Christmas in the Gazebo

The Gazebo is now decorated for Christmas, so grab a cup of hot cocoa and let's take a tour! 

While the Camper Christmas is a fun mix of trees with lots of pink and turquoise parked along the driveway, the gazebo is tucked in our yard and has a more traditional color scheme with red, white, black, and grey.

 Natural greenery and berries, red trucks, a couple of fun gnomes, along with some buffalo plaid ribbon decorate the setting. Of course our rustic gazebo has plenty of galvanized buckets and containers, along with a dishpan snowman! 

I painted a red truck with trees and snow on a old chicken feeder. I picked cedar, pine, berries, and pine cones at the farm and added it to the buckets and the grapevine garland. Once the holidays are past and the greenery dried out, it will go to the compost bin. 

I had previously declared that I would never purchase used Christmas lights again, but I did. I found the old fashion big bulbs at the thrift store for $2 a strand. In my defense, several strings were still in the boxes. I did buy a couple of extra strings, in case I needed to change out a few bulbs.  I mean, $2 for this style lights is a steal of a deal! 

The youpon bushes are about to overtake the old bicycle. When I planted them, they were so small in 1 gallon containers - they sure have gotten big! By next spring, I may have to rescue the bike, until then, the basket on the front has more cut greenery and a string of solar lights. 

 Mr. Dishpan Snowman has a plaid scarf and consist of 3 old enamel pans. The holes were already in the small pan and make the perfect face!

I had to make a few gnome trees! (You can find the tutorial on how I made the gnome trees, here.)

This red truck was a Christmas gift and is actually a bird feeder and house! In the past, I've had a cardinal family spend a lot of time in the gazebo and even raise their babies in the bushes beside it, so I'm hoping they come back to visit. 

How to Make a Gnome Tree

Gnome, gnome, gnome - you've got to say it three times! So we have become a little obsessed with gnomes lately! If you've been following along on facebook or instagram, you might have seen our recent gnomes at our shows and even Jeff holding a couple of them! We even have a new gnome tee! 

I sure do love me some bearded boys! (Angea made the two that Jeff is holding, although I've made some that are similar for our shows.) 

 Our friends have said we need to make Jeff a gnome hat and others have said we should just call them "Jeff's" instead of gnomes! lol

Since then, I've been planning my outdoor Christmas displays and I decided we needed a couple of gnome trees! We went thrifting to find some items to make our gnome trees. I saw some very generic and skimpy ones at one of the big box stores, but you know us - can we make it cuter and for less? In this case, yes! 

I found two artificial trees - one for $2.99 and the other for $4.99 (it came with lights.) I picked two that had longer branches and instead of "fluffing up" the trees, I pulled all the branches down, except the very top branch.

 I found this grey sweater for a quarter. Now for the hardest part - I pulled it over the top of the tree, with one sleeve over the top branch.

 Now, just take a sharp pair of scissors and cut about where you want the gnome hat to be. I had the ribbed collar for the front of the gnome. Since I know where my trees are going and that they won't be seen from the back (after this how to), I'm not real concerned about it being perfect on the backside.

 I was outside and didn't have all my supplies nearby and I really wasn't even considering sewing the hats. I had been string lights on my other trees and of course that meant there was lots of those little twisty ties from the lights ( you know the wire ties that you take off the new lights?) Anyways, I take one of those wires and use it to "sew" the back of the sweater together. It was stiff enough to thread through the sweater and twist together, to make the hat fit better. I did trim the sweater up a little bit.

That's what the sweater looked like after making one hat. 

If you work with much greenery garlands, you know there's always a piece or two that will fall off. So I took one of those pieces and tied to the sweater cuff to close off the sleeve. I shaped the one branch that was still sticking up, to make the hat have the curve I wanted. 

 Now for a nose... I went searching for anything that would work and came back with a shatterproof Christmas ornament and simply hooked it on a branch under the hat. I saw one pretty gnome tree made with fresh greenery and they used a potato for the nose.

