Valentine’s Day is only a week away and I am thrilled! I look at this day as a chance to bring some colour and spice into my home. Living in Ontario, February is at times dreary and cold. So for me, Valentine’s Day couldn’t come at a better time! This past week, I took down all my gold, silver and copper touches around the house. I left my vases and jars (still filled with epsom salts or tinsel) in place. I went to my local dollar store and picked up some red hearts in various sizes and red garland. I then simply placed the hearts in the jars and vases. I also hung small hearts on the branches of the fireplace mantel. To finish off the Valentine’s decor, I wrapped the garland around the vases and jars on the fireplace and piano. I think the red is a great contrast between the white, silver and crystal.

Take a look:

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

Christmas is quickly approaching and it is time for our Christmas tour. This being our first year in our house and in the middle of renovating, I have had to limit the decorating to our hallway, family room, dining room and outside. I hope to hit some great sales after Christmas and decorate my little heart out next year! I am joining the Nesting Places Christmas tour.

In the mud room, when you enter the house I added a few Christmas items. The great thing about snowman is that you can leave them up after Christmas!

After you take your coat off you enter the hallway:

If you turn to your left and enter through the glass doors, you would be in our family room:

I tried to put the toys away but my son pulls them right back out!

I hung little wreaths in each window:

Here is the table in our family room:

Our piano mantel:

The only gift under the tree (I’d better get shopping!)

Our fireplace mantel:

And another angle:

Looking into the hallway:

Now if you look into the dining room (soon to be our kitchen!) our table looks like this:

On top of our china cabinet, I put extra Christmas balls into our punch bowl:

I hung a wreath in the window:

I added a few snowmen accents in this room as well:

Here are some outside pics:

I will add some pictures of the house in the daylight tomorrow:)

I spent this morning while my son was taking a nap shoveling the snow from the storm that passed through. Shoveling is one of my least favourite winter activities. Actually there isn’t anything about the snow that I do like so let’s just say I was not in the best of moods. But after making myself a nice hot cup of hot chocolate, I realized that now it actually is starting to feel like Christmas.

Last week, my husband, son and myself ventured out to the local tree from to cut down a tree for that window area of our living room. This is the first year we have gone to get a tree in the rain and mud! I wasn’t slipping on ice to find the perfect tree, nope, it was mud. Every few feet my husband would hear me scream as I tried to regain my balance. It was all worth it when we did find our perfect tree. Here is what it looks like in our living room:

I don’t know if I have mention that our house was built in 1890 so it is old and we have very high ceilings. Our goal was to find the tallest tree we could find and not have to pay a fortune. This tree, with the tree topper, sits about an inch from the ceiling. Our colour scheme for the last couple of years for our tree is red and apple green. We also have snowmen accents. Here are a few examples:

I have green, matte and glossy red balls and some sentimental ornaments in there as well. Here is another picture of our tree in our new home:

I’m joining Thrifty Decor Chick’s Christmas tree party:

I have slowly been working on my living room since moving into this house in July. We painted a month ago and I have trying to put up more things on the walls. In my living room, I have a fireplace and an antique piano. I have not really started to even think what should be placed on these mantels for any other season but Christmas. When we first laid eyes on the living room my husband pointed to a corner of the room with windows and said “that is where our Christmas tree has to go!” So since July, our thoughts have been on Christmas for this room. I was saying in my previous post that I got like 5 boxes of Christmas decorations from my last visit. Well I pulled everything out of the boxes and began pulling apart the left over wreaths I hadn’t used for my Christmas tree urns and laid them along my mantels. I placed one of the wreaths in the center of the fireplace mantel and began placing pine cones and berries into the garland. I cut some branches from a shrub on the side of my house and placed it in a reddish vase on the mantel. I also picked up at a local thrift store 4 stocking holders. They were gold so I spray painted them copper and placed our initials on red paper in the frames. After adding a few more elements, here is what our fireplace mantel looks like:

And a close up:

* for those of you that noticed I only put up three little Christmas tree holders, very good:) I thought I’d better get another holder in case I can ever talk my husband into another child!

For my piano mantel, I wanted to incorporate copper and snowman elements. I laid out my garland and put two little Christmas trees on the center of the mantel. I found two cute little snowman out of my Grandma boxes and placed them on either end of the mantel. I purchased two vine balls and some copper branches and stuck them in around the garlandl. I added a few pine cones and some other rustic pieces. Here is what the piano mantel looks like:

And the close up:

Not too bad for our first year!

I went to my Grandmas last week for a visit. This usually entails eating (A LOT) and going through stuff! My grandma has a big old farmhouse full of STUFF. Lately she tells me that it is time for her to start cleaning things out or we will have to do it (which I don’t want to think about). Good news for me though is that I can usually find some great STUFF. My husband must have thought I was crazy when I packed the truck with four boxes of Christmas things and like 10 wreaths. When I got home I kept thinking about what I was going to do with all my STUFF.

The flyers for the week came in the mail (I love looking at flyers) and I came across the Canadian Tire flyer. I noticed the 3′ christmas trees were on sale for $20 each. I’ve been keeping my eye on them because I really wanted some for my earns by my front door. I really do not want to spend $40 for a pair of tiny trees. Then it came to me:) I brought home this:

*please excuse the mess, we are renovating this room

So like I was saying I brought this piece of wood home and like 10 wreaths so I decided I would make my own trees!

My first step was to take a saw and cut this piece of wood into two pieces of wood.

I will not say how long it took me to saw my way through this wood! 20 mins. at least

I decided that the trunk should be a darker shade of brown so I got out my brown acrylic paint and watered it down. I then painted the 2 trunks with my dark brown paint.

I didn’t even wait for the paint to dry before I started cutting branches from the wreaths. Using wire cutters I cut a few branches and them all by myself I changed the bit on my husbands drill:) (WHOO!!) I had a moment of girl power! I then drilled holes into the wood, starting at the top. I put glue in the holes and stuck the branches in:

I waited for the glue to dry before I worked with the shape of the branches. I continued down the truck and then on to the next tree. When I was finished I had this:

I used some left over lumber from another project and my husbands miter saw to cut them into the right size. I then screwed them into the bottom of the truck and viola! I have a stand.

I added a few pine cones, berries and vine bows off the old wreaths. I then dug out the dead plants from my urns and put my trees in. I covered the stand with dirt and placed a few left over red bulbs at the base of the trees. Here is what the trees look like with a fresh snow fall in all!

LOVELY!

And did I mention that I made these two gorgeous trees for FREE!!!!!!

Thank You Grandma:)