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.