Merry & Bright - Cyber Monday Sale in our Shop!

I'm pretty much done (for the most part) with Christmas decorating, after busting my hump this weekend trying to get it all finished. The only bummer, is that it's now wintertime here in Utah, so this means that the sun goes down around 4pm. No joke. grrrrr.
Today after church I got working as fast as I could to finish up these DIY stacked boxes to add to my Christmas shelves, but only managed to snap this quick picture with my phone before I completely lost light.

Tomorrow is my day for Christmas decor pictures, so I'm sayin' a little prayer that there will be some sunshine for me :) For now though, I'm excited to announce our CYBER MONDAY SALE over at our shop,

THE HOUSE OF SMITHS DESIGNS!

We're giving anyone who purchases items this cyber Monday in our shop, 30% off + a FREE GIFT with every order (and it's gonna be something good, I promise) whoohoo!

Just enter code: CYBER2013 at checkout. *code is case sensitive

We've got a TON of fun decals stocked up and and listed, ready for gift giving; and thanks to some awesome Designs by Destiny this holiday, we now have even more new Christmas themed ideas for you to check out this year. Can you say polka dots!? :)

As you know, I've been working on deckin' out my own polka dot wall, and even came up with this fun woodsy, whimsical board to add to our shop!

Alright, enough blabbing, get comfy and get your online shoppin' on! Start AND finish your Christmas gift list... you can DO IT!

HAPPY SHOPPING!

An Impromptu Snow-Filled Photo Shoot

A few days ago I had a wild hair, and decided that we needed to go do a snowy, woodsy photo shoot together as a family.

Problem was, we didn't have a photographer and there wasn't really any snow on the ground... where we lived anyway. So we drove up a canyon or two, until we found some.

Yes, I was determined... and as far as a photographer was concerned, our self-timing camera and a remote clicker would just have to do :)

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.

DIY Creepy Halloween Toe Pincher Coffin Tutorial

Alright, so I know I said I was ready for Fall decor, but typically I decorate for Fall and Thanksgiving time together, so at our house Halloween decorations always come first, and if you've been a reader for a while, then you know that I also like to try and do something new or a little bit different for each holiday every year.

    

    

 This year I've been hovering around this sort of art deco type feel with my Halloween decor. You know, the geometric lines and contrasted colors; a bit 'Great Gatsby' if you will, and of course, I'm working on adding a few touches of gold as well :) I have most of my decorating done, besides a few finishing touches and I realized that I had a lot to share, so I thought I'd break it up a bit over the next little while, to show you all the details and step-by-step better.

Our first little DIY project was this creepy, stained, toe pincher coffin. I wanted something on my shelves that was different this year; not a frame or regular board with a saying, so when Cason mentioned a tall tombstone or coffin leaning up against the wall, I was sold!

Here's How we did it:
We used a piece of 1/4th inch thick birch plywood in a 2x4ft size and sketched out what we wanted our toe pincher coffin to look like. We ended up going with the below measurements. 6 inches for the three top portions, 11 1/2 on the longer sides and 4 inches at the bottom. Cason figured out that the points towards the middle met at about a 130 degree angle.

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!

The House of Smiths Designs - Cyber Monday Sale!

Hello, hello! How was everyone's Thanksgiving!? Wonderful I hope!

I'm pumped to share our big House of Smiths Designs Cyber Monday sale with you today, along with a few new Christmas designs for this year AND 6 new mixer decal designs that we've been working on, just in time for you to spruce up that kitchen mixer of yours for the crazy-busy holiday baking season!

First things first, let's talk about that fabulous sale!
:)

In honor of our favorite holiday (Christmas of course) we're doing a 25 off of 25 sale! When you order $25 worth of product or more from our shop, then you get 25% off by entering the discount code "CYBERMONDAY" at checkout!

this code IS case sensitive and has NO spaces

After numerous requests from our customers for new mixer decal designs, I decided to get to work. Check out these 6 new, fun decals that just hit our shop for the first time!

Trick-or-Treat Halloween Decal Deal!

We've had such an awesome response to our new Halloween themed decals that we showed everyone in our last post. Yay! I'm glad you all loved them! But we also have had a request by more than just a few people, for a small decal that simply said "trick-or-treat", like our big one... so we designed this little guy, added him to the shop and thought it would be fun to offer it to our readers for a slammin' deal of only

$3.00 each, with FREE shipping!

***You can order as many of these decals as you want, in all different colors, and still receive free shipping! But if you decide to purchase other decals from our shop, regular shipping rates will apply***

Here are some different ways to use this decal:

Halloween Tablescape & Vinyl Decal Sale!

Okay, so It's a little bit early for Halloween decorating, but I spent some time this year working on a few more Halloween vinyl decals for The House of Smiths Design shop and I'm super excited to share them with you! I  also wanted to give everyone plenty of time to get their Halloween decals ordered before October is in full swing. I know a bunch of you mentioned still wanting to snag some of the decals from last year too.

Since our kitchen is in a bit of a chaotic state right now, due to a few changes we're working on, I decided to decorate my entryway table, instead. 

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!