It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas...Design on a Dime Style

I love getting our Christmas decorations out each year. I love all of them because there are so many good memories and sentiment attached to them. Most of our tree ornaments were my mom's and brother Andy's. Marsha has made the cutest decorations for all of us and I love putting those out. But this year when I decorated I was feeling like we needed a few items to pull it all together. So after watching some HGTV shows and brainstorming I came up with a few ideas. I spent $50 and I think I did okay. Maybe not Pinterest board worthy, but I was happy. 

The base of this wreath is the one Marsha used for our wedding reception and gave to us. I've used it as a base for many different wreaths and this year I decided to use it for Christmas. I spent $4.00 total to put it together. Most of the decorations used in it came from Goodwill. 

The base of this is a piece of ironwork that hangs on our wall in our family room. The colors are blues, greens and yellows and not very Christmas like so I decided to cover it with Poinsettias. If I had it to do all over again there are a few things I would change, but overall, I think it's kind of cute. 

In the past I have hung up our NOEL stocking hangers and stockings on our mantle and that was about it. This year I decided to take it up a notch and buy some garland. I found this pre-lit garland at Tai Pan for $9.97. And then used the rest of my Goodwill floral selection to spruce up the tall basket things on either side of the mantle.

The tree isn't anything different than any other year, but I just love our tree. We found it at Lowe's one year at a day after Christmas sale for 75% off and I am so glad that we bought it. It is starting to show some wear and tear, but I still love it.

This isn't anything fancy, but it is simple and I kind of like it. I bought the vase for $5.00 and filled it with ornaments, and now I have a Christmas centerpiece. 

I also bought a couple of wreaths to hang on our outside lights on the garage. I forgot to take pictures of those. Anyway, most of my money was spent on the poinsettia arrangement, and everything else I got for super cheap. So, there you have it. I am obviously a little bit proud of my decorations or I wouldn't be blogging about them!  :) What can I say? I love Christmas and I love decorating so I get a little excited about this stuff.

Sort of an eventful weekend...

This was a pretty eventful weekend, by my standards anyway.

First, I got my hair cut way shorter!

Nice picture, huh? Lisa did a great job, but I don't think I was quite prepared for the shock I felt afterward. It is soooo short! That's what I asked for, but you know how sometimes you do these things and afterward go "what was I thinking?!" I had one of those moments yesterday. Well, the shortness is growing on me. I think that it's going to be a fun haircut and way, way easier to deal with. My hair is ultra thick and not very manageable so short will be good.

By the way, doesn't my smile in this picture remind you of that Jell-O commercial where they paste those huge, fake grins on people? Sort of scary! Note to self: no more self portraits.  

Lizette and I had a fun outing together on Saturday. She went with me to get my haircut. We shopped for shoes for her. We did some more shopping for the house. It was a fun girls outing! She is such a good little girl and so fun to hang out with. She makes me smile every day with the new little things she says.  She's been on an "actually" kick lately. "Actually, mom, I don't think I want any milk right now."  Her other new saying is "You might want to think about".  "Mom, you might want to think about changing Lexi."  "Mom, you might want to think about taking out the garbage."  It cracks me up.

The other sort of eventful thing we did which was not really planned, was to decorate our bonus room. It's been "done" as far as painting and furniture now for a long time. I've never done any more to it because I really didn't know where to start. We received some really fun old sheet music from Jeff's Grandma Hill a while back that we had framed and hung in that room. The colors on the covers were mainly blue and orange. I thought it would be fun to pick up on that and go with some more blue and orange in there since we are part of the Bronco Nation and all. But we're not die hard enough fans to have BSU posters hanging everywhere or anything like that.

I was at Target on Saturday and they had some lovely pillows and throws on sale in their clearance section. (Yes, another sale! ) They were the perfect color blue and I just got inspired. So, I walked around the corner and there was a perfect orange side table. I finished up with bean bags, storage tubs and a few accessories from Wal-Mart and voila! It went from a pretty much all brown, drab room that we hardly ever spent time in, to feeling cozy, fun and inviting.  I love accessories!  :)  

The Girls' Room

A while back I told Jeff that I would like to re-do the girls' room. Over Memorial Day weekend he was a little bored so he just out of the blue decided to start the project.  I love it when he gets bored!  And I love that he is such a handy guy.  You'll see what I mean...

BEFORE PICTURES:

After Jeff did his handy work and installed wainscoting.  

LOVE it!  

And here are the AFTER photos:

                                         

        

These are my favorite elements in the room.  I love these baby pictures of both of them and I like how they turned out with their names above.  Cute!  (If I do say so myself)  :)  

        

I put my Cricut cutter to work again to cut out this saying around the picture as well as the girls' names above their beds.

This picture is so cool.  Lexi just happened to be standing in the right spot so you can see her reflection in the mirror.  

I love the lantern.  Might not be the most practical thing because Lexi will probably yank it down one of these days.  But, it's cute for now!  

Jeff did the construction.  I did the painting and decorating.  And Jeff took the cool photos for me.  Team work is great!  I love doing projects with Jeff.  We have so many planned for our house now that we know we are going to probably live here for the next 20 years.  Should be some fun times ahead!  (I hope Jeff feels the same way.)  ;)

The Playroom

I recently rearranged some rooms in our house. I decided to move the girls into the same bedroom and make the other room into a playroom. As far as decorating and organizing this room, I was sort of starting with a clean slate. The room is painted a sky blue color and I knew if I wanted to make it girly it needed some touches.

I put my Cricut cutter to work cutting some vinyl decorations for the walls. Polka dots, flowers and some meaningful words and phrases.  I had purchased some Closetmaid cubbies a while back which work great for storing toys. All of the small toys are organized in labeled bins. I love it! Everything has a place.  My favorite part of the room is the craft/desk area. So far it is a huge hit with all of our visitors. They can sit up to it and color, paint, play with play-doh or do whatever other craft projects they like. It's great!

All in all, I think it's cute!  It wouldn't win any design awards or anything, but I think it's a fun space.

For my birthday my oh-so-talented photographer friend, Shandy, called and offered to shoot my playroom for me! She knew that I had recently re-done it and that I was pretty excited about it. Normally, upon getting an offer like this I would say something like "Oh you don't have to do that." Not this time! I jumped at the chance to have Shandy photograph this room. What a HUGE treat!

Without further adieu, I present to you "The Playroom". Designed by yours truly and photographed by Shandy Vogt of Shandy Vogt Photography.

Sometimes you get photos back and say that the pictures don't do it justice. In this case, the pictures make this room look so much better! I love them! I love all the close ups. As always, Shandy made magic happen. Thank you Shandy! What a sweet memory for my girls and I to have.