The Interior DIYer
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DIY Friday – you’re the Obi Wan for me

It’s no secret my husband is a Star Wars fan. As is evident by our apartment. So a couple of months ago I saw a really cute meme on Instagram [I’ve tried to back track and find it, but I can’t UGH] stating you’re the Obi Wan for me and BOOM. I knew my Valentine’s Day card for husband was sorted. It was perfect. 

I sat down the other day and planned it out. I used an A4 piece of 220gsm card, folded it in half and painted some abstract water colour on the front [I practiced on some scrap paper first until I was happy with the right amount of random]. While that was drying, I stamped out the key phrase using our Dymo Omega label writer. There is nothing that thing can’t improve. Including Valentine’s Day cards. Of course if you don’t have a label writer, you could write directly on the card. 

I finished it by drawing a little heart on the outside and wrote ‘always and forever’ on the inside; part of our geeky Napoleon Dynamite inspired wedding vows. I’m obv. going to write more than that on the inside, I just wanted to mimic the sentimental message that usually comes on the inside of store bought cards. 
A really simple card idea I thought I’d share for anyone who may be stuck for a card next week. Pretty simple and dare I say fool-proof. Not that I think any of you are fools. xx A

Also featured – Bill Murray print – living room artwork [warning: shoddy early blogging photography etc.]
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The halls are decked, ‘berry style

Christmas has finally settled in our home and we’re on the cusp of enjoying the holidays. I decorated for Christmas back in November for the Sunday Times supplement, and even though our tree’s been up for almost a month, I’m still really happy with it and don’t want to tear it down! Yay! Yet. Maybe because it’s not in our line of sight but behind us when we’re on the couch. It seems a bit anti-social of us, but it’s nice to have the holiday focus evenly dispersed throughout our apartment this year. 
This Christmas I kept it relatively straight forward with the decorations; tree, mantle and a couple of alternative decorations here and there. 

I only got around to properly decorating our mantle this week as last week I basically had the plague and was house-bound for 6 days. That seriously cut into my holiday prep time, but I managed to make up for lost time this week. I picked up this garland from Dunnes Stores and it’s the absolute perfect length for the shelf over our tv. I personalised it by adding some upcycled baubles and a heap of lights. 

Other than that, I took a rather lazy approach to the rest of the decorations. I just hung shit up. 

My favourite being husband’s Christmas sweater and the Star Wars advent calendar that hangs next to his side of the bed. Because let’s face it, no matter what age, all men are basically children. 

We have almost all of our Christmas shopping done and dusted. It just needs to be wrapped, and I love wrapping presents. And let’s be honest, I’m totally one of those people who carefully unwraps presents too. Recycler 4 lyfe. 

Happy Friday, friends! I hope you all have a relatively stress-free weekend before the holidays, and remember, it’s called the Christmas season, so chillax and treat yourself. That’s an order 🙂 xx A

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DIY Friday – bespoke Christmas baubles

On Monday I wandered down my usual charity shop route on Capel Street and when I stopped at CASA charity shop, I struck gold as they had a basket full of random unwanted Christmas baubles looking for a new home for 0.10 each. I couldn’t not. 
I headed home with a bag full of baubles and a couple of ideas for how to make them more personal. I first thought of drawing rough geometric triangular patterns on them using a Sharpie in keeping with this years edible ornaments I decorated. I couldn’t go wrong as I didn’t have a pattern in mind; I just kept drawing triangles haphazardly in various sizes. 

Optimal thumb placement on the bauble so you can’t see all of me in my pyjama glory. Dripping in diamonds. God bless tripods and timers. 

For the larger baubles, I had an idea to add some punched Dymo embossed labels to add a simpler and old school retro feel to our decorations. I punched out some of our favourite phrases including our wedding vows from Napoleon Dynamite [ALWAYS AND FOREVER] and some romantic Star Wars quotes [“I LOVE YOU” … “I KNOW”]. Husband particularly enjoyed those. 

Some more ideas to decorate your baubles, last year two years ago I used double sided tape and black glitter to decorate some plain baubles, as well as wrapped glitter / scratchy baubles in yarn to better suit the colours in our home. These baubles can be seen at the bottom of the image above. 

How are you guys coming along with decorating for the holidays? I’m not finished yet, but to me that’s part of the fun. Adding, making more things, moving things around to the point that it drives husband insane because he can’t find anything the next day. It’s all part of the season. 

Happy Friday, friends! I hope you have something festive lined up this weekend. Happy holidays xx A