(Advent) Calendar Love

I know it's already the middle of December so you have probably either made an Advent calendar or scrapped the idea by now, but I absolutely love the one I made so I am still going to show it to you.

My Advent calendar idea was inspired by a couple things I saw on Pinterest. First, this amazing Christmas tree of vintage ornaments hung on a screen:

pinned here

via my fav bloggers, pinned here

I decided to make a magnetic Advent calendar. At first I was planning to just put it on our fridge, but then realized that the ornaments were likely to get knocked off because our fridge is in kind of an awkward position in our house. So I decided to use a magnetic board and hang it somewhere else in the house.

On my way home from work, I stopped at Goodwill and picked up a 16" x 20" botanical print for $7. Then I went to Target and picked up two sets of colorful ornaments.

Because it was nighttime and c-c-cold outside, I started painting the ornaments first. Using Martha Stewart silver craft paint, I labeled the ornaments #1-24.

After the ornaments dried, I used a hot glue gun to attach a magnet to the back of each one.

The next day, I took the glass out of the picture frame, set up shop in the back yard, and spray painted the frame. Learning from a previous projects, I made sure that I primed the frame.

After the frame was painted, I went to Home Depot to get some sheet metal and have it cut. Much to my dismay, the only piece of metal big enough for my 16 x 20" project was $20! No thank you. Instead of using sheet metal, I decided to go to Target and find a magnetic board that might fit. Luckily Target had a number of 16 x 12" magnetic dry erase boards, and I picked up the cheapest one for $7.

I unscrewed the frame around the whiteboard and pried it off with a screwdriver, which left me with this result:

The frame whiteboard didn't fit snuggly in the frame, so I used a hot glue gun to glue the white board to the backing of the original frame. Once I had my magnetic surface, I cut my fabric to size.

I used spray adhesive to attach the fabric to the whiteboard, spraying both the white board and the fabric.

Once the fabric was attached, I squeezed a bead of tacky glue on the inside of the frame. To make sure the board was secure, I also used upholstery tacks to hold the board in place. 

With the board done, I set out to make fabric pouches for each ornament. Using my sewing machine and some utility fabric I found for about $5/yard, I sewed little 3 x 3" ornament pouches. 

First I cut 24 4 x 7" panels of fabric:

Then I cut a piece of yarn and placed it near the top of the bag:

The first  seam I sewed was the drawstring pocket. Leaving the yarn in there made life SO much easier than if I had to pull the yarn through the pocket.

Then I folded the panel in half with the wrong side of the fabric facing me. I sewed along the two open unfinished edges. I was careful not to sew into the drawstring area so that I didn't render the drawstring useless.

Once I was finished sewing the pouch, I knotted the yarn and turned the bag from inside out to outside in.

Using the same silver Martha Stewart paint, I painted numbers on all 24 pouches. To prevent the paint from bleeding through the fabric to the back of the pouch, I used pieces of cardboard and pieces of a shopping bag in between the layers.

To display the bags of ornaments, I braided six strands of yarn together (3 strands doubled up), hung strand over a nail, and used tiny clothespins to attach the bags to the strand. 

I'm excited about the end result! I even glued the bow at the top of the board to a magnet, so that it's completely removable. That way I can use the magnet board throughout the year!

Has anyone else made a cool Advent calendar this year? I think they're a really fun Christmas activity with so many different way of making them your own. 

You Go Girly Christmas Tree

When you haven't been out of your parents' for more than a Christmas or two, it can be really tempting to copy everything that they did in the house you grew up in to make you feel like you're home for the holidays. I get it, especially if you are living in a city far away from where you grew up.

But I still encourage you to stop for a minute and think about where you currently are in your life, where you'll be in even just a couple of years, and the traditions you'll establish with your own family eventually.

If there was ever a time to experiment with fun Christmas decorations or break tradition, it's now! Sure, you can always have fun Christmas decorations, but when you're living by yourself or with roommates, you likely haven't established any traditions besides going ice skating together or having a holiday potluck. Once you're married and have kids, you'll have other people that will want to stick with traditions you establish, and change will become a group decision. Christmas traditions are great for families and I look forward to establishing them at some point, but while I'm not legally or residentially attached to my boo and am sans children, it's fun to try something a little different.

