thanksgiving table

We’re not hosting Thanksgiving this year.  In fact, we won’t even be in Michigan for Thanksgiving – we’ll be on an awesome East Coast Thanksgiving Extravaganza.  But, because Kim is throwing a Dare to… Entertain party today, I set the table and pretended.  So this is what our Thanksgiving table would look like… if we were having Thanksgiving at our house.

Can you believe this is the first time I’ve gotten out the china and crystal?  It makes me really happy.  I’m going to have to get it out more often.

Jason came home as I was setting the table and was all, “Are we having a party I don’t know about?“

I made this little place card holders using this idea from the November issue of Real Simple magazine.  It’s basically a bunch of twigs tied together with twine.  I slipped orange wooden berries into the bundle to continue with the twigs and berries theme.  It took 3 minutes and adds bunches of fun.

So, there you have it!  Our Thanksgiving table, if we were to have a Thanksgiving meal at our house.  To be honest, I’m super-thankful that we’re not having Thanksgiving at our house.

I’m also thankful for time spent with friends and family on our East Coast Thanksgiving Extravaganza, and I’ll be back next week to share my adventures in the big apple, talk about time spent with our nieces and nephew, and the final tally of meals eaten at Chipotle – it’s a must-have event since there are no Chipotles where we live (Jason: 3, Jen: 1).

 

dead floral arrangements

Tis the season… for dead florals.  I mean, just because the plants are no longer green doesn’t mean I can’t display them.  Right?

A few weeks ago, I was looking for a few pretty things to make the house feel a little more fall-y.  But also?  I didn’t really want to spend money on them (this is a general theme of my life).  Enter Eddie Ross’ beautiful dead flower arrangements.  They were so stunning and subtly fall that I was inspired to copy them using things from my own yard.  Or from the roadside.  And if you’re into challenges, I suggest you walk two dogs while carrying a huge bunch of dead weeds.  Tricky!

Anyways, I thought I’d share them today in case anyone is looking for some last-minute Thanksgiving decor ideas.

Here’s the table in our living room.  I clipped some grasses and put them in a vase (on top of the table), then added a bowl filled with pinecones.  On the bottom shelf, I’ve added my dead florals to apothecary jars (everything looks fancier in an apothecary jar) and added a pumpkin made from some sort of natural fibers that I picked up from Crate and Barrel earlier this year (using a giftcard!  yay for giftcards!).

Here’s a closer look at the apothecary jars.  I used hydrangeas in all 3 and then added different elements to each one – dead weeds to the left one, little pumpkins made from natural fibers in the middle jar, and some wooden berry-type things to the right jar.

Here I just put hydrangeas and some sort of other dead plant material found by the side of the road in a silver pitcher.  I kind of like the juxtaposition of the silver pitcher and the dying weeds.  Lovely.

And, whatever I had left over, I threw in a bucket and called it good enough to sit in the dining room.

I also grabbed some birch wood from our wood shed and threw it in a basket next to the gas fireplace.  Not very useful, but cute anyways.  Earlier this month, I saw bundles of birch wood being sold at Crate and Barrel, so was inspired to use it somehow.  Turns out the easiest way to “use” it is to just place it in a basket.

So, there you have it!  My fun, dead plant-y approach to fall/Thanksgiving!  Anyone else a fan of dead weeds and other natural materials this time of year?

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I’m sharing this post for Frugal Friday at the Shabby Nest.

our very first project

This weekend marks our 6 month house anniversary.  Yep, we’ve lived in this baby for half of a year!

We find it interesting that we feel more at home here than we did in either of our two previous houses.  I think it’s because we moved in and plowed through a whole bunch of stuff.  It helps that I’m mostly unemployed.  And that I figured out how to hang pictures without my husband’s help.

After we got the keys to the house 6 months ago, the first thing we Jason did was change the locks.  All of them.  Because the seller’s behavior worried us a little (lots of insane requests – like she had to have an extra 24 hours in the house after the closing to have a rummage sale?).

After that, Jason removed the carpet in the upstairs hallway and stairway to uncover hardwood floors.

Meanwhile, I began work in our bedroom, removing the shelves from the walls and the old wallpaper border and repainting a deeper shade of blue.  Here’s a glimpse of the before (with the previous owners’ furniture):

We tried to remove the old, stained bedroom carpet.  Despite the fact that the rest of the upstairs and both of our bedroom closets have wood floors, there was no nice hardwood floor under the dirty old bedroom carpet – only plywood subfloor.  Plan foiled! (And also?  This is ridiculous.  Who installs hardwood floors in closets and not the rest of the room?)

And here’s our work-in-progress:

Our current bedroom is much larger than any of our previous rooms, so we’ve picked up a few new pieces of furniture (like the chair, bedside tables, and madeover dresser).  I sewed curtains from a beige fabric, hung wedding photos on the walls, and added accessories that we already had (like the candles on the table above – they’re plain candles that I wrapped in twine for a little bit of fun).

