Christmas Past

Yes, it's true, Christmas has come and gone. But, it is one of my favorite times of year, and was my more recent opportunity to make my home beautiful, so I'm going to share it.

We kicked off the season this year with an advent activity for Leo. I borrowed the idea from my good friend Christine. Since Leo didn't really understand what Christmas is all about, I thought the idea of reading a story each day about winter and the holiday season might help learn about what was coming. So, I wrapped up a Christmas or winter themed book for each day of December until the 24th. Thanks to my reading teacher Mom, I only had to purchase about half a dozen books to have enough. 

I made simple paper labels and attached with silver washi tape. The crafty designer in me wanted to make them more designy and complicated, but similar to the approach I am taking with the blog, I opted for just getting the job done. I set all the books up on a shelf in Leo's room, with a mini tinsel tree. Each night, as part of our bedtime routine, we would find the right book and Leo would open it while we put on his pjs. In addition to being a way to learn about the season, it also helped him learn about the concept of opening presents. 

Of course, the last book we opened on Christmas Eve was a board book version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. 

We all gathered on the sofa to read the story together, sporting our new Christmas PJs. All in all, I think the storybook advent was a big hit and we will probably make it an annual tradition. 

This Christmas was the first time that Greg and I actually hosted the holiday dinner. My mom came to stay with us, and it was just the four of us for Christmas Eve. Here's what the table looked like for our dinner on the 24th. 

If you are familiar with our dining room, you might remember that we typically have a bar height table with stools. We only have 6 stools, and we were expecting 8 people total for our Christmas dinner, my mom, and Greg's parents, grandfather and brother in addition to the three of us. We ended up buying an 8ft folding table to use for the event. It will come in handy in the future for all sorts of indoor and outdoor parties. I couldn't bear the thought of all of us sitting on boring gray folding chairs, which we already had, so I decided to paint them. There are some better shots further down. You can see that my Christmas colors are not the typical red and green. I use teal, lime green, purple (big surprise), pink and a little red. I love this whimsical mix of colors and how they look festive, but at home with the decor I always have in my house. So, for the chairs, I did each of lime, teal, purple and pink. The plates on the table came from Target a few years ago. I made the placemats back then as well, from wrapping paper covered in contact paper. You can get a better view of those here.

Of course, it wouldn't be Christmas without cookies. I usually make dozens upon dozens of frosted sugar cookies. I still made a few of those, but I also wanted to make some that might appeal a little more to Leo. I got the idea for these peanut butter cookie reindeer from Pinterest of course.

After we finished reading our story, we got some of those cookies ready to leave out for Santa! I'm pretty sure he liked them. 

Before I tell you about our morning, here's a look at some of the other holiday decor around the house. 

I loved the way this turned out. I strung a bunch of shatter proof bulbs with baker's twine from the chandelier in our dining room. It made the room feel a little like Christmas in Wonderland. 

We have always like colored lights on our tree. I love the way the colors of the ornaments I used complement the lights so nicely. Above, you see the ornament I bought Leo for his first Christmas last year. It was perfect, as one of my favorite names for him is "Peanut."

I set the table for Christmas dinner with our real dishes, instead of my melamine snowflake set. I didn't have enough snowflakes, and I wanted to be a little more formal. These are the dishes we use every day, but they are nice enough for special occasions. 

For place cards, I used my favorite sugar cookies. I have a set of little letter cutters I used to create the names. 

The placemats were made with some silver vinyl fabric that was left over from this year's fashion show. I thought it looked a like snow. I just used basic plastic tablecloths from a party store, layering a clear with white snowflakes over a blue. All in all, I was pretty pleased with my first Christmas dinner. It whimsical and fun, which suits my personality perfectly. 

 One more idea from Pinterest were these Grinch fruit kabobs. Even though Leo doesn't know the grinch, he loves fruit. And the adults got a kick out of the reference.

