Category: Home Decor

AR Workshop: Countdown to Christmas

Lindsey and I are totally on a roll with our AR Workshop projects. First, we did a couple plank signs (see here) and then we went back and made our own chunky knit blankets (here they are). I follow the Annapolis AR Workshop on Instagram, so when I saw that they just came out with personalized advent calendars I immediately texted Lindsey and we signed up!

{Pssst, this isn’t a sponsored post, but if you want to find an AR Workshop you can find them here: https://www.arworkshop.com/}

Usually, I leave Jack at home with Travis. But he was super busy over the weekend with some tree felling goodness, so I figured I’d just take Jack with me. And I’m awfully glad I did, because he had a great time helping!

Much like my previous plank sign, we started with picking our colors, sanding the wood board, stained it, cut out and attached the stencil, painted the letters, took the stencils off, and then did any touch-ups needed. For this particular project, we also stained some extra wood pieces to attach to the front of the sign. After marking each straight line, I turned it over and used a nail gun to connect them together.

Funny story: when the helper lady brought out the nail gun and handed it to me to use, Jack raised his hand and let us know that he is NOT comfortable using a nail gun. Yeah kid… you’re 7. We know!

Here are some photos we took throughout the process:

Jack did help every single step of the way – except for the staining of the board and the nail gun use – and was super proud that he could hang out with the adults. I love that every year when we bring out our new Countdown to Christmas calendar, it will remind us of the fun memory of making the project together.  

Here are our finished projects:

Lindsey made a sign for her parent’s mantle and we made our Countdown sign. We just need to find something small – like a little tree or stuffed toy – to place on the ledge in front of the appropriate date as we count down.

As always, we had such a wonderful time at the Workshop that I’m already checking the website to see if there is something else I want to make. My sister reached out and wants to go too, so maybe I’ll have some more Workshop goodness to share soon!

Den: Before & After (Again)

Remember back in August when I shared my Sunroom: Before & After post? Yeah, I messed it all up.

Here’s the thing: I LOVE my sunroom. After I redecorated with the hanging chair and fluffy white couch, I would spend every weekday evening out there with a book and every weekend morning hanging in the chair with a coffee cup in my hand (and Ollie on my lap).

And then one morning I went out into the sunroom for my Saturday morning laze-a-bout… and it was too cold.

I knew that it was going to happen soon, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up my comfy couch sitting! So I did what any sane person would do, I dragged my sunroom couch into my den.

Before my abrupt redecorating, the den looked like this:

Actually I wrote a whole blog post about it in February, because that was the last time I redecorated that room (you can find it here).

So yeah, I was totally happy with my den AND my sunroom. Until suddenly I wanted that damn couch inside. I moved the massage chair out into the sunroom (for now), the large leather recliner into the corner with the lights and my honey helped me drag the couch where the chairs previously lived.

And I love it! Which is a problem… because now what do I do about my dang sunroom?! It seems silly to buy a duplicate couch for the sunroom in the spring, but now that I love the new den set-up I don’t want to take it back apart. Of course, maybe I should just wait until the spring and see how I feel…

Have you ever redecorated a room with literally no thought or planning? Is it super weird to own two identical couches that live in separate rooms about 15 feet away from each other?

AR Workshop: Making My Own Chunky Knit Blanket

Back in July, Lindsey and I made a couple awesome plank wood signs at the AR Workshop in Annapolis (you can read about it here). We had so much fun that when I saw that they were running a chunky knit blanket workshop, we immediately signed up!

You can find an AR Workshop closest to you here: https://www.arworkshop.com/ The chunky knit blanket workshops registration fee was $85 and it included all our materials and instruction.

I’m not really a knitter. In fact, I tried taking a knitting class about 10+ years ago and found it so boring that it literally would put me to sleep when I tried doing my knitting homework. However, these blankets were hand knitted, meaning that no hooks were needed… just the chenille yarn and our hands. So, I thought they might be easier.

We started off with balls of yarn – Lindsey used 5 balls of yarn and I bought an extra ball because I wanted my blanket to be a little larger (since my knitting was a bit tighter). From there, we closely followed the instructor to make a slipknot and then the braided end of the blanket. I literally started and tore mine out probably a half dozen times until I ended up with this:

Once the end was finished, we started making the loops. Once you get this step down, you are good to go, because the rest of the blanket is basically just making loops over and over again:

And over and over and over and over again.

And over and over…

Once we got down to our last balls of yarn, the instructor came over and helped us finish the ends of our blanket with another pretty braid. And we were done!

It took us just about 2 hours on the dot and we both LOVE how our blankets turned out. While we both are pretty darn crafty, neither of us had much knitting experience… but our blankets look pretty darn awesome. They are soooo soft too and were perfect for some couch laziness while watching Netflix movies that night.

When I got home, Jack immediately tried to steal mine and when I told him that it was MINE, MINE, ALL MINE he asked if he could go to a class and make one too! I did a little searching online and I some similar yarn on the Joann’s website for about $6.50 each… so I went ahead and placed an order. I’m hoping to recreate another one with Jack at home… so wish me luck!