I’m finishing up a little dressing table/chair revamp, and we’ve still got some things to hang on the walls, fabric to make throw pillows from, and bedside table lamps to purchase.  Eventually, I’d like to rip up the nasty blue carpet and replace with beautiful wood floors, and replace the overhead lights with something a little more inconspicuous (recessed lighting?).

Overall, though, I’m pleased with our progress.  Our room is organized, functional, and calming (when clean) – which are really the main goals here.  Not bad for only living here 6 months!

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This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value (www.StartRightStartHere.com).

white dresser

I was all excited to show you my first painted furniture project today… until I realized that I completely forgot to take before pictures.  Sigh.  (enthusiasm waning)

{here’s where a before picture would have gone, had I remembered to take one}

So maybe you can just imagine the super-ugly dresser, all scratched up and whatnot purchased for a mere $30 on Craigslist?  Pretty please?

A few coats of white spray paint later (and by a few, I mean, actually kind of a lot), and new black knobs, and she’s much better suited to sit in our has-yet-to-be-finished bedroom.

I loved this dresser because of the detailing on the drawers and the pretty feet.  Also?  It has dove-tailed drawers and a full piece of wood between the upper and lower drawers, which means that it’s a pretty quality piece of furniture.  And quality is good in my book.

I used leftover curtain material to make a little runner for the dresser.  (I simply folded over the bad edges of the material and ironed).  This should protect the dresser from the old school TV on top of it.  The TV isn’t very pretty, but I like to fall asleep to the TV sometimes – especially if I’m home alone.

I envision a big mirror hanging on the wall over the dresser to reflect some light around the room.  But for now, I’ll settle with engagement photos a few frames and a green pot with a half-dead plant in it.  I excel at house plant killing.

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I can definitely see more furniture painting in my future.  The key, I think, is to make sure that things are evenly sanded and to be prepared to paint a million light coats.  Chime in now if you have any other tips that will come in handy on my next furniture painting adventure!

gratuitous pictures of the dogs

This has nothing to do with our home, and I’m not really going to write much, other than:  aren’t these two cute?  Sometimes I can barely stand how cute the two of them are together!  They are totally doggy BFFs, and when they’re both sitting there, flashing the same cute doggy expression at you, it’s hard for your heart not to completely melt out of your chest.  Or maybe that’s just me.

Barley is falling asleep with his head up in this one.  He’s doing the head bob like a college kid in an 8am class.

I think this one is my favorite.  It looks like they’re having a little heart to heart in the leaves.

The dogs sporting their matching please hunters don’t shoot us orange bandannas.

Barley heard a shot and freaked out a little.

i *heart* faces – autumn beauty

This week’s I *heart* faces theme is autumn beauty, and I thought I’d join in.

Over the weekend, I made Jason and the dogs let me take photos of them in their matching orange hunters, please don’t shoot me gear.  Of course, the puppy was crazy and silly, and Jason likes to make strange faces at the camera, so of the 200 or so photos I took, this happens to be the best one with a face in it.  If it was I *heart* dogs, though, I’d have a million cute entries.

thankful book

Dear everyone,

This is a Monday morning party, and you’re all invited.  Despite my husband’s eye rolls and mocking.

Because we had a really busy weekend and lots of productivity was achieved.  And then I sat down at my computer, read my google reader and remembered that I mentioned I’d join Kim @ NewlyWoodward’s holiday DIY party.  Because it sounded like fun, and also?  It’s a great thing to motivate me to do fun holiday crafts and whatnot.  Because I’ve come to terms with the fact that if it weren’t for this blog, I probably would spend my days in my pjs, watching TLC.  Oh wait.  Hmm.  I do that anyways.

Moving on to crafts! Thanksgiving crafts! This week is officially “Dare to… Be Thankful!” week, and J and I are really thankful for lots of things.  Like jobs and dogs and fuzzy socks and that we survived Day 1 of deer hunting season unscathed, despite Jezebel’s mid-morning breakaway sprint into the woods.  Yikes.

So my craft for today is a Thankful Journal.  It is not mind-blowing, or difficult, or complicated.  It can be done in 20 minutes on a Sunday night.

I LOVE traditions.  Love them.  And after we were married last October, I started looking for fun new traditions that J and I could start with our own family.  One of those traditions was a Thankful Journal, to be written in on Thanksgiving by all who you share the holiday with (I found the idea here).  Basically, on Turkey Day, everyone writes down a little somethin-somethin they’re thankful for.  I thought this tradition would be especially fun and doable for us since our families don’t live near us – or each other – and we spend Thanksgiving with a different set of relatives in a different part of the country each year.

When I came across this idea last fall, I didn’t have time to actually make a journal, so instead, I harassed my family to write what they were thankful for on a piece of paper.  They thought I was a little nuts, I’m sure.  And some of them took the assignment a little more serious than others.

Then again, I guess the First Law of Thermodynamics is something that we should all be thankful for.

Anyways, upon reading Kim’s blog, I remembered that I wanted a pretty Thankful Journal.  Luckily, I had a not-as-pretty blank journal in one of my office drawers.

