DECK THE HOLIDAY'S

   This  diy comes from www.dollarstorecrafts.com .  These look quite cool.  They can be used all year round.  Enjoy! Dollar Barn DIY: Robin’s Egg Vase Morning, everyone! Your very own crazy crafter, Jess from Mad in Crafts, here. Are you cheap? I am. I have a little panic attack anytime I see a price tag in the triple digits. Do you like pretty things? I do. When my house is clean and decorated, sometime I just sit and look around at it all. Partly because I know it will be many moons until it's actually clean again. Anyway, because of my remarkable cheapness and love of pretties, you can imagine the internal torment that overtakes me when I visit the Pottery Barn website. ((shudder)) A few months back I wrote a couple of posts called A Dollar Barn Christmas where I took items I found at my local Dollar Tree and turned them into home decor that was inspired by all the goodies at Pottery Barn. I was browsing on the PB website a few weeks ago, and got that lov

    Omizutori , or the annual, sacred Water Drawing Festival , is a Japanese Buddhist festival that takes place in the NIgatsu-do of Todai-ji, Nara, Japan. The festival is the final rite in observance of the two week long Shuni-e ceremony. This ceremony is to cleanse the people of their sins as well as to usher in spring of the New Year. Once the Omizutori is completed, the cherry blossoms have started blooming and spring has arrived.     The rite occurs on the last night of the Shuni-e ceremony, when monks bearing torches come to the Wakasa Well , underneath the Nigatsu-do Hall, which according to legend only springs forth water once a year. The ceremony has occurred in the Nigatsu-do of the imperial temple at Nara, of the Todai-ji, since it was first founded. These annual festivals have been dated back to the year of 752. The earliest known records of the use of an incense seal during the religious rites in Japan were actually used during one Omizutori.    

   The world we live in is a colorful place (except in our dreams, which are mostly black and white, which is odd when you stop to think about it). Though we are surrounded by color and new colors are invented all the time, some colors have completely disappeared from our lives, or are very rare, or are becoming extinct. This list is a sampling of some of those pigments or colors once found in nature, in consumer products, manufactured goods, building construction, etc. 10. Automobile Colors    Ever drive down the road and notice most of the cars you see are colored in four colors (mostly black, white, silver, or gray)? Part of the reason why is resale value – people who want to resell their car later know they are far more likely to find a buyer if the car is one of these common colors. Though other colors are out there, (mostly brightly colored new small cars and new muscle cars), we have lost some of the variety of colors we used to see on cars.    Anyone who remembers c