awesome, over sized, colored, netted mason jars were a new product from Down to Earth at Gardner Village and I immediately fell in LOVE with them. I knew I could use them as decor, straight into the summertime as well.

The thin frame that I hung this green pip berry wreath over with a piece of burlap was one that I snagged up at a thrift store. You can spray paint an empty frame any color, to coordinate with your decor. It's a super inexpensive project and only takes a few minutes + dry time.

I'd love to say that this cute paper pennant banner was my idea, but I'd be lying. ha!

My really good friend Margie Aslett hosts online video craft idea workshops every few months and I took her "Spark your Spring" classes a few weeks back. There were so many fun, adorable ideas for home and everyday crafting, and this pennant garland was one of them!

Thanks Margie!

Since Cason's been teaching Aubrielle how to sew, I commissioned them to assemble my little pennants together after I punched them out with my Fiskars punch.

Secret Santa and H of S Design Shop Info

I can't believe how FAST December is flying by! It's almost not fair! I LOVE this month, and I wish it could last just a liiiiittle bit longer. One of the things keeping me on my toes these past few weeks has been the constant knocks on my door from USPS, UPS and FedEx, delivering all of the online goodness that I've ordered. Gosh, I'm a total online shopper... are you?

Something else that came last week to my doorstep was a fun little package from a Secret Santa! At the beginning of this month Stefanie from Brooklyn Limestone gathered a few bloggers together to do a secret Santa gift exchange. Do you do this with your close friends or family!? I love the "secret" behind it all... so fun!

 I was really excited to get my first gift! Here's what I got.

A Tower of Packages & Love

Chances are, if you ordered something from our Design Shop in the past few days... You'll see it very soon.

:)

We're feeling very festive around here, if you can't tell.... hee hee

Feeling incredibly thankful for the support that all of our readers and customers give us.

And equally as thankful for a fabulous team of extremely talented, ridiculously business savvy, smart, hard working people who help me make my visions/dreams come true. You know who you are.

Feeling loved from so many today.

Thank you.

Happy Sunday!

Christmas Decorating - Classic Reds with Modern Patterns & Splashes of Color

Christmas Decorating with Modern Patterns and splashes of Color

Merry (almost) Christmas Everyone!!! Can you tell I'm just a liiiittle excited for the month of December!?

:)

Christmas is absolutely my most favorite holiday, and each year I get so anxious for December to creep closer and closer so that I can start decorating! Last year I started in October (yes, that was a little on the crazy side)... so this year I waited till mid November. That's good enough, right? ha!

Also last year we were out of town for the holidays so we didn't have the opportunity to put up a tree or really decorate all that much, except for our ever-changing kitchen shelf vignette area.

  

  

We also didn't use any red color in our decorating. Not because we didn't like it... but because I wanted to try something a bit different! I really liked stepping outside the box, but this year... I was itching to use reds ALL OVER my home! I also had a goal in mind, to work in some trendy patters and colors that we already loved, to make this years Christmas... traditional, with a twist of modern. Perfect for our home!

Here are some photos below and info on how we did it!

Thanksgiving Decorating and Crafts for the Home

When I posted photos of us putting up our Christmas tree on Instagram and Facebook last week I had some worried readers, wondering "What happened to Thanksgiving!?" Well, to be honest, I hadn't planned on really doing a ton of decorating for Thanksgiving, but I couldn't completely pass up this holiday! It's the perfect time to reflect on all of the amazing things that we're so lucky to have, for goodness sakes! :) So I decided to do some really simple decorating, crafts, and even try my hand at a table setting or two.

Here's what I came up with...

Halloween Porch Decorating

Happy almost Halloween! Today I wanted to share with you the little corner of my world that is ready for the trick-or-treating goodness that is coming our way! We've been so incredibly busy lately, that Halloween decor is coming a little late this year, but better late then never, right!?

This time around I decided that it would be fun to "Hallow-glamify" our front porch. Again, I don't know why I have such a hard time actually using orange for Halloween, but I just do. I will buy it... but then always end up tossing the color out of my Halloween mix. (hmm... I guess orange just isn't my color?)

Anyway, here are a few simple things that I did to spookify up our place.

Let's start with pillows. And let's also start off by saying that a girl can NEVER have to many. Agreed?... Good :)  ha! I made the green and white striped one with fabric from IKEA. The yellow striped one came from Pottery Barn, and the black and white pillow with all of the text on it came from the Goodwill.
(although I think it's originally from Target)

H of S Designs Packaging and Thank You!

We'v had such a successful few days during the grand opening of our shop and I just wanted to drop in to give everyone who has ordered product, left kind comments, or emailed and called me with words of support and advice when starting out with a small business, a great big virtual hug and... 

THANK YOU!

It really means so much to us, more then you know.

On another note, we have finally finished designing our shop packaging. yay! We'll be mailing out our first orders on Monday and we're ready to go!

We've also been entertaining the idea of carrying a few other fun items in our shop for our customers that may include small pieces of limited time handmade furniture, frames, knobs, pillows...etc. All "House of Smiths style". Designed by yours truly, and most pieces built by our in-house master carpenter and handyman (aka: my Dad) ha!
More on that later...
:)

We hope that everyone is having a relaxing afternoon, filled with lots of quality time with family.

Happy Sunday!