Kate and friend singing Silent Night

ps. sorry it's sideways, I will try to figure out how to rotate it.....

The Christmas tree

Here is our tree all decorated in the house.  It is a Virginia pine.  Hopefully it will still be green in 3 weeks for Christmas day.  It has been soaking up a lot of water every day.  We have no theme for decorating.  The last couple of years I did 2 trees - one for me to decorate and one for the kids.  This year we have a mix match  

of everything on one family tree. 

 I had to add some extra pictures of our family room and kitchen because I took the day off work today and the kids were at school and the opportunity to have the counter totally clean and free of clutter needed to be documented!

One last Christmas project was these wreaths I made and hung on our front windows.  I used plain grapevine wreaths, wrapped with garland from Dollar tree, and I added silver poinsettia ornaments (from Dollar tree too.)

I have wanted to do wreaths like this since I saw these at the Guenther House in San Antonio last year

Day of painting

I have been thinking of painting my bedroom furniture for a while, since before I wrote this post.  Last night I bought a quart $8 can of black paint and got started.

Here is what the bed looked like BEFORE:

The bedroom was green when we first moved in last year, then I painted it gray this year.

Here is the AFTER picture:

As well as painting the bed and tables I painted this chest we have the TV on.

It is a change from my usual paint everything white, but I love it, it is like having brand new furniture.

The paint I used was Valspar latex enamel satin from Lowes

Linking to piece of work Wednesday

and the power of paint party

Fresh Christmas tree

We had fun last weekend going to a Christmas tree fun and getting our tree.  You get to pick your own and cut it yourself.  This place was a lot of fun.  They also had a hay ride and other activities.



New chalkboard

I started with this big vintage framed print (bought for $5 at an antique store)

 I just taped off the frame, painted one coat of primer, then 2 coats of chalkboard paint,

now it is a big chalkboard - perfect for the kids' artwork to add to our Christmas decor.

Christmas mantel

Here's my easy decorating Christmas mantel.  I mostly used what I already had, the only new things are the green star ($5 from Big Lots) and the garland and green berries (Dollar tree).

We have a tree and some more Christmas decorating around here too, but I haven't taken pictures yet of the tree all decorated yet.

We went to a Christmas tree farm and cut our own tree for the first time:



Linking to the mantel party at the Lettered Cottage

San Antonio 1/2 marathon

We were in San Antonio again last weekend, this time Chris ran the 1/2 marathon instead of the full like last year.  The weather was cooler and running 13.1 miles was a lot more enjoyable for him than 26.2.

We even got to do some antique shopping here:

Mirror mirror on the wall

 

I found this mirror a few weeks ago at an antique store, I don't think it is any kind of "antique" but I liked the look of it, and it was only $10.  The outer frame is plastic but it looks like metal from a distance.

I like the way it looks in here, now our "formal dining room", with some other white and cream things.

I got this little lamp (below) for $2.99 from Goodwill and the burlap shade from Target.

I'm looking forward to decorating this room for Christmas!  I did not decorate much for fall, only some white pumpkins here and there and some Halloween decor on my sewing table.