Elf Yourself 2010

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays 2010

2010 Halloween Decor

When I was spook-erating our house this year, I realized I never posted photos of our halloween decor from 2009. After digging through my old files, I found that not only do I NOT have photos from Halloween 2009, I don't have photos of our Halloween decor from any years past. However, I do have a photo of us in costume for Halloween 2008.

Fun right? Can you guess who we are? (Hint: Why it's grease lightning!)

But let's get back to the topic at hand. Our Halloween decor for this year, 2010! Here is our front step that I crime-scened-up with some caution tape and haunted house sign.

I have high expectations for the pumpkins also residing on our front step, but we'll see if I can wrangle some spare time this weekend to accomplish the feat.

In our front living room, I stretched more faux cobwebs over some of the furniture and filled a large, green recycled-glass bowl with medium sized gourds.

In our dining room, I heavily draped more faux cobwebs over the chandy and spruced up the tabletop and sideboard with fall themed tablescapes.

The faux spider webs came with these small plastic spiders which I strategically placed for added creepy factor.

I didn't go crazy in our family room and stuck to only changing up our mantel...a tad. For this I rearranged the vintage glass liquor bottles and made some basic white tapered candles more horrific by dripping melted red candle wax down them.

This yellow candlestick was an additional $1 Goodwill score when I picked up the items for the mini-cakestands I made for our kitchen tablescape.

As you can see I didn't go over the top with the heebie-jeebie decor this year, but I definitely feel the halloween vibe. Anyone else spook-up your decor?

Fall-oween Tablescape

As I mentioned last week, here is the tablescape I arranged on our kitchen table. I didn't want to make it completely gory (because it is still a dining area), so I mixed fall and halloween items, calling it fall-oween decor. I used the cake stands I made last week for the centerpiece, some simple white dishes, and other various props I had on hand.

First I spread out a poison-apple red table cloth and laid out the dishes, other linens, and centerpiece. Then I placed medium-sized gourds on the cake stands and stretched faux spider-webs over them.

To pump up the spook-factor, I positioned steak knives on the napkins. There is something horror-esque about the sharp stainless steel knives contrasting with the black napkins on top of the crisp white plates with the blood red table cloth as a background. Don't you think?

And when Halloween is over, I'll just pull off the spider webs and swap out the knives for something like a bundle of twigs for a singularly themed fall tablescape. What do you think? Does it scare you-but-also-look-like-an-appealing-place-to-eat-dinner?

Merry Christmas - Go Elf Yourself!

Deck the Dining room

Yesterday, I gave you a peep into our dining room, my favorite of the decorated rooms this year. I realize that not much was revealed in this small glimpse, but that's what a sneak peek is all about!

So, without further ado, here's the dining room with all the halls decked. I love that by positioning our tree off center in the living room, it frames the extended space unsystematically, yet visually it is comfortable.

A shot down the table.

I love the antler that I picked up from the vintage store during our up to the Twin Cities so much, that instead of removing it and clustering candles or ornaments for a centerpiece (as I so often do), I draped it with some beaded garland that I had picked up on mega clearance last year. I love the rustic glam look it has.

My other holiday decorative fallback is wrapping a small length of garland around the chandelier and hanging extra-large ornaments from the light's arms. I also draped the rest of the silver beaded-garland for a slight dash of glam.

The new addition to my holiday decor (bought pre-after-Christmas sales) is this set of stuffed felt trees from CB2. I have thought of so many different ways to spruce them up, since they are essentially large pin cushions, but decided that in their first year in our home they would stay as they are.

Lastly, I popped some extra ornaments in the table settings' bowls and kept the square cuts of kraft paper to break up the white dinnerware.

Hopefully, you see why I am loving our dining room this season and maybe it inspired you to look at your holiday decor in a new way (or gave you some ideas to copy!). Happy holidays!

O Tannenbaum

As the days before Christmas dwindle, I am back with photos of my holiday decorations you can find in our living room. I mentioned yesterday that our neighbors (and the odd bystander) can catch a glimpse of our second tree through the large windows in our living room and now you can too! (Though it loses a bit of it's twinkling charm in the photos.)

As you can see, we have yet to paint our insane asylum white room, which means that time hasn't run out to chip in your two cents about which color scheme we should paint the space, or suggest one of your own. On the other hand, the white and silver decorations still work their winterland magic in the space but don't give as much oomph than if the room was a darker color. Oh well, maybe next year!

The deer stocking holders are one of my favorite holiday decorations. I love their uncomplicated silhouettes and that they are heavy enough to hold up a stocking full of gifts.

These next two photos are for my mom, who isn't able to make it out to our house this year, but wants to see pictures of the handed-down garland she gave to me last year. Look at Harley pretending to be a statue, what an attention hog (pun intended).

