{Guest} Live.Laughter.Happily Ever After

Happy Tuesday lovelies!

I  have a special treat today! Instead of a Soiree Day post I'd like to introduce you to a new blogging friend!  It's always so amazing to me the awesome connections you can make through blogging.  Well Kalyn and I got connected through Instagram and the hashtag #SheReadsTruth, a great way to get connected if you ask me!  I love, love the crafty idea that she's sharing today! 

♦♦♦

Good Morning, Blog World! 

Hello Vintage Gwen readers! I'm Kalyn and I blog over at Love.Laughter.Happily Ever After. I am SO  excited to be guest posting today for Vintage Gwen and her lovely corner of the Internet! I was immediately drawn into following Vintage Gwen the moment I read one of her chapel posts. Plus, she and I share common ground when it comes to creativity, DIY projects, and food recipes. For me, it is an all around win each day I visit her blog looking for a little encouragement, advice, or blog love. It is an even better win to visit her page every Wednesday for the Show and Share link up party! If you are not joining, you totally should!

Currently, my heart is in overdrive because love month is here! Happy, happy February! Admittedly, I am a newlywed obsessed with love, life, and my Savior. I am super excited to finally have the opportunity to share the month of February with my husband. You should probably know that we started dating almost 8 years ago, became in engaged in 2011, and were married n June 2012. Five of those years we dated were long distance. Therefore, we have not spent Valentine's Day together since we were both in high school. Talk about long over due! We have had our first Valentine's celebration planned for about a month. Needless to say, we are itching to experience our first Valentine's dinner and movie together in the same zip code for once!

Since Christmas I have been looking to take some "me" time to escape school and the hustle and bustle of life to try and recreate this DIY project I saw on Pinterest while I was wedding planning. However, I added a little unique spin of creativity so that our design would be different. What better month than to break out the goods now? 

As you can tell above, those pieces of round wood are from the bottom of our Christmas tree trunk! Yes, I am that wife who makes a huge deal about all the "firsts" we are experiencing on this new journey. I made sure to seize the opportunity to save some part of our very first Christmas tree trunk. I am going to share with you how to reuse them as ornaments for next year.  

Before chunking out the tree when cleaning our home decor, my husband cut off a large section of the trunk about 6 inches long. Then, he and my father-in-law sliced up the trunk into a couple of smooth, one inch round blocks. As a method for hanging this make-shift ornament on our tree for our second Christmas celebration, I was planning to have a hole drilled into the top portion. However, my father-in-law came up with a better hanging method which you can see in the photo below. 

As you can tell, there is a round hook screwed into the top of the wood. I tied a colored ribbon through the hook to match the colors associated with our 2012 Christmas decor. 

I fell in love with this idea as soon as I saw it because it is functional, cute, and so heart felt no matter the occasion. Whether it is baby's first Christmas or the celebrating of newlywed love, the reason for saving the bottom of your Christmas tree and recreating it into an ornament is a special time piece that will last for years to come. 

As you can tell, the creative options are endless when it comes to writing or decorating your piece of wood. I am not all that creative, but I do try often. I am sure you can spruce it up with to fit your own likes! It may sound crazy, but I have yet to store these suckers! I added them to the Valentine's decor I have displayed around our home. 

I am not sure which ornament we will actually put on our tree next year. I have three to choose from and am excited to be able to show our future children a part of Mom and Dad's first Christmas that we saved not only based on pictures taken! Also, I made sure to incorporate our wedding invitation and honeymoon memories into glass ornaments for our tree (Follow the links for those tutorials). In future years, I know that we will love looking back at where we once were and how far we have come! :) 

What You Will Need: 

Wood Chunks

Sharpie Markers

Rhinestones

Ribbon

Hooks

I hope you all have a wonderful day, friends! If you enjoyed this post I would love to invite you to my little corner of the Internet.Typically, I may seem all over the place from day to day in posts but I normally blog about whatever is on my heart at the time. Whether it be random life lessons, marriage, Jesus intervening my to-do list, cooking a recipe twenty different ways based on Pinterest posts, DIY projects, or fashion- You can bet I will blog about it.

As always, until next time- Happy Blogging!

♦♦♦

What a special way to preserve Christmas memories! And I love that you could totally embellish the wood chunks any way you want! Isn't Kalyn great?  Be sure to go check out her beautiful blog!

Have a Happy Day!