This week we put on our warm sweaters and headed out to the Skyline Ranch Tree Farm to take part in a classic holiday tradition: choosing and cutting down our own Christmas tree. Although it may not seem to be the “green” thing to do, cutting your own Christmas tree actually turns out to be quite an ecological choice. We’re not talking about pulling over to the side of the road and taking your pick of nature’s bounty, but rather heading out to a Christmas tree farm where trees are a responsibly grown seasonal crop. Once the big day has passed and your tree has been undressed, it can be mulched or given to your city for recycling.

Cutting down a farm tree is part of the season’s harvest, and at Skyline it’s more like pruning than chopping. Skyline uses trees cultured from established stumps and the stump we chose our tree from had the marks of at least three other sizable trees taken in years past. By leaving some lower branches untouched the tree will continue to grow. They plant 700 to 1000 seedlings a year here, and we could already see next year’s crop growing strong.

CLICK HERE for the rest of studio choo’s tree farm post after the jump!

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interior designer betsy maddox has taken a page from the scandinavian style book, when designing her chicago home – and rightly so. nothing quite warms up a space like white walls, light colored floors, and pale colors. (and after spending 3 winters in chicago, i can say with some authority, that warming up is definitely in order!)  i for one, wouldn’t mind spending the winter, in this cosy oak park bungalow! {thanks, betsy! and thanks to kim postma for the lovely photographs!} amy a.

[My husband and I were charmed by the big, expansive living room in the front of the house, and all of the character that is typical in Oak Park bungalows - like the stained glass, the built-ins, the hardwood floors, etc. It also had a brand-new 2-1/2 car garage which charmed my husband!  This dining room set we bought at a resale shop in Oak Park that, sadly, is no longer around. It has the original nubby cream fabric on the chairs. The wallcovering in this dining area is a new treat that cheers me up whenever I lay my eyes on it (from Ferm Living). The circular mirror I got for a steal at a silent auction several years ago. The shade is from West Elm and was intended for a floor lamp, but we had it retrofitted to use above the table.]

The sofa met all of my criteria when we got it: deep enough to be able to sit cross-legged, low arms, modern style. We got a good deal on it at a Design Within Reach warehouse sale. The patterned pillows are from Urban Outfitters and the green ones from a commercial fabric house called Luna Textiles.

The bird’s nest is really a sweet story. We watched the mama bird build her nest in our hanging plant on the front porch last spring. We kept tabs on the nest as all of the eggs were laid, followed by all of the eggs hatching, and finally the chicks growing big enough to leave the nest. One day the nest blew down to the ground and my husband retrieved it, only to find one lonely egg still in it that never hatched. I kept it and put it in a hurricane that I got from Jayson Home and Garden in Chicago.

CLICK HERE for the rest of Betsy’s peek after the jump!

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this next before & after comes from jelena of poppyseed creative living. jelena recently left her 9-5 corporate job to pursue a career in design and refurbishing found furniture, and this beautiful yellow dresser was one of her recent projects. after cleaning up the frame, jelena applied a coat of yellow paint and distressed the finish to give it a more aged feel. the original hardware was replaced with knobs from anthropologie and voila! a new dresser ready to go to a good home. great work, jelena!

[have a before & after you'd like to share on d*s? just shoot me an email right here with your low res pictures!]

robbi lindeman of salt labs in detroit decided to upgrade a simple $12 ikea frosta stool with some playful decals. robbi applied image transfers to the stool with a solvent and then sealed the seat with a clear coat finish to match the sheen on the legs. this would be such a fun project to use in a child’s room- and on a wonderfully low budget. great work, robbi!

designer will means has already shown us the beautiful before & after work he’s capable of, so i was excited to see another email from him in my inbox. will picked up a pair of old library chairs for $15 and decided to revamp them. after stripping the chair down, will refinished the frame and repainted it with this dramatic new look. i love the way the wood grain peeks out from under the new white coat. great work, will!

[have a before & after you'd like to share on d*s? just shoot me an email right here with your low res pictures!]

designer autumn clemons of design*dump recently redid this den/office with some very clever detailing. after repainting the room, she added a beautiful wooden inlay to the floor and great detail to the ceiling with decorative molding. click here to see more on the project (including the floor inlay process). thanks for sharing, autumn!

[i'm thrilled to have our summer correspondent in copenhagen, brittany watson, back for a special holiday post- thanks, brittany!]

I’m back, but this time planted back in DC finishing my last year of school and dreaming of my unforgettable Danish summer. Somehow, Copenhagen came back to me when we, three students from the Corcoran, Caryn Cramer, Breeze Giannasio, and I, and two from the Danish Design School, Louise Havndrup and Tirsdag Ohrt, were asked to design the annual Christmas party for the Royal Danish Embassy held at the Ambassador’s House. Talk about being right up my alley. Because I was in Copenhagen at the time we were asked, I got to meet up with Louise, our future collaborator and I knew we were in for a treat. From the get go, we all had the same vision: no red, lots of candles, and all sorts of hand-crafty goodness.

This year the party took a twist as it also celebrated the UN COP15 Conference being held in Copenhagen right as we speak. We adopted Hans Christian Andersen’s “Snow Queen” as the theme and set it into a new context, one that reflected climate change through imagery from the story like snow, reindeer, roses, and crows. All selected materials were either recycled, recycleable, reused, or reuseable.

We created a snowstorm as the constant element throughout the house consisting of roses made from coffee filters, stacks of Financial Times, and other trash taken straight out of the recycle bin here at school. We held weekly flower-making sessions in order to gather the mass we needed to carry it off. Then, Breeze would water and bend each petal of the coffee filter roses with a toothpick to make it more life-like. Yes, true dedication.

CLICK HERE for the rest of Brittany’s post and more beautiful pictures after the jump!

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yesterday we posted four great holiday craft projects and today blair is keeping the diy fun going with a great sweater wreath project that lets you make good use of any old sweaters that are headed for the trash. CLICK HERE to see the full how-to on the d*s guest blog!

in non craft-project news, i’m really loving these homespun initialed linens at chestnuts & papaya. i grew up with a mother (hi mom!) that had a great appreciation for vintage linens so things like this always really hit home for me. her taste was a bit more towards traditional white linens, but i always love these heartier looking french-looking styles. click here to check out chesnuts & papaya’s full selection.

My love for plants growing under glass knows no bounds and I was extra excited to find a way to incorporate a little terrarium love into my holiday repertoire this year. These ornaments are actually fake terrariums, by using dried sheet moss or reindeer moss , the ornament isn’t technically growing so it requires no care. Perfect for those of us who are excel at forgetting to water things. Plus, I’m tempted hang them in my kitchen once the holidays are through. -amy m.

CLICK HERE for the full how-to after the jump!

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i purchased these miniature birdhouses from the craft store about six months ago, because they were so adorable and i knew i would eventually come up with a use for them. voila! a miniature wooden village for my mantel during the holiday season. i already had some lights lying around, so i went and purchased some fresh cedar garland to complete the vignette. this takes mere minutes to set up, and the best part is that you can decorate these birdhouses in a million different ways: paint, wood stain, markers, paper, glitter, decoupage, stamps, stickers, moss, to name a few… i like the simple scandinavian feel of the plain wood for now, but i will definitely be trying out some different decorations on my little village in the future. have fun!!! – kate

CLICK HERE for kate’s full how-to after the jump!

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