DIY Christmas décor: easy holiday wall art

DIY Christmas décor: easy holiday wall art

  This year at our office instead of going out to a restaurant to celebrate the holidays we decided to have a potluck lunch. Since our boardroom was the perfect place to have our feast, I decided to spruce up the white walls with some very cool wall art using red and white wrapping paper. Seriously, this DIY took very little time to do, barely cost anything, and delivered a...

Faux fur Throws: Love Them or Hate Them?

Faux fur Throws: Love Them or Hate Them?

I recently went to Montreal to visit my family, friends and, of course, my favorite furniture and accessory stores. While shopping, I couldn’t’ believe how many faux fur throws I saw. Although they’ve been on trend for quite a few years, it seems like this year they have completely invaded the market, showing that this trend is definitely here to stay a while longer. I spotted the throws artfully draped...

Custom Framing a Vacation Souvenir

Custom Framing a Vacation Souvenir

Years ago, my husband, kids and I traveled to Europe. Since we were traveling “light” I only bought small souvenirs from each place we visited. This one is one of my favorites. It’s a handmade ceramic tile depicting a street, where we happened to stay, in the city of Bruges in Belgium. Once back home, I looked for a ready-made frame to showcase the tile, but I simply couldn’t find...

Budget-friendly wrapping ideas

Budget-friendly wrapping ideas

Have you ever received a gift that was way too pretty to unwrap? Lots of thought goes into picking out the perfect gift for loved ones, so why not take the time to make the wrapping just as memorable as the gift? But wait, just because you want your package to be gorgeous, doesn’t mean that it has to be expensive. Here’s a book that we wrapped last year and...

Celebrating Holiday Traditions

Celebrating Holiday Traditions

Call me old-fashioned, but I love holiday traditions and I hope that my annual November get-together with friends to make tourtières, a traditional meat pie from Québec, will continue for years to come.  Here I am with friends (from left to right) me, Pam, Anne, Karen, Carolyn, Cathy and Shirley, celebrating another successful tourtière-making afternoon. Coming from a large French Canadian family (nine kids), on Christmas Eve my mom would put...

Hanging a mirror above a mantle

Hanging a mirror above a mantle

Hanging a mirror above a mantle is an excellent way to accentuate a fireplace as the focal point of a room. The mirror can reflect and increase the light in the room, and if you’re lucky enough to have a great view from a window that faces the fireplace, a mirror will showcase the reflection of the scenery. With that said, not everyone is lucky enough to have a great view...

Hanging Art in a Staircase

Hanging Art in a Staircase

Art hung along a staircase can make for a stunning look, but if you have a busy household it’s important to make sure your art is well secured to keep it from crashing on the stairs when the kids race up and down the steps. Here are a couple of tips to make this high traffic area safe: Hang your frames as flush as possible against the wall to prevent...

Outdoor holiday decorating ideas

Outdoor holiday decorating ideas

This is an outdoor decorating project that takes less than 15 minutes to do and is guaranteed to wow your guests every time. One winter, I hung the balls on a day when there was no snow, but by the next morning the ornaments were covered with fresh white fluffy snow which looked unbelievably Xmas-y. This crab apple tree is in my teeny tiny city backyard, and as boring as...

An Advent Calendar for Kids at Heart

An Advent Calendar for Kids at Heart

It's almost December 1, have you had a chance to hang your Advent calendar yet? I have. I’ve hung one at home and one at the office for big kids like me to enjoy. Now, we’ll need to figure out who gets to open a tin each day and who gets the large one on the 25th, which has a chocolate and a bonus gift card in it.

How to hang stockings from a mantle

How to hang stockings from a mantle

I did a little investigating over the weekend to search out the most popular Christmas stocking hangers sold in retail stores and almost all of the large DIY stores carried both weighted stocking hangers and mantle clips, each of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. You should choose a hanger depending on your needs: i.e. whether it’s for decorating purposes only and/or for safety purposes. Here are some tips...

Instant Christmas: Just add a red bow

Instant Christmas: Just add a red bow

This has to be one of the easiest way to add instant holiday flair to your house: simply add a big red bow. Adding red bows to anything during the holiday season just screams “Christmas” and makes a huge impact with minimal effort. Red bows are inexpensive, that is if you buy the plastiky-velvety kind like I bought, and in the right situation they don’t look as tacky as you...

Thumbs Up from the Handyman

Thumbs Up from the Handyman

A professional handyman tries hundreds of tools, so when he gives something a thumbs up, it means a lot. That’s why we were so excited to hear how handyman Shawn Schmidt had done just that for our Hang & Level, Déco Hammer and Anchor Points. In his demo for KFRY-TV, Shawn was quick to point out that our tools are especially handy for those who don’t need or have expensive professional tools around...

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