3 Handmade Holiday Ornaments

I really enjoy Christmas tree ornaments. I’ve been collecting them since I was a teenager. Some were made for me as Christmas gifts from the crafty ladies in my family, some are store bought, and some I made myself. Let’s take a look at a few of my favorite handmade Christmas tree ornaments.

I still have my 12 inch bachelorette Christmas tree**. I put it up on the second floor landing of The Condo. This tree is now our Rennie Tree. It has some of the ornaments that Husband and I collected and displayed when we performed at renaissance festivals. Back in the day, our large tree was The Rennie Tree decked out in purple lights, gold ribbon, and Elizabethan animal ornaments. To fill in the holes in the that large tree, I bought some frame ornaments from Restoration Hardware and put photos of Husband and I in our many characters on the tree. For more filler, I string a few jingle bells on ribbon from my sewing stash. After all these years, they still look good. These ornaments sum up my personal decorating style -pair and pull off a combinaton of the expensive with the clever but very inexpensive.

15 Habits That Lower Winter Utility Bills

During my 20% home energy reduction challenge, I quickly found that one of the best ways to lower my utility bills was to change my household habits according to the seasons. Seriously, folks, all of the energy efficient light bulbs and sealing of air leaks in the world won’t do much to p reduce your home’s electric and natural gas use if you keep every light in the house blazing and set the furnace to the highest temperature all day every day.

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Here are some of the things I do that help me lower my winter electricity and natural gas usage and hopefully the bill (unless they raise my rates.) These habits will work also work for apartment dwellers and renters too.

15 Easy Ways to Lower Your Winter Heating Bill

10 Green Gifts That Suck

There are some great environmentally friendly gifts and some that are not. I suspect that these are the items that a Greenzilla would give. (You know, the zealot who raises the green living bar so high that pretty much every person who honestly tries to do their part still fails in the eyes of the Greenzilla because you haven’t met the Greenzilla’s specific expectations?)

On the other hand, if you’ve decided this holiday season not to give gifts not as a token of love and appreciation but as a way to force your recipients to live the green life by doing everything exactly like you do – NO EXCEPTIONS then these sucky enviro-gifts may be for you. (Personally, I’m not into the Greenzilla line of thinking because I think that there’s always more than one way to do something and achieve the same goal, which in this case, is a living a more sustainable life.)

10 Green Gift No Nos

How to Make a Personalized Appliqué Fleece Dog Blanket

Last year, Blitzkrieg and I participated in a small dog sport gift exchange. Well, technically the dogs were the gift givers and recipients but their humans did all of the shopping, wrapping, and shipping of gifts. In other words, the dogs got the goods and the humans did all of the work. Seems only fair because in our sport of agility Blitzkrieg does all of the work of running up over and through the obstacles on the course while I just run beside him and point to what he has to do next. OK, dog sport people know that there’s more to it on the human side, but that’s not the point of this post.

Anywayz, my New Year’s resolution that year was to try to use up some of the stuff in craft stash that in some cases had been sitting around for more years than I like to admit. Some of the items languishing in my craft stash were pieces of fleece that were too big to throw away but not large enough to make anything out of. That is, until this gift exchange. Turns out the fleece squares I had were just the right size to turn into small dog blankets. This project was the perfect time to try my hand at a little hand appliqué as well.

My applogies for the poor photo quality. 
I had to use my PDA to take the photos.

How to make a personalized appliqué fleece dog blanket

10 Meaningful Holiday Gift Ideas

As my extended family gathered and opened presents one holiday eve, the Dad looked over at the gift his son just opened and said, “Hey, that’s cool! Who’s it from? I bet it’s a Lisa gift!” Then the mom got excited, “a Lisa gift! What is it? Let me see! Let me see!”

Me? I’m sitting there thinking,”Uh oh. I’ve totally done it again. The family I love but that has more Nos than Yeses when it comes to what’s allowed for their kids, is going to make my gift disappear because I screwed up their only-known-until-you-break-it kid gift rules. Oh no!”

Quite the contrary, the Dad told me. In their house, a Lisa Gift is something unusual, awesome, and something the giver didn’t know that they wanted or needed until they got the gift and used it – a lot.

Design Within Reach Black Friday Discounts!

Design Within Reach doesn’t hold many sales during the year, but when they do hold a sale, they do hold a sale. From Black Friday, November 28th to Cyber Monday, December 1st Design Within Reach is giving customers 15% any purchase in their stores or online. You must use the Black Friday discount code DWRFF8 for your online or in store purchase to get the 15% discount.

Design Within Reach is also having a Floor Sample Sale where you can save up to 50% off. The email I received from Design Within Reach says that their Floor Sample Sale starts November 28th but some stores may be marking down items and selling them early. Last weekend while Husband and I were doing some Christmas shopping recon we visited our local Design Within Reach Studio and saw that they had many floor samples already marked down. (And sweetie, if you’re reading this, it was the Nelson Crisscross Pendant that I repeatedly mentioned how nice it would look in the living room. Christmas is coming hint, hint!)

If you don’t live near a Design Within Reach Studio, or like me, some of the items you want to buy aren’t available in the brick and mortar store, the online store is holding a clearance sale.

Happy Shopping!

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