Happy Christmas 2012

December 2012

Happy Christmas.... in April.  One day this blog will catch up and I won't be posting these in the off-season. Every Christmas I like to document our decorations and general festiveness.  This was our second big Christmas in the house and we made some additions.  Unfortunately, we did not celebrate in the house as both Josh and I were visiting family but I still really enjoyed the decorating.

The mantel got it's fresh cedar garland and poinsettas, I hung our christmas artwork above and broke out our christmas gnomes.   Add some new awesome personalized stockings made by Josh's aunt Connie and it was starting to look legit.

The snow village was back out and wood bead garlands on the chandlier.  We added some small Christmas trees to the hutch and added an Elf on the Shelf to our liquor selection.

We tried a new tree this year, we moved away from our Noble Fir and tried a Blue Spruce.  We loved it, it dropped less needles, it is more open and allowed us to get all of our big ornaments up.  I will give it negative points for the fact that you now can see the wires for our lights, but still I think this might be a new tradition.  My favorite addition this year- this awesome moss covered reindeer I got on a whim at Target- so awesome-sauce. 

Outside, we lit our Mountain Oak, added candles in the windows and even hung icicle lights from our porch gutters.  Add to that my new wreath and we felt our halls were decked!  We spent a wonderful weekend up at our friends beach house in Rockaway and got our Christmas sweaters out- Gus joined in as well.

Merry Christmas!

 and of course, just to prove I am not a true blogger my centerpiece says happy fall.... I can't help it gourds never die.

Our Christmas Castle

Christmas 2011

As I have mentioned in the last three posts, we got a chance this year to do Christmas in our house.  For the first time we bought a fresh Noble Fir at our local stand.  Insert, we also had to buy a tree stand, ornaments, Christmas lights, etc.  We also got some fresh cedar garland for the mantel and for around the front door. It was fun putting everything out and about. Small decorations were spread out around the house: vases of red flowers, red bead garlands and some plaid bows. We lite up our lone tree in the front yard and put some lights on the porch. I bought adorable ceramic and twig reindeer to protect our front door and even our buffalo head got a little sprucing up.  

For the mantel, I hung out stockings, added some poinsettias and hung some winter photographs on the wall.  In the dining room, I used our freshly stained built-in top to put up a collection of ceramic snow village houses my mom used to collect.  When I finally bought my own house she let me pick out my favorites and sent them along so I could have my own little village.  This always fascinates people who come to visit, one because they are beautiful and all lite up and two because 26 year olds don't normally collect ceramic Christmas houses.

This was also our first real 'party' at our house.  So we broke out the few nice plates and serving dishes we had.  We set up a drink station in the family room with warm spiced cider and a vintage red coleman cooler filled with wine and beer.  For the first party I made a gluten free cobbler, and a fresh apple pie, we also bought some cookies and a pound cake from Whole Foods.  For the second party we bought a honey baked ham, I made fresh biscuits and cut up fixings.  I made homemade cranberry sauce as well as spinach and artichoke dip. We also made New England clam chowder and served them in espresso cups, which was a huge hit!  It was great to see family and friends and I think we made a good showing!  Happy Christmas!

A Christmas Miracle, Mudroom Vortex Part Deux

December 2011

This year we decided to spend Christmas in Portland, which was super exciting.  It was our first time staying home and would be our first opportunity to really celebrate in the house.  Of course, we could not just sit back and relax?  Apparently working on your house 24/7 doesn't end for the holiday season.  So, Josh and I decided to host a small Christmas party of desserts and drinks.  Then as luck would have it, we offered to be part of our neighborhood progressive dinner party which happened to land the following night December 26.  Yup, that's two parties, two different menus, in two days, gulp.

 

As if this wasn't enough, this would be the first time many of our friends and neighbors had ever seen the house.  Which put the pressure on to finally deal with a lingering project to nowhere: the mudroom.  As you may remember, back in July we installed beadboard in the entire space.  In August, we rented a belt sander and sanded the floor boards.... then nothing happened for a while. Then we sanded the ceiling, only to realize we had to skim coat it again, so we sanded it again.  Are you seeing where I am going?

Well it was a little over a week to Christmas and we needed to at least make the room presentable.  We primed the entire room and set about painting all the walls, trim and ceiling a nice fresh white semi-gloss.  One coat went up, then two, the wood was soaking all the paint up like sponge, I seriously didn't know if I could keep painting the same space every night like this.  Finally, we tried a third coat, it had to be deemed good enough and we stopped at four coats of paint.  This made a huge difference in the room!  So bright and so fresh.  We were excited and couldn't wait to paint the french doors. Except we soon realized they had to be open to painted?!? Since it was about 30 degrees and rainy in Portland these doors were not getting painted anytime soon.  Total fail on our part.  We had three months of perfect weather in which to paint the doors and well... it looks like it would be almost a whole year before it happened.  So please ignore the ugly preprimed beige doors.

 

I will take a break from this failure to show you a picture of our amazingly cute sconce we added to the mudroom.  Prior to this addition there was no light in the space, not one.  Making trips to the basement or outside at night was an 'at your own risk' adventure.  Then I saw this little guy and decided he should come home with me (I am glossing over the fact we had to bring in a electrician to actually make it light up). But that aside, its adorable and I love him every time I go down to the basement without tripping and dying.

 

With the door failure looming we decided to paint the floor.  I primed the bare floor boards, which kinda gave it a fun whitewash effect and then Josh painted the floor with crisp porch paint. Two coats, one of which was done on Christmas Eve.  Yes, we painted the mudroom floor on Christmas Eve, Josh was at until 9pm.  Fumes be damned this would be our Christmas miracle! We pulled it off and shared a glass of wine before passing out.  Now I just needed to start contemplating two parties to cook for. 

A 2010 Christmas

December 2010

 

So for those of you coming into this blog a little late.  I figure I should remind people that I have started at the beginning of our adventures.  This means we are only slowly moving closer to present day.  In the wonder that is my procrastination and random happenstance we are now exactly a year out in my projects.  At this time last year, we had completed our small kitchen reno, our outside landscaping, painted our dining and family rooms and done numerous other small and large projects behind the scenes projects to get us to this point.  We decided to take it easy through late November and December as we travelled to see our families and celebrated Josh's brothers wedding in Mexico.

 

I figured if 2011 Christmas is upon us, what better time then now to show our small but in many way momentous first Christmas in our own home.

 

I look forward to speeding through 2011 projects and getting you caught up and hopefully embrace the new year and blog more often.  Thanks for the reads... please 'follow' me if you can... purely for my own self esteem.  Please have an amazing year my friends for we are indeed truly blessed!