Which is what prompted me to finally get the white Christmas tree I'd been yearning to have for two years. Yes, I geek out on Christmas and admire trees for years at a time. Partly because I used to work here.

I have long loved white Christmas trees. There's something about the lightness of them, the way they reflect the soft glow of Christmas lights, and the way you can see color so well on them. They're happy and playful and I've always wanted one. So this year I got one.

I bought my white 6 foot pre-lit tree from Walmart for $40. The tree isn't the greatest quality in the world and looked pretty sparse when I first put it together, but once I put ornaments on it I was in love. I like that it's girly and on the smaller size, like she (duh, she) is saying, "I am just so cute and beautiful that I don't need to be gigantic and overwhelm your living room." I decorated her with silver, pink, turquoise, and lime green baubles, and then added the personal ones I've collected since I was in college (my nice collection of ornaments that I gained throughout my childhood is still safe at my parents' house where I hope it will stay until I buy a place or have my own rental at least). I also used light blue plastic icicles and silver glitter snowflakes that I bought from Walmart. I topped the tree off with a pink glitter star and used some shimmery batting snow that I bought from Michael's.

One thing I learned when decorating this year was to think more about editing. While our tree last year was huge and very decorated, I wasn't totally in love with it. This year's tree is smaller but it makes me smile whenever I see it, and you can see the detail of the ornaments on it better.

For tips on decorating a tree and information on how to make your tree look beautifully decorated while using your personal ornaments, check out last year's Christmas Tree post.

Back in Action

Welcome to my new and improved blog, Savvy Young Something! I’m thrilled that you found it—it’s always a little nerve-racking to make such a big change. But I’m excited about it.

Sorry if you're really confused right now because you were redirected from the old blog. Hope you'll forgive me. Your eyes definitely will.

To answer a few questions:

Why the new name?

To be quite honest, I was never in love with “Young, Hip & Handy”. I used it because I couldn’t come up with anything else and I just wanted to start posting pictures of my projects. As my blog evolved, I knew that the name didn’t do it justice. I also always knew that there is something…well…not very young and hip about calling yourself “young and hip”.  Through some googling I realized that I was in the company of quite a few “Young, Hip and…” blogs, which further fueled my desire to change the name.

I went through a few options and finally settled on Savvy Young Something. Thanks to all my friends who let me bounce my ideas off of them!

Side note: SavvyYoungSomething is too long for twitter, so I’m using SavvyYoungSarah. I’m only telling you this because I came up with it today and it makes me smile. Oh yes, and because you should follow me.

So what does this new name mean?

A Savvy Young Something is someone who doesn’t always know what she (or he) is doing, but is willing to embark on the process of learning and gaining new skills.

As I wrote my blog over the past year, I realized that I wanted to do a lot more than post about how to refinish furniture.  Between posts about crafting and handiness, I found myself writing about establishing traditions when you’re not living with your parents, thoughts on young love and the royal wedding, my experiencebuying a car, and general appreciation of this quasi-grown up state I’m living in.

This realization coincided with thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life. For the first time in my career, I’ve had the same job for over a year. While I really enjoy the people I work with, I’m not totally in love with the work. I’ve talked with a lot of people my age about this and found that most of them feel the same way I do. We’re all trying to be something, but very few of us have figured out what that something is.

At the same time that I've felt unsure about my professional career, I’ve also found myself better able to gain my footing in places that I wasn’t able to even two years ago. I can go out partying one night, stay at home the next with a book and a glass of wine, and not remotely feeling like I’m going to miss out on something. More now than ever, I can put on an outfit and know immediately whether it’s “me” or not. While I don’t feel completely like an adult, I know that I’m completely capable of growing into one. There are a lot of other things I’m getting quite good at.

I may not always know what I’m doing, but I am getting better at knowing where to look and how to approach challenges of the grown up world. And I feel mega empowered every time I accomplish something new.

My goal in writing this blog is to share my adventures in growing up and let other people learn from my experiences. I’ll still focus on home design and DIY projects—after all, a Savvy Young Something should totally have a sweet place on the cheap—and I plan to keep posting things that I learn (like the buying a car posts) that most young somethings encounter at some point. I’ll also try to expand the information on here to include more “growing up” knowledge, perhaps from other people who are willing to share their experiences with me if I can pull it off.  