So, now that you've seen what the house looked like, here' a few shots of Leo discovering what Santa left behind. 

Before I go, here's a look at the basement. We've been having so much fun family time down there in our new family/play room. I wanted to make sure we were feeling the spirit of the season when we were down there as well. 

 I used similar colors down here, but went heavier on the red of course, because it's one of the featured colors in the room. The room still needs a lot of finishing touches, but I thought this decor added a lot for the month of December. Of course, now that all of it has come down, I'm itching to get moving on more of those finishing touches. I will be sure to share them as we go!

The Nursery

The long awaited nursery reveal is here! I spent Sunday morning making the room look photo shoot worthy. It will probably never look this way again, but at least I will always have it documented, right? So, without further ado...welcome Luigi's new room! If you are curious about where things came from, there is a resource list at the bottom end.

This is the view you see from the hallway. 

Once you get to the doorway, you can see a little bit more. 

I'm really happy with the way my scrapbook paper animal faces came out. At some point, I would like to add more art on the other wall above the crib, preferably something with words/letters. But, I think that can wait for now.

When you turn around, and look behind you, you can see the big wall of stripes. Have I convinced everyone that purple is completely acceptable in a little boy's room yet?

I'm sure the objects on the floating shelves will be constantly changing. 

Here's the crib from the closet wall. 

From the far window, looking back at the closet, you get a good view of the rocking chair and dresser. 

We created animal face artwork to compliment the colors of the stripes, and the subtle zoo animal there.  It was really important to Greg that Luigi have some faces to interact with. Of course, I wanted something very graphic and not too characterish or themey. I think we came up with a good concept. 

And coincidentally, the mobile has almost the exact same combination of animals. Just swap a zebra for a tiger. But they both have stripes. 

Zoo mobile

Cuddly Courdy Roy the Horse, sits on the rocking chair and adds an extra splash of purple. 

Yes, I even got coordinating cloth diapers. But only a few so far...we still need to see how it goes. 

But they look really cute on the changing table, don't they?

Luigi's first Matchbox car, a purple pickup truck selected by his cousins H & L. 

Cool wooden race cars from my friend T who is expecting a boy in January. I think Luigi will be playing with these much before we let him touch the purple pick-up. And maybe someday T and her son will come to Boston so he and Luigi can play cars together. 

Toy/Book shelf, stocked up and ready to go with so many wonderful and
generous gifts from family and friends. 

Really cool robot piggy bank, a gift from Granny's friend. 

Resource List:

• Dresser - my old dresser, painted in the same colors as the stripe wall
• Eiffel Tower Lamp - have had it for awhile, it will probably be replaced eventually when we find something different. I think Target still carries this in black. 
• Rocking Chair - found in my Gram's house years ago, and painstakingly painted and reconstructed to get rid of the horsehair and hay cushions. Amateur no-sew upholstery in Boca Pacific. 
• Blackout Curtains - found at many online retailers, can't quite remember who I actually bought the from. 
• Ottoman - from Target
• Carpet Tiles - FLOR, Feeling Groovy in Lime, Sky and Iris. 
• Crib - Babyletto Hudson
• Changing Table - IKEA Gulliver
• Toy/Book Shelf - IKEA EXPEDIT, in high gloss white. Can be used vertically someday as well, if need be. 
• Wall Shelves - IKEA LACK in high gloss white. 
• Mobile - Nojo Jungle Tales
• Bedding & Changing Pad Cover - Morning Zoo from Land of Nod.
• Striped Pillow in Crib - IKEA VLABORG
• Lamp on book shelf - IKEA VIDJA
• Paint - Sherwin Williams:
• Main Walls - Cay
• Stripes - Secure Blue, Lime Rickey, Aquarium & Genetian

It's time to do the nursery

In case you haven't heard yet, Greg and I expecting a baby boy this October! We beyond thrilled! And of course, this opens up a whole new realm of home improvement projects. So, yes, I will admit, while Greg has been busy building the deck all spring, I have been doing a lot of napping in the hammock, but I have also been doing a lot of prep work on our son's nursery. I thought I'd share a little preview of what we're planning so far. Oh, and in the images below, you'll see we've given him the nickname "Luigi" so we can call him something more interesting than "the baby" before he gets here and we decide on an official name. (and no, we won't be sharing our list until he's actually here!)