I pulled the embellishments off of the front, and replaced them with my own Thanksgiving-themes embellishments.  (And then I put last year’s Thankful notes in the journal.  See, family?  I am not completely off my rocker!)

And it’s a pretty little addition to my coffee table, not to mention a fun reminder of who we’ve spent the holidays with!

Now all I have to do is remember to bring it with us on our Thanksgiving 2009 excursion and hope that the in-laws will play along!

staircase photo collage

I *finally* finished printing photos and putting them in the frames that I had hung (almost a month ago!) over our staircase last night, so I thought I’d show them off today.  I chose a mix of different black frames, black or off-white mats, and color, b&w, and sepia-toned photos.  The color and B&W pictures are from our wedding, and we mixed in sepia-toned pictures of our parents and grandparents on their respective wedding days.  I’m pretty happy with how it all came together.

Here’s what the staircase looked like before (with the previous owners’ photos):

And here she is now:

We ripped out the carpet in May, and there’s still a few pesky, hard to pull out carpet staples left.  I think this is one of those projects that neither Jason nor I tackle because we’re both secretly *hoping* that the other person will do it.

It’s incredibly hard to capture all of the frames in the same photo.  It looks like they’re at an awkward height here, but I assure you they’re not.

See?  Here’s the view from the dining room:

To hang these, I laid out the frames on the floor and played around until I liked how they look.  Then, I started hanging pictures, starting in the middle of the staircase and working my way up/down.  I know that it’s recommended that you use a taped piece of paper to mark things off on the wall, but I just don’t have the patience for that.  I really like it for now, but would love to add in some more ornate frames or maybe even a few oval frames.

Anyone else sporting the over-the-staircase photo collage?  Does it make you smile every time you walk up or down the stairs, too?

Check out other awesome staircases here!

forestry

I mentioned yesterday that I was learning about forestry.  It’s another one of those things I would have never guessed I’d be thinking about, much less blogging about… yay for country living!

Ever since the giant tree branch came crashing down across our driveway a few months ago, I’ve been a bit spooked that the giant tree branches above the house are also going to give way, only this time, they’re going to kill me in my sleep.  I’m going to {partially} blame this new-found fear on my mother, who pretty much said exactly that the first time she visited.  And the second time.  And the third time.  And maybe even a few times on the phone.

(Hi mom!  Thanks for worrying about me dying in my sleep via tree branch through the lungs!  Look, your nagging DOES work!  Love you!)

Anyways.   Since my mom wouldn’t shut up about it I am pretty nervous about the tree branches, I thought we should look into having the trees cut down.  Only, having recently purchased a new heater + heat pump, we don’t really have thousands of dollars laying around to use for tree removal.  I found a nearby forestry company to see if they’d be interested in purchasing the trees from us.  As in, they’d come out, cut down the trees, and then PAY US to take away the lumber, mill it, and sell it for furniture or flooring or whatever else suited their fancy.  It seemed too good to be true.

In fact, it was maybe a little too good to be true.  Instead, we’re working on a compromise where they’ll take the 3 large trees near the house + 20 others scattered around our lot.  Since the three trees nearest the house will be expensive (>$1000 each) for them to remove, they asked to take a few more to make it more worth their while.  Which I understand.  I mean, a guy will have to scale each of the three trees and take them apart piece by piece, and we’re going to have to mess around with some of our landscaping when it’s time to pull the trunks down (that brick wall will get pulled apart before the trunk comes down and then put back together when all is said and done).  And, they’ll still pay us, which is swell.

They want to take the marked trees… which are few and far between.

We fell in love with this property because of the forest and the trees, and I hate for any of it to be taken down or potentially ruined.  On the other hand, I am worried about the big trees near the house falling on us.  And they block the sun from the East side of the house, so things there tend to stay pretty wet and we’re beginning to get moss growth on our siding.  (Which, upon google searching “moss on siding” appears to be not a huge deal, but it is kind of an eyesore).   And I know that thinning out your old growth is supposed to be good for your forest anyways, as it allows the younger trees some room and sunlight to grow.  So I think we might go with it and have the foresters come out to do their thing.  I wonder, though, what would you do?  Has anyone had experience with these forestry-type things?

knit throw: add this to my christmas list

I’m working on some serious projects around the house involving forestry, my still-needs-to-be-finished book chapter, furniture, and wedding photos.

But I just wanted to throw something out there (pun intended) – if anyone wants to knit me one of these for Christmas, I would be overjoyed.  (Or, if you want to buy it, that would be great, too!) These look cozy and perfectly warm for winter cuddling on the couch!

(Target)

(Pottery Barn)

(West Elm)

(CB2)

I am a huge fan of having cute throw blankets adorn my sofa(s) in the winter, and our current throws are looking a little worse for the wear.  I love the texture in these – they just scream “warm and cuddly” to me.  Which I could use about now, since I’m fighting the urge to turn up the heat…  Sigh.