I added a few bells to the hat and a little more decor to make it complete. While the camper has a kitschy pink and turquoise Christmas vibe going on, the gnomes are headed to the gazebo, where there will be more traditional colors with red, white, green, and grey. 

Of course the gazebo has rustic metal containers, so the gnomes are sitting in a galvanized water cooler and on a pig feeder. 

So whatcha think? Two cute gnome trees for $8.23! That's a fifth of what I saw the store bought gnome trees for and they were skimpy.

Here's a sneak peek of the gazebo - stay tuned for the full gazebo reveal coming real soon!

Miss Gussie, the Glamper, and the Tree Farm Lit Up for the Holidays!

Hey Y'all! Miss Gussie is all lit up for the holidays and we couldn't wait to share pictures! We decided to have a "Tree Farm" theme this year. Our tree farm has some fun and non-traditional colors. We have 16 trees in shades of pink, aqua, silver, white, and a couple of green ones! I already had several of the trees, since I've used them in past displays and shows, although we went thrift store shopping and found a few more to add to our collection. I've been told pink trees are supposed to be the color this year, although I didn't know that, till after I was working on my decorating. I simply decorated the trees with tinsel and lights and it's made it a fun and happy set up.

We actually lit her up one night last week on a Facebook Live Video!

 

You may remember me talking about the ugly garden makeover, earlier in the summer. There once was a garden fence and bricks outlining forgotten raised beds. The briers had taken over and it was hard to mow. I was tired of looking at the ugliness, so I pulled it all up. I never really showed the after picture of what we were planning - well the spot is now "The Campground."  The camper is closer to the house and that's the greenhouse in the background. It makes it a better place to hang out and of course I take a lot of my product pictures outside by the camper. Nothing is attached permanently in this spot, so that we can hook up and move her, if needed. (although it will take some careful maneuvering to get her out!)

All of the trees are in tin buckets, old wash tubs, milk cans, or even vintage chicken feeders - you know, the things I had flowers planted in, until frost killed them. So as we cleaned up the yard, the containers got moved to the camper for the tree farm. 

We were at the Swap Meet  in October. I ask about a couple of items and somehow I came away with a truckload of things including some porch rails / post. They were unloaded by the camper and I was trying to firgure out what to make of them. Well, I've always wanted to be able to hang a chandelier by the camper, so those three pieces were wired together, so we could hang the chandy and a sign and of course covered in grapevine and Christmas garland! 

The chenille bedspread covers the metal bench and just makes it cozier this time of year! 

The night before I was planning my photo shoot, I decided we needed a couple of flamingos. Living in a small town, I didn't know where I could find any by the next day and I really did not have time to travel to a larger city to look. So I ask my Facebook friends if they specifically knew anywhere I could buy a couple of pink birds, locally. A couple of my friends tagged the local girl scout leader and I was loaned a couple of flamingos the next morning! As one of our friends said - only in a small town can you ask for pink flamingos on Facebook and within two hours of networking find what you are looking for! (The Girl Scouts use them for a fall fundraiser flocking people's yards, so they have a lot on hand.) I would have gladly purchased the birds, but I was thankful to be loaned them on short notice. Anyways, I put Christmas wreaths around their necks and they they added a fun touch to the display! The t shirt has a couple of flamingos and deer on the front, so that was a couple of elements that tied in with the graphic.

The same day I got everything decorated on the camper, I went to sign up for the Gilmer Yulefest Christmas Show. I was planning to just use my tent, but in conversation at the Chamber Office, Miss Gussie was invited to go to town, so we will have to take it all down next week, as we prepare and go to the show. It's December 7, 2019 on the Courthouse Square in Gilmer and we will have our shirts and Christmas decor for sale. We will be open from 9:00 am till 7:30 pm and there will be vendors, food trucks, carnival rides for the kids, Candy Cane Lane crafts for the kids and the evening will end with the Christmas Parade. It's also designated as a Shop Local Day in Gilmer. We are excited for next week, so come out and see us - we will be taking some of the trees, but not all 16! 

Of course, if you aren't local, we can always ship the shirts to you. Shop online at gypsyfarmgirl.etsy.com or www.rustandromance.com