A Winter Wonderland

Well, we have successfully converted our house into a winter wonderland and I love it! I wish it was acceptable to keep Christmas decorations up all year long.
Here is our Christmas tree, I love it and I can't wait to get a bigger one for next year! :)

 Above is our make-shift tree topper. The one we had was too heavy so we had to get creative.

The colors we used were gold, silver and maroon.
Here is our "mantle", oh how we wish we had a fireplace.

 I got the stockings above from the dollar store last year.
We put a lighted garland around the front windows and I added some maroon bows for color. FIY bows are one of the easiest and cheapest things to decorate with. You can get 18 for a dollar and they can be easily added to just about anything.

Above is just a simple vase with layers of pine cones, white potpourri and Christmas ornaments.
Our TV corner:

 I added some ornaments to my "planter stand picture frame", and on the right is my attempt at an ornament wreath. I ran out of ornaments which is why its so small, but I will definitely be buying more and making a bigger one.

The star was our tree topper but since it was too heavy we found a new spot for it. I remember playing with this reindeer bowl every year at Christmas growing up and now I get to have it in my house! Thanks Mom :)

 Here is our mini Nativity scene and behind it are twine Christmas trees. All they are made of is a Styrofoam cone wrapped in twine. They are so cheap and easy to make, you should try it!

 Sean and I felt we needed some lights in this corner of the room since we had lights everywhere else, so we came up with this. We took a bucket, some sticks and some gold and silver artificial leave stems, put a few left over Christmas ornaments on it and threw in a 20 count strand of lights. I think it turned out pretty nice.

 We put a garland across the entry way between the living and dining room. Then we hung gold and silver ornaments at different lengths across it. Oh, and put mistletoe in the center of course. :)

Here is our Christmas place mats and centerpiece. (Place mats came from the dollar store- they love me there!)

We put yet another garland over the kitchen windows and then I hung two red snowflake ornaments from each window which I got at Target for 85 cents each!

 On the table in the kitchen I used two candle holders with red and green in the bottom, and in the center is just a galvanized bucket with sticks in it and some ornaments on the ends.

This is the "Man Cave" Christmas tree.

And now for the outside....
Simple lights and a bow for the back door.

 

In the front we kept it pretty simple too. A little wreath on the door and two "tomato cage Christmas trees" shown to me by Danielle via Pintrest (Thanks Danielle!). Then some lights wrapped all around the railing of the porch.

That's it for our Winter Wonderland tour. I hope you enjoyed  it and maybe got some good ideas for your decorations as well! Love you all!
-Amy

Living Room rearrange and Dresser redo

Hey everybody,
I know it's been a while since my last post. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving and now I'm looking forward to Christmas and enjoying the season. All that being said, at the same time, I've also been crazy busy and have a lot to post. I got an itch to rearrange the living room several weeks ago. Once I got it in my head I just couldn't let it go. My very sweet husband accommodated me and my rearranging impulses. We must have moved the furniture around every which way and in the end simply ended up flip flopping our short couch with the long one and flipping the corner our TV was in to the opposite corner. The main purpose for the rearranging was that I had now fixed up two chairs for the living room and needed a "sitting area" to put them in. Here are some before pics of the living room:

Above is the second chair I refinished. I found it on the side of the road, stained it and put these cushions on it. I came across another chair several months ago, also on the side of the road (I'm noticing a trend...) took it home replaced some missing parts, cleaned and stained it and got the same cushions for it.

When I first brought it home, and then with new stain on it.

 My new sitting area!

While rearranging Sean and I decided that since we were moving the furniture anyways, it might be a good time to redo our dresser/tv stand that we had been talking about redoing for over a year. So began the monumental task....
This is the dresser before:

We spent literally two days (morning to evening) stripping the paint off this thing. It was the closest thing to tar other than actual tar. Basically it was a nightmare, but eventually we got most of it off and sanded.

Then we stained it.

Meanwhile, the dogs enjoyed a nice day outside....

Anywho, back to the dresser. The last step was to put new handles on the drawers.

And tadaaaa! After all that effort we ended up with this.

Also, since these pictures were taken we have put up our Christmas decorations which I will be posting soon. Stay tuned and let me know what you think!
Love you all.
-Amy