travel inspired holiday...

spotted on apartmenttherapy, emily henderson's holiday guide.

holiday hairdos

We had so much fun with this little holiday hair

preview at our house last night.

My girls picked out some of their favorite hairdos from fashion magazines...

it was my job to "create" and their job to model.

We gathered up the styling gel, hairspray, and bobby pins...and some

good Forever 21 accessories

and went to town.

My lighting was kinda funky for the pictures, since

by the time we got around to all this is was

pretty late...but you get the idea.

My youngest wore her retro waves (Veronica Lake)

to school today.

She has the hair for that one.

the red green show

We already have a lot of red and green decor in the house...but

since it is that time of year, I was ready to add some more.

I also made a book page wreath to hang over the mantle, since there was a big empty spot.

It was so easy and turned out great. It only cost a few dollars to make too.

I found a tutorial here.

vintage letter ornaments

Last week I saw a great post on making newspaper ornaments from Holly at Life In the Fun Lane. She wanted some ornaments she saw in Anthropologie...and knew she could make some for next to nothing.

I decided that this would be a great holiday craft for me and the girls. I happened to have a stack of vintage letters that I picked up at an antique store (I am using the vintage postmarks for a future craft.) The letters are correspondence between someone in Sweden to various people in Minnesota and Washington State. They are old (postmark looks like 1918) and are written in Swedish. The paper is beautifully yellowed, and the swirly handwriting, ink, and ink blots are so perfectly imperfect.

Holly used some pages from an old book, which turned out great too. You could even use pages from a new book and tea stain them to look aged.

We cut all the letters into strips and then glued the strips with mod podge onto clear plastic ornaments that we got at JoAnn Fabrics.

I got a pretty branch from outside and spray painted it an antique ivory color. Once the ornaments were dry, I tied them to the branches with some jute. I have to say that I really love how the ornaments turned out. Thanks to Holly for such a great idea! What would I do without all of you creative bloggers?