Merry Merry Merry Merry Christmas!

I’m hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas!  We had a blast this year.  We spent our holiday at Justin’s parents house.

Zack refused to come unless he could dress as a reindeer.

I was so pumped because Justin’s brother Tyler was in town to visit.

This photo is a miracle because these guys are all rarely in the same city at the same time and even more rarely all let me take a photo of them! I don’t know why, they are all so handsome!

Char man loves the chuck it.

Got a photo of Justin and I also.  Don’t mind my face though, I think this is mid laugh, this is as good as it gets people!

Justin’s brother Alex and his girlfriend Shelby came too.

The Hayden family also came over for the day.  As you can see Charlie cannot take his eyes off of Justin even for a minute.

Also don’t be confused, the photo above is Justin and the one below is Kent.  I guess they say like father like son for a reason.

And did I mention that we all have dogs and brought them with us?

Don’t worry they were all spoiled, here’s Charlie’s gift load…

So there you have it.  We all had a great Christmas and now we will start our count down for Christmas 2014!  We love our families so much and are so grateful for them!  Hope you are as lucky as us!

Going green

Hello friends. Hope you had a very merry Christmas. We had a great holiday and I am gonna tell you all about it, but first let’s talk closets. Remember this closet?

This disaster of a closet was calling for some help.  So, I cleared everything out and have started to organize EVERYTHING!  While in the process I started to notice how dirty the walls of this closet are…

Let’s get a little closer…

As you can see the child that previously lived here used her closet as her art studio.  Do you know where I am going with this? Yup, it was time to get my painting on. I wanted to do something a little darker since the walls in this room are so close to white…

Since the room also has some green accents I thought that would be a good color to go with, another bonus is that it is my favorite color.  I chose a color similar to the color in the front office and living room.  I did some quick cleaning of the walls and prepping, then got to painting!

As you can see it’s not a crazy green color, which now I think I maybe should have gone with something a little more vibrant.  Here is the finished product…

 

 

Do you Ike it? Either way it feels much cleaner and I love clean, so I am pleased. I am still doing some major organizing, I’ll keep you updated on how that’s going.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Well, not quite like Christmas down here in FL.  But in our house, yes it is starting to look like Christmas.   I didn’t go too crazy, but I do seem to accumulate more stuff as the years go by. So without further ado, it’s time to get our Christmas decorating on.  As you know we already have the tree…

Look at that happy little tree.  You know I can’t stop there!  The rest of the house needed a little Christmas love as well.  What better place to start then the mantel…

First up, the stockings!

My mom sent these last year filled with all sorts of things for Justin and I(yes, we still get our stockings filled!).  These two became my new favorite stockings, so last years have been retired.   I also picked up a couple little reindeer from Hobby Lobby to hang out on this good ol’ mantel…

It also got a bunch of candles and a cute little Christmas tree.  And did you notice that awesome new pillow hanging out in the basket?

My aunt Kim sent this sweet monogrammed little pillow to us for Christmas.  Don’t you just love it?  Thanks Kim!

I also grabbed my glass hurricane that I used to decorate for Thanksgiving…

And I used that sucker to decorate for Christmas too !  Versatility rocks yo!

This time I used a white pillar candle and just strung some red beaded garland around it.  I just threw it together and yup, love it…

Some more reindeer joined the hurricane on the console.

And a snowman to boot!

Next up I headed to the kitchen and plopped down our Christmas table settings that Justin’s mom picked up for us last year.  Along with a cute little centerpiece that we got to take home from Justin’s Work Christmas party this year! Love it!

And do you see those berries in the background niche?  Oh yes I stole that idea from my Thanksgiving decor as well, remember these?

Well they got filled with beans this time, and I picked up some sticks with berries attached from Hobby Lobby and came up with this…

I dig it.

I also added a gingerbread man…

And snowman soap dispenser, gotta have one of those…

Here’s some more Christmas decor and our massive Christmas card collection, yes that’s all of them!

