Making Merry Revisited

During this time of year when, in general, women all over the world are busy doing, going and buying for others (and quite happily too), I invited Rosemary and Kim over to put the breaks on the Christmas crazy and spend an entire day Making Merry. What better way to recharge and refuel in the midst of the Christmas season than to indulge in a bit of top notch retail therapy and ultra creative play?

We went to one of my favorite places to get decorating inspiration, Chartreuse and Company and then we stopped in at a new store down the street from my home, Wild Rose and Co. that also does an amazing job of merchandising the goods.

Then it was back to the house where we said hi to the City Chicks and then got down to the business of creative play...

Rosemary had brought the motherload of Christmas stashes (I want to go shopping in her studio!) as we embellished wine boxes. We were so proud of our accomplishments that they all got an impromptu photo shoot (mine is on the far left).

I decided to give mine away to my mom (She never reads my blog, so I'm safe. Did I tell you about the time Mom went skinny dipping with my Dad when I was a little kid? hehehe) and put some very delicate, breakable Christmas ornaments in it. Voila, perfect vehicle for a fragile gift.

Then we stopped for snacks, nom, nom, nom. There shall be no art without serious carbo loading.

After that, we started on my very long, very messy project. Let's just say that cotton batting, cotton balls, glue and mica make incredibly gorgeous finished clouds and snow scenes, but the process is like you gave a kid a roll of duct tape and a bottle of paste then told them to go to town with it. The final result was a snow laden cloud with a vintage Christmas light to lead the way through the dark night with a vintage goodie laden tin in tow (or that's what I hope it looks like).

The inspiration were some vintage cotton batting ornaments, some 'travel' related ornaments my children have the involve zeppelins, or cotton batting sail boats and another project where someone used a vintage tin as a balloon basket. (I've come to the conclusion that a truly original idea, if it should ever suddenly hit me, will probably happen long after I've gone gray and senile) After all that creating, we were wiped out, so it was dinner time! Tim, otherwise knowns as Pizza Boy, took our orders and made us homemade pizzas which was followed by more carb loading because being covered in glue and mica burns serious, um, brain cells?


For our final creative endeavor, Kim taught Rosemary and I how to make flowers from ribbon. Both Rosemary and I kind of shivered with intimidation until Kim guided us through beautiful petals, leaves and more. Seriously we had no idea how cool it could be and all of the amazing projects that can be done with ribbon flowers!


Of course, I don't have a photo of mine because we didn't finish. Our spirit was willing, but our bodies were weak. I've had my pieces in a basket by the sofa so I can slowly put it all together, but I think Kim enabled us to explore yet another new creative outlet!


(And I think we ate some more as we packed away all of our projects. Who are we to waste perfectly good carbs?) As we hugged each other goodbye, cries were heard of Making Merry to all and to all a Good Night!