Did you design the blog yourself?

Yes! And I’m so pumped about it. I recently bought a new computer and forked over the extra $70 to get Photoshop Elements, which is what I used to design the header. It’s totally still a work in progress, and I have spent a ton of time reading different websites and trying to figure out how to fix certain things, but for now I’m quite happy with the design. And yes, I know I’ll have to tweak it in about a month. Oh well, more fun with Photoshop! 

What happened to all the posts from the old blog?

All of my posts from Young, Hip & Handy are included in this blog. I imported all of them, so they are tagged with all the old labels and everything. I also created a few new pages where I plan to store projects that I’ve completed and topics related to grown up stuff.

OK, I need to stop focusing so much on this redesign and start posting all the stuff I’ve been working on for the past few months! I’ll start with Christmas stuff and reserve a few of the projects I completed over the past couple months for after the holidays.

Thanks so much for making this transition with me!

My Mom's in the Cover Story of the Post Magazine, NBD

As I've mentioned before, I worked in a year-round Christmas store for the better part of my young adulthood. My neighbor owns the store and my mom is the assistant manager. This week they were the cover story of the Washington Post Magazine! Check it out! Christmas never ends at the Christmas Attic

Speaking of Christmas, I stumbled upon 97.1 WashFM this morning and realized they are already playing their all Christmas music all the time. I know plenty of people think it's way to early, but it was just too cheerful to turn off on this Monday morning. If you're not in DC, I believe you can find them with the I Heart Radio app that clear channel pushes so heavily (around here at least). They literally play all Christmas music 24/7 through Christmas.

I'll be back later this week to catch you up on some of the projects I've done in the last month, an adventure I went on last weekend, and some of my plans for the Christmas season. Have a great short week!

Map Fail.

Having majored in urban planning in college, I love maps. But sometimes an aerial view can go a little awry.

Take, for instance, a portion of this year's Marine Corps Marathon course map.

This ridiculously inapprop map can be found here. 

Nope, that's not a joke.

Happy Halloween weekend! Good luck if you're running on Sunday!

Another Throwback Costume

Some of you may recall last year's My Little Pony costume, which I'm still pretty pumped about. Everyone knew who I was, and I was right in the area of cute-but-not-skankalanky--exactly where I like to be on Halloween. For those of you who want details on last year's look, check out this blog post.

If I were to do it again this year (which I gave serious thought to doing), I might wear leggings instead of pants. Target has pretty cheap leggings in a variety of colors, and it might have been a little cuter. And you would've been able to see the hearts on the ankles of my pants better. I also would've worn short sleeves because I was HOT last year. Oh yes, and I would have reconsidered the jewels around the neckline, because that very subtly but totally ruined my shirt.

But enough about last year. It's time to move on to this year.

I should preface this by elaborating a bit more on my previous statement--you know, that I like to be in the area of cute-but-not-skankalanky. There's something about going to Party City and buying a super sexy version of Dorothy or Red Riding Hood that freaks me out a little. And it makes very little sense to me. Call me crazy but neither of them really seemed like hobags, so the repeated portrayal of them as such seems a bit off. But to each her own.

While I stay away from skanky territory, I'm also not a girl who wants to throw my femininity out the door when Halloween roles around. I like to hover around looking good but not slutty. (I think this is generally a good rule of thumb any day of year.) What I lack in slut-tasticness I attempt to make up for by being a little bit clever. After all, a conservative cat next to a skanky cat is not cute, it's lame. You have to go a different direction.

This year I'm pulling some inspiration from Jessica Quirk over at What I Wore and going as Carmen Sandiego. What can I say? I love the throwback costumes. I'll be wearing black leggings, a black shirt, red belt, red hat with a yellow ribbon, and black gloves. I used this costume as a fabulous reason to buy a cute rain coat that I can actually wear again, so I'll be sporting that as well. Still deciding whether I should wear boots or my fav black pumps.

photo of this cool cat found here

What are you going as this year? How do you find inspiration for your costumes? I'd love to hear what other people have planned for this weekend!

Guest Post at Chic Done Cheap

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being featured over at Chic Done Cheap. Check out my post about the Young, Hip & Handy Toolbox Essentials and explore the other great information that Maizie has to offer!