One last, almost repetitive photo, to share. This one catches a glimpse into our dining room, which is my favorite of the decorated rooms this year. When I look into it, I feel a sudden rush of holiday spirit and I can't wait to share it with you...tomorrow!

Fa-la-la-la-la Family Room

I keep reminding everyone of the Christmas Tree massacre and even gave a tip how to repel your kitties from your favorite evergreen, but today, I am finally sharing photos of the dazzling (and upright) tree in our family room.

This the first year we have been able to put up two trees in our home and we love having the formal one (photos to come) in the front half of our house for the passersby to see, courtesy of the large windows in our living room. And we keep this gem to ourselves in the family room in the back half of the house.

I always have trouble keeping the color flow between our family room, dinette, and kitchen since the family room accent color is orange, which slightly contrasts the dinette and kitchen's red accent. However, last year, I scored bookoo deals on all of the ornaments and other holiday decor for this room by waiting until after Christmas to shop. Fortunately, the red, gold, and burgundy ornaments don't sorely contrast the orange, but rather pull that balance through the room.

I picked up these stocking holders this year and love the shapes. I think the black balances the mantel decor with the rest of the space perfectly.

I bought this metal tree from Urban Outfitters (I still think they sell them) back when I was in college. It was tagged as jewelry stand but I like using it as an element on our mantel. It also gets a dash of glam when I dress it up during the holiday season with mini ornaments.

I went a little crazy with the ornament buying last year (I blame it on the deals) and bought too many. Though, good thing I did since many of them were lost when the tree face-planted less than 24 hours after being put up. After redressing the tree, I stacked medium-sized ornaments in some vases left over from our wedding centerpieces. I have two clusters, a set is here on one end of our mantel and the other sits in the middle of our dinette table as a centerpiece.

This concludes the Fa-la-la-la-la Family Room this year. Check back tomorrow for another room, frosted with holiday cheer.

Sour Puss

After the Christmas Tree fiasco I did some major googling for ways to kitty-proof your holiday decorations. I found some ok suggestions but the majority of them included major decor upheavals (surround your tree with child gates) or 24/7 surveillance (lock up your cat when you can't watch him), all of which I was not willing to implement. We already shoot them with a water spray bottle whenever they are being naughty, but contrary to some suggestions, they do not learn that being shot with a jet stream of water means NO, even after 4 years.

Then I came across a Cat 101 page that told me cats naturally do not like the smell of oranges, rotten apples, onions, and garlic. How come I have never known this? I've only owned cats my entire life! I continued reading and found out that by inconspicuously placing orange peels (the best smelling of the latter) around off-limit areas, cats will stay away. You can also spray your tree with diluted citronella oil or rub the trunk with oranges. I was weary of spraying or rubbing my tree with anything in case it discolored it, so I picked up a ¢78 orange from the store and sliced it up. Before I went the distance and distributed the slices around our trees, I tested my cats' reactions and was happy to see them crane their necks back and even run away. All systems were a go at that point.

Various sites suggested placing peels around the trees, but since I don't particularly like eating oranges, I left the fruit attached and put them in small ramekins to keep it clean.

Not only are they an unnoticeable fix, but their scent makes my house smell like I just cleaned everything. Bonus!

So far, I have not had another crime scene in my home and while some ornaments get knocked off occasionally, I prefer that to a whole tree face-plant.

Hopefully this helps my fellow feline-lovers out there!

What goes up, must come down

Our big project for the long holiday weekend was, like most of the rest of the population, to put up our holiday decorations. (I will be sharing photos of our hard work soon, but this story must be posted first.)

This year, we put up two Christmas trees, yippee! We were fortunate to inherit a hand-me-down tree the year previous last and scored some major deals on ornaments after Christmas last year. So in addition to our white and silver adorned tree in the front of the house, we frosted our old one with red and gold in the family room. Justin and I finished putting up the second tree Saturday afternoon while getting in the holiday spirit watching The Holiday (one of my favorite movies).

The cats always get rowdy when we break out the decor and generally make it up the tree a few times each holiday season, but unbeknownst to us, the extra weight they gained last year would be the downfall to our already-on-the-brink-of-a-Charlie-Brown Christmas tree.

This is what I found when I padded downstairs Sunday morning.

At the sight of this Christmas tree murder, I literally gasped as my hands covered my mouth. All of our hard work! Here's one of the little suspects returning to the crime scene.

I didn't have the heart to count the number of bodies (ornaments), but if I had to guess I would say at least 15 lost their lives and the star was seriously injured.

After Justin and I cleaned up the mess and patched our tree back up, we anchored the base with extra paver bricks left over from our patio install last summer. That should hold the tree up, but hopefully they don't bend it or break off the top half like my mom's cats did a couple years ago, though it does make for a nice cat stand. Fingers crossed that the bandits don't hit again.