I made these pine cones a couple years back, just picked them up outside and spray painted them white and red.

Holdiday plates?  got those too.  And a handsome yellow lab.

And of course some santa napkins…

Lastly we headed outside to get festive.  Justin tackled the front yard…

Aren’t those globe lights in the tree just dreamy?

I think it’s my favorite part!  We got them from Lowe’s if you’re interested.

And last but not least, the palm tree on our back patio received a make over…

There you have it, our house for the holidays.  Hope you all have a rockin Christmas!

Oh Christmas Tree!

As you may have guessed this post is going to be all about our fancy schmancy Christmas tree.  I am a pretty big fan of Christmas, so you better believe we picked out our tree the day after Thanksgiving.  And now you know how long it really took me to write this post since Thanksgiving is long gone.

We were pretty jazzed to get our tree, since this is our first Christmas in this house!  We couldn’t wait to get festive and how about start with the tree?  Amiright?  The last two years we have had an artificial tree, but this year we decided to get a little wild and get a real live Christmas tree.  We’re living on the edge people!  Since it was black Friday we checked out the ads in the paper and we saw that Lowe’s was selling an 8 foot for $40, so of course we headed to Lowe’s.  We went with an 8 foot tree because at the lowest point in our living room the ceiling is 9 feet tall.  We were figuring we would put the tree in the corner of the room, where the ceiling is lowest, so 8 foot seemed appropriate.   Here is our pretty little tree in all packed up in my car…

Isn’t she pretty?  We also had to pick up a tree stand and a couple more strands of lights.  We always go with white lights, I think we both agree that we like the simple classic look of white Christmas lights.

Then we propped her in her new stand and I cut the netting off…

Look at that pretty little tree!  Here is the tree skirt that I made last year…

Last year I was looking for a tree skirt and everything I liked was around $40 and I was not interested in spending that much on a simple piece of fabric to go around the bottom of a tree, so I grabbed some fabric for about $6, cut it into a circle, hemmed the edges and voila… tree skirt.

Next up were the lights…

And then I added a red beaded garland…

Then came the ornaments, my favorite part.

and all lit up again…

While I’m at it I figured I would share some of my favorite ornaments.  Because I am sure this is intriguing stuff to you as well!

I guess I’ll start with this little bottle brush yellow lab, of course a yellow lab!

We also have 4 of these Sabres hockey pucks. Gotta represent Buffalo down here in FL!

Cute little bird in the tree also!

Love this peace ornament from my mom back in 2011!

She also got this one for Justin and I a while back, complete with our mugs right on it!

How about we get a little sentimental with Justin’s little baby booties ornament!

And I thought I would also show you some of my favorite homemade ornaments…

I made this guy last year out of a portion of a Christmas tree trunk.

I painted these two a couple years ago.  Did you know that I like my pups?

I also made a bunch of these guys a while back out of light bulbs, small branches, paint and some fabric.

And that’s that.  I love our first real live Christmas tree.  Makes it feel like home.  And how about a handsome dog in front of a pretty tree?

Okay one more!

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Renninger’s

I recently went to Renninger’s Antique Center with Justin’s mom, Sandy.  Sandy had heard this place was great for finding antiques so we had to check it out.  It’s located in Mt. Dora, FL, so it was a bit of a trek for us, but well worth it.  Just look at this aerial view…

I rented a helicopter just to get this shot, I’m big time now.  JK I googled Renninger’s and stole this photo.  Anywho, this place goes on and on.  They have row after row of indoor and outdoor booths.

Let me show you some of the things we found.

Here is one of the outdoor booths.  As you can see it’s stacked floor to ceiling, so it was a true scavenger hunt.

I thought these antique cigar boxes were pretty cool.  I could imagine using one for extra storage on a desk.

I fell for this wine barrel being used as a table, it even had corks under the glass.

And how about this antique thread box?  Wanted to take this home, but for $275 I wasn’t really feeling it.

