A Little Bit o' Christmas

Usually every year by this time in December, my house is all decked, my presents are all wrapped, and we are fully immersed in fun Christmas crafts, cookie making, and holiday outings.

This year we are doing everything low key. Make that really low key. Of course, that is not by choice, just the circumstances we are in at the moment; I'm not going all bah humbuggy on you.


Ho, ho, ho! It's Santa Brennan.

As of today, I have no wrapping done. Actually, I don't even have any wrapping paper, and some of my need-to-wrap gifts won't even get here until after Christmas. We haven't done any cookie baking yet. I do plan on doing that soon. (The commissary here has several gluten-free flour options. Yay!) Brennan has decided Santa needs chocolate chip cookies this year. Sounds good to me. :)

As for all the other trimmings, I don't have any Christmas-y smelling candles, or a mantel to hang our stockings, or even a Christmas tree. But we have had a fun time making a couple craft projects to make it a little festive around here.


On our daily outings to the playground, Brennan has been collecting pinecones.


I told you it wouldn't take long to use my new glitter!




We've also made some paper chains.


Easy pack Christmas decor. :)


And we made a felt banner.


Banner making.

I was also able to mail over a couple of our favorites.


Our Christmas advent tree.


The snow globes we made last year, and our tiny first Christmas tree.


Brennan's nativity...and Spider-man gloves, and Matchbox cars, and Transformers. :)

And as is our tradition, our Christmas ornaments for this year.


Our family ornament. Fitting for all the National Park exploring we did this year. We found this leaf at Bryce Canyon National Park.


Brennan's ornament. Since we are now international, Santa on a globe was perfect for this year. Brennan has had concerns that Santa won't find him. I think the little man will be getting his yearly email from Santa any day now. :)

He will not, however, be getting the skateboard that he put on his Christmas list. I don't think my Mommy nerves are up for that yet. Yikes.

A Cabinet Refinish

I thought today I would show you one of the things I have been working on in the past few weeks.  This is a little cabinet in our foyer.  I'm sure you've seen it around on the blog.  It was in our foyer in our last house, too.  Before that it was in the dining room, and in the two houses prior to that it was in the kitchen.  You get the idea, it's a super versatile little cabinet (and we move a lot.)

So, though I love my little cabinet, I had fallen out of love with it's color.  There is no natural light where it sits, and it was reminding me of a big black hole.

I didn't take a full picture before I started dismantling and taping it up, but I'm sure you can imagine, it was just black.



As you can see, it's purpose at the moment is holding all the decorating stuff that doesn't have a place in the house right now.



The colors I chose for my refinish project were:
Paint: Milk Pail by Martha Stewart
Stain: Dark Walnut by Minwax

A big BIG thank you to Katie at clarendon lane for the color inspiration.  She refinished her master bathroom vanity with those colors and I loved it.  (She's an Air Force wife, too.  Her blog is cute and has tons of decorating and furniture refinishing ideas, go show her some love!)



So after some paint, some distressing, some stain, and some poly, here's the finished result.



Much lighter and brighter.



Just seeing it now makes me so happy.



Want to see what I'm working on next?



Kinda scary, huh?

Happy February

Happy February Everyone!

Just a quick post today.  Brennan is home sick from school today, and we have a date to watch a little Kung Fu Panda.  He's doing much better now, but last night he had a fever, sick stomach, and a cough.  Right now it's just a cough, thank goodness.  Let's just say I had lots of very unpleasant laundry to do this morning.  Please pray that soap and hand sanitizer keeps those germs away from me!  He was funny this morning.  He was recapping the events from the wee morning hours and he told me he got "choke" all over the floor.  Poor guy.

Since today is the first of February, I thought it would be a great day to share our Valentine decked mantel and hutch.  I know I've been showing glimpses of them for a couple weeks, but now you can see the whole picture.

Here is our hutch.  Hopefully this is the last time you see it this color.  I am way over the black and wood.  It has a big makeover in it's future.  It has to wait it's turn though, I have other projects happening right now.  I'm thinking that at this rate, by the time Jason gets home, I will have painted or modge-podged everything in the house. : )



Like my little topiaries?  I love them!  I found them on Amazon. (Though it looks like the price went up since I bought mine. Bummer.)  The wood blocks are from Target either last year or the year before, and the cards are from Paper Source.








A little love on the chalkboard.  It needs a makeover, too.  It's chalkboardy-ness is almost nonexistent.  I have to get it wet to write on it.  Time for some spray paint!



And the mantel.



Our "Love Across the World" globes.  I may have to keep them up past Valentine's Day. : )  The Be Mine art is just a card I stuck in a frame.



Our waterless snow globes are still hanging out.



I planned on making a bunch of these, but when I got this one up, I liked it just fine all by itself.  Any more would have distracted from my lovely window.



Here's the bottom half.  Remember when I mentioned I had made a chalkboard at Brennan's level?  Well, here it is.  He loves it.  All I did was stick some chalkboard Contact paper on a piece of plexi-glass I had in the garage.