First, here's a mood board of sorts showing the feature wall. The other three walls will be the light aqua color, which is pulled from the bedding. The bedding is Blue the Morning  Zoo from the Land of Nod. The crib is the Hudson from Babyletto, and the curtains are blackout curtains that match the green in the bedding, from many sources online. The rocking chair is an antique Victorian chair I got from my grandparents house, which my mom has been kind enough to store for me for the last decade. We plan to paint it white and reupholster it, which should be interesting, since we're essentially rebuilding it from scratch. It was literally filled with hay and horsehair! There are two windows in the room. One opposite the feature wall, and one to the left of it. The crib will nestle in between the windows. The last wall, to the right of the door is mostly just the white closet doors. 

OK, so you got it?

The tall chest of drawers is my old piece. It's a sturdy natural maple chest that I've had since I was a teen. We just got a new dresser for our bedroom that finally coordinates with the rest of our furniture...which hopefully I will get around to showing you someday. So yes, I have no problem painting natural wood. My first thought was to paint it to match the stripes on the wall, and almost camouflage it in. 

But, then I wasn't sure if it stood out enough. So, I looked at painting each individual drawer it's own color, and something that would intentionally be different than the wall stripe behind it. I think this makes it pop a bit more. 

Lastly, I love the idea of some large scale animal silhouettes that Luigi can relate too, so maybe one would work on the drawers? Especially since we're just not going to end up with a heck of a lot of bare walls at his height. At first I thought I would paint it on. But then I reminded myself about the decals, which will make it much easier to get rid of when we're mature enough to move on from zoo animals. 

The room has hardwood floors, so we want to put down some type of area rug. I am absolutely in love with carpet tiles. They have been awesome with our cats when there is a mess. We just pick it up, spray it off in the sink, let it dry, put it back. This seems like it would be a great feature in a kids room too. Not to mention that they are so easy to move around, change up the pattern, or take with you when you leave. It's pretty much a definite that we will use them here. I just have to come up with a design. I'm thinking of creating stripes on the floor with the carpet, that will run parallel to the ones on the wall, almost making it look like the wall stripes folded down onto the floor and across the room. What do you think? Too many stripes? I tend to use a lot of patterns, and mix and match. I always think it might be too much, but it hasn't yet...Maybe a checker board of just two colors, or a solid field with a contrasting boarder?

Let me know what you think. Which dresser do you like best? Thoughts on carpet patterns? Ideas where I can find a fun and colorful graphic zoo animal mobile?

And never fear, I still have tons of pictures to share of how the deck is coming along. It's all finished up top now. We just hosted two parties this week with 15 & 16 people, and everyone fit! Greg is still hard at work on the next phase...the shed enclosure. 

Storage

The other day, I was walking through Target, and stumbled upon this aisle.




I could barely contain my excitement!

I wasn't sure quite what I needed from this aisle, but I knew there would be something. I ended up back there later in the day (we'd had to drop Greg's car off near by...I don't usually hit Target twice in one day) and picked up a few things. Here's one of them.

It's a little basket to use for all the kittie's toys. We used to have a traditional basket, and lets just say, it must have seemed too much like a litter box, so it didn't last long. But, we really liked having a place to coral all the little stuffed rodents that we are otherwise constantly tripping all over. The basket is actually plastic, so it seemed safe to try again. And, it complements the coffee table perfectly! Greg put some cat nip in it, so the boys would know it's for them. It's so adorable to watch them go over and grab out a little something to bat around the room.