Playing Sublimely Has A New Web Address!

Hello you blogger friends of mine! It has been brought my attention that some of you are unaware that Playing Sublimely has moved! If you were a previous follower of mine here on blogger, I couldn't take you with me. You will need to resubscribe to my blog over at the new site. Beginning back on January 1st, I moved to WordPress! Come over, visit, say hello and get caught up at http://www.playingsublimely.com . I have missed you!

Open wide your doors!

This Christmas, my goal was to keep it simple. I typically put up two trees, one with white lights and one with colored lights. But this year I gave myself permission to not...and it feels so good. I picked three areas to focus on, no more, no less. My front porch. Our family room Christmas tree. And my dining room table. That's it.

My front porch was inspired from a store front. The minute I saw what the store owner had put over her front doors, I knew I would do it over mine. The ribbon reads "Open wide the doors, that the King of Glory may come in. Psalm 24:7". Don't you just love it...is there not a more perfect scripture verse in all the Bible?

The store that inspired the verse, had embroidered the ribbon that read the bible verse. Well that wasn't in my budget, so I used a gold Sharpie paint pen and it worked just fine.

And with the "King of Glory" as my theme, the crowns were added to my wreaths.

Our Christmas tree:

The only other space I decorated for Christmas was the dining room table. It is a collection of candles, plants, over-sized trumpet ornaments, and ribbon. Most of this I already had, and I just clustered it all up together and called it a centerpiece!

And finally, because these three darlings that are visiting Santa are mine, and because one of them is about to have a birthday this week, and because they are about to be out of school, and because I haven't bought the first Christmas present, Playing Sublimely is closing up shop for the rest of this year. But oh how I hope you will join me the 1st of January! Darcy has been working her magic on some renovations and we plan to be up and running with a new look by the 1st of the year. There will be a few changes in store for us around here, and I can't wait get back into writing in 2011! Merry Christmas my sweet friends, and won't you open up your doors wide and let a whole lot of Glory come in this Christmas season! There is a sweet baby in a manager that I want to draw close to these next few weeks. I adore you all and will see you in January!

Much love in Him,

Linking up with Kelly and The Nester this year!

Handmade Christmas Tutorials: A "re-publish"

As we approach this gift giving time of year, I thought it relevant to "re-publish" a few of my tutorials that I think make great gifts.First are my monogrammed candles, which are probably one of my most favorite things in my house. Edie at Life in Grace (one of the coolest girls in blogger world) hosted a 12 days of Handmade Christmas, and these painted candles of mine were Day 8. Click here to read the tutorial; but more importantly, check out all the other 11 ideas for a handmade Christmas.


The other handmade gift tutorial, was featured with Gina from The Shabby Chic Cottage over at her 12 Days of a Handmade Christmas. Click here to check out that tutorial. In other news, my oldest daughter told us yesterday that her class was "brainstorming" a list of treats that their moms are especially good at making, and ones that all the children would like to have as a part of their Christmas celebration at school. She oh so descriptively told me that some kid's moms made great sugar cookies, and others said that their mom made great brownies, and so on and so on. I should interrupt this retelling to inform you that as she was painting this charming little scene for us, my husband and I both knew where it was going, and he was already practically hyperventilating from laughter anticipating the punch line. She said that when it was her turn to share, she said (and I directly quote) "I couldn't think of anything that you make that is any good, so I just said you will probably bring in Krispy Kreme doughnuts...cause that's what you always do". In her defense, she didn't mean it nearly as awful as it sounded, she was actually being quite innocent and factual about the whole thing. And besides, home girl was right, there is nothing I could ever make for a Christmas party that would ever be better than just simply picking up a dozen hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The best part was my second child quickly came to my defense, and started listing all the things I make that are really good (all lies). Then my oldest daughter got upset because she realized that she had probably hurt my feelings (which she had not) and started trying to back pedal on everything she had just confessed. I haven't laughed that hard in awhile, and I can tell you my husband has not!


There are only two weekends left before Christmas sweet friends, happy crafting! And today, I'm linking up with these two crafty girls Stacey and Gay, this tutorial was just too perfect not to.