So simple and so cute. : )




linked here:
Home Stories A to Z
Serenity Now

Decorating: Chalking It Up

As you all know, we just moved to our new house in November.  Right after we moved in and got our furniture arranged, we decorated for Christmas.  After the holiday decorations came down, the whole place looked pretty sad and barren.  So you know what that meant?  Yay, time for some decorating!

One of the things Jason and I worked on before he left was this handy-dandy chalkboard. (Why, yes, we do watch Blue's Clues around here quite often...and, yes,  I also have a handy-dandy notebook.)



While it would have been nice to have a vintage schoolhouse slate chalkboard, No. 1 - I've priced them, and they are way out of our budget, No. 2 - Jason still has several years left in the military, and I hate to imagine how much a slate chalkboard would add to our household goods weight.  So...we did the next best thing and built one ourselves.  We went to Lowe's and bought a piece of smooth plywood cut to size, and some trim.  Then since our Lowe's doesn't carry chalkboard paint, (I know, crazy!) we went to the Home Depot and bought some chalkboard and trim paint.

A side note to my mother-in-law: Yes, Jason and I miter cut trim together, and yes, we are still happily married. : )



I love having everything right there on the wall.  This is our ongoing agenda for the Winter.  Brennan is finger painting right now, so needless to say we don't always do the right thing on the right day, or maybe we do some things on several days.  Only our Friday lunch dates are non-negotiable.  Brennan's pretty good at knowing the days of the week, and if he knows it's Friday, he knows that means Chick-fil-a or McDonald's.



It's a great place for doodling...





For Brennan, too, ha!  Even though he has his own chalkboard that he loves, and it's right at his level.  I'll show you that soon.



Of course, I had to dress it up at little bit.  I can't wait to change decorations with the holidays.



The clock is just stuck on the board with a Command strip.  Have I ever told you Brennan has a huge fascination with Command strips.  He does.  I have no idea why.



♥♥ I love our new chalkboard! ♥♥

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Spidey Sense and Other Randomness

Recently, we bought a shelf and hung it over the couch.  It looked perfect and made me happy, and I filled it up with goodies right away and loved it.

Unfortunately, there was an unforeseen dilemma with my decorating plan.  Every time someone is sitting on the couch it freaks me out a little.  I don't know why.  Maybe because it's a floating shelf that doesn't look like it should be able to stay up?  A trick of the mind, even though I was the one who hung it up, and my mind should know that it is securely anchored to the wall and fastened to it's metal cleat?


(This is like the fourth arrangement of things I've had up there.  I was hoping I could convince myself it was just the contents of the shelf, and not the shelf itself.  It didn't work.  Also, the shelf really is centered over those ceiling tiles, it just doesn't look like it in this picture.  Anyway.)

Understandably, Brennan being the boy jumping bean that he is, could knock something off.  But even when I am sitting on the couch, being still, all by myself, that shelf makes my head tingle, like I've developed spidey sense all the sudden. I have since read that hanging a shelf above your sofa is bad feng shui.  Apparently I have a feng shui sensitivity.  I had no idea.  So it looks like my new little shelf will be looking for a new place to hang, and I will have some big holes to patch.  Not to mention that now I have to figure out something else to hang up there.  Boo.

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I posted awhile back that it was about time for me to invest in some warm boots.  My trusty rain boots just weren't going to cut it for winter wear this whole season.  (Even though I still wear them often.)



So now I have not one pair of new boots, but two!  The first ones are snow boots.  With fuzzy stuff in them. I've worn them several times, and they are so warm.  Great for building snowmen and for all the snow shoveling that I will inevitably be doing in the coming months.



The second ones I found yesterday at Famous Footwear.  They were 50% off and  I had $5.00 off in reward points.  Oh yeah!  But...   I have no skinny jeans or leggings to wear them with, and my old standby boot cut jeans just don't look right tucked into them.  So they are on the sidelines at the moment waiting for a wardrobe update.  I can't wait to wear them!



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Last week we went treasure shopping at an architectural salvage shop in Salt Lake City.  There was so much old stuff...chippy paint, weathered wood, and it all had a history.  As soon as we walked in I fell in love with two pieces.

They came home with us.

A leaded glass mirror from the 1800's.

There are not words.  Except I already think of her as another family member. : )

& Co. Sign.

We bought this complete with bird poop on the back.  And FYI, there wasn't a discount since it had been pooped on, ha.  It really bothers Jason that it doesn't say anything before "& Co."  But that's why I love it so much.  What happened that the end of this sign got cut off?  What happened to the rest of the sign?  Was there a big blow up fight and a breakup, or did someone die, or retire?  Hmmm...we will never know.

We also got a wooden shutter, but a picture of that will have to wait for another day.  It needs a little work, and I don't know yet where it is going to live in our house.  You just never know, it might end up above the couch. : )