This lamp was pretty sweet with the shade being made completely of branches.  Not very practical as a shade, but still very cool.

We also saw a couple of these antique fans that I was really digging.

And I love me some sailboats, I really have a thing for nautical accessories lately.  I would love to have something like this in one of our many niches in our home.

Sandy and I both loved this dough bowl, we thought it looked very pretty holding all of this holiday decor.

Here is another lamp that caught my eye, it also leans on the nautical side.

This desk was also beautiful and in great condition.

This pedal car was pretty sweet and I really wanted the butcher block it sat on!  Look at that chunk of wood!

This guy was calling my name.  This shop had all sorts of handmade furniture.  They used a mixture of industrial parts combined with rustic barn wood and the combination of those two things produce some pretty fabulous furniture.  I fell in love with every piece in this shop.

This antique set of drawers would be perfect in an art studio, all of those little drawers would be amazing for storage.

And here are a million milk bottles!

How about some antique ceramics?  Oh yes, they had those as well.

Don’t worry I’ll be back to let you know what I got on this trip.  I’m thinking Renninger’s will most likely see me again in the future.

Giving Thanks…

I hope you all had an outstanding holiday!  I sure did.  Justin and I spent our holiday at his parents house and as usual we had a blast.  I got a few pictures and I figured why not share!

We played our usual game of phase ten and I won, wahoooo.

Kent was our turkey cook, he grilled the turkey on the big green egg and it was delicious as usual.  Thanks for being a great cook Kent!

We got to hang out with Alex, Justin’s brother and his girlfriend Shelby also.

I sure am thankful for this guy, can’t imagine life without him.

Sandy of course made amazing food too! Thanks Sandy!!

Char Man and Zack came too, and as you can see from Zack’s face he had a blast.  Hope you all got to hang with family and eat tons of food too!  We really are so lucky to have great families and we are super thankful for them this holiday!

Who Doesn’t Like a Good Pillow

Last I showed you our bedroom was looking like this…

We had purchased some new bedding that we fell for at Target and just to keep you all posted it is super comfy and working out great, it’s even char man approved.

How cute is he?  Anyway, this bed was much in need of some pillows to beef it up a bit.  So, I got to hang out with my sewing machine for a little bit.  I decided to just cover the old pillows that were on this bed previously…

I’m talking about those three blue guys on the bed.  Here’s what I did…

I started by taking some scissor and slicing those old covers that I had previously made right off(yes I am recovering previously covered pillows, no waste here).  Once I had my old pillows ready to be recovered I needed to decide on what fabric I wanted to use.  I thought that I definitely needed to go with a lighter color since the bedding is pretty dark.  I thought white would be nice and I just so happened to already own the perfect fabric for the job.

It’s the white fabric that I used on the cornice in our room…

Once I had decided on the fabric I cut it about an inch wider than the pillow’s length on each of the four sides.  I had to cut four squares, one front and one back piece for each pillow…

Look at those snazzy squares.  From there I sewed three sides of the fabric together back side of the fabric facing outward…

For the last side that was left open, I sewed a small portion of this side shut. I sewed inward from the corners leaving a small gap open in the center. This probably makes no sense, hopefully this picture will help…

See how the top and the bottom are sewed about an inch and a half inward?  Then I flipped it inside out.

I had to make sure I pushed the corners out completely, they got stuck slightly because it is a thicker fabric.

From there I just shoved the pillow inside.

Once the pillow was inside I flipped the extra fabric around the hole inside as well.   Then I just needed to sew that sucker up.  I made sure the folds were even and I used the sewing machine to sew the last side shut.

See what I mean?

Then I just did that all over again for the second pillow.  And now I have this…

It was still a little too plain for me, so I picked up this guy at the Dillard’s clearance center for $2.  Yes, $2!

Perfect combination of gray and white right?  I am pleased with this pillow, makes me love our new bedding!

I think I will eventually buy a couple shams or possibly make them, but for now our gray pillow cases will do.  So here is our bedroom now.