Tag Archives: home decor

I’m Dreaming of a White Day After Christmas

This morning, we woke up to this!

Cincinnati rarely sees snow at Christmas, much less in the entire month of December, so I’ll take a White Day-After-Christmas if that’s what I can get. Plus, it really helps my case for staying in my pajamas all day today.

We had a wonderful holiday; the past 5 or so days we’ve been going non-stop with holiday dinners, parties, post-party cleaning, food prepping, family time, etc. I’ll back up and start at the beginning to give you all a recap of my very merry diy’d Christmas!

On Saturday, we hosted some couples for dinner. We got to use our dining room for the very first time since we moved in! Yea! Only took a year, haha. We don’t have a formal dining room set, so we used two folding tables instead! I put the table centerpieces together out of things I already had around the house: hurricane vases, ornaments, festive berry sprigs, loose tinsel, snowflakes, etc. I put a clay lollipop at each place setting in lieu of a place card, and asked everyone to take them home with them. I got 2 red paper tablecloths at Target for about $3.50 a piece.

I like to cook most/all of the food myself when we have parties versus getting pre-made meals or asking everyone to bring dishes. I just think if you’re invited to someone’s house for dinner, you should be able to go and enjoy yourself without worrying about bringing food along, keeping it hot, etc.

This was our menu for Saturday:

Appetizer: smoked sausage, garlic and herb cheese spread, olive tapenade, crackers, and cashews.

Main Course: mixed greens salad with toasted pine nuts, dried cherries, fresh parmesan and balsamic vinaigrette; baked salmon with herb seasoning (a “coastal blend” purchased from a local spice shop); and orzo with pesto and peas.

Dessert: homemade truffles and peppermint bark. Here’s my truffle assembly line: chilled ganache, toppings (chopped pecans, pistachios and cocoa powder) and a clean baking sheet to set them on!

(Scroll to the end of this post to find links to the recipes I used)

On Sunday, we celebrated Christmas with Tom’s parents. In year’s past, we celebrate on Christmas Eve, after the larger Kennedy family gathering. But with the new pup in the house, we decided to space things out a bit this year. We even took Molly with us to Tom’s parents’! She was pretty well behaved, and by the end of the night, had shredded a lot of wrapping paper. Girl loves to shred paper.

On Monday, we went to Christmas Eve Mass and then to the Kennedy family gathering.

On Tuesday, we hosted Christmas for the first time! My parents came over early in the day for brunching and gifting; then my extended family came over later in the afternoon for dinnering and gifting. Then we cleaned up real quick and went to Tom’s Grandma’s house to see his mom’s side of the family. Whew! Hence, why I’m staying in my pajamas all day today.

Here’s our Christmas Day Brunch menu:

Spinach, Bacon, and Red Pepper Quiche with Sharp White Cheddar

Portobello and Crimini Mushroom Quiche with Apple-Smoked Gruyere

Maple and Brown Sugar Sticky Biscuits

And some shots of the day’s various festivities:

Yes, those are official Clark Griswold Moose Mugs! Tom’s parents gave them to us. They are just as awesome in person as I could have imagined them to be!

Molly opened her own gifts! Smart girl shredded the paper, then plucked out her toy (a squeaky gingerbread girl), and started playing! I got to clean up her soggy paper shards.

Tis the season for owls! I got this awesome owl stuffie (from Kohls), an owl ornament, and an owl tealight holder. My family knows me well…

For out Christmas Day table, I changed out the table cloth (another paper find from Target; this one’s got a bit of Scandinavian flair!), and added paper trees underneath the clear plastic plates for a bit of color.

I added some other decorations around my chalkboard-inspired painting.

And lastly, the coolest gift I received, from the most awesome husband in the world 🙂

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with family and friends!

Recipes via: Coastal Blend Seasoning / Pesto Sauce / Homemade Truffles (I rolled mine in cocoa powder, chopped pistachios and chopped pecans)/ Peppermint Bark / Basic Quiche (I always reference this for baking temp, time, and the number of eggs; I usually skip the half-and-half because Tom is lactose intolerant) / Sticky Biscuits

Scents of the Season: Homemade Potpourri

I’ve seen a few of these simmering stovetop potpourri recipes floating around Pinterest lately, so I thought I’d give one a go. I looked up a few recipes to gauge amounts of ingredients, but ad-libbed the one above.

Cinnamon, Clove & Clementine Potpourri:

– 2 clementines, cut into fourths

– 2 sticks of cinnamon

– 3-5 whole cloves

Cover with water, then bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for as long as you like!

After doing a bit more reading, I think I should have used just the clementine peels instead of the whole fruit (the pulp starts to disintegrate after a while). I kept it out on the stove (but turned the burner off, of course) to see if I can fire it up again over the weekend. Hopefully it holds up! If not, it was pretty easy to throw together. I’d also like to experiment with lemons, limes, apples, herbs and spices. I bet adding vanilla or peppermint extract would be awesome, too.

Have you ever tried a stovetop potpourri? If so, what’s your favorite recipe?

Inspiration via: Picky Palate / Make It Do / JanDee Crafts

Linking up to:

Weekly Wishlist: More Time!!!

Okay, so this is a little different than my usual Weekly Wishlists. I cannot believe that Christmas is 6. Days. Away. Where did December go? Why do I still have a huge to-do list for the holidays? Why haven’t I mailed out my greeting cards yet? Why is my house still only half decorated? Why are my DIY gifts not done? Ack!

::deep breaths::

So, if I had all the time in the world, here are some of the things I’d love to do for this holiday season:

– DIY ornaments (for myself and for gifts), like some of the fantastic ones created by IHeartOrganizing

– DIY decorations

– a themed Christmas tree (probably to fit in with my “Winter Wonderland” vision)
– baking and candy-making up a storm

– create a way to display all the holiday cards we’ve received (inspiration via IHeartOrganizing)

– DIY-ing some wrapping paper and gift bags

…just to name a few. I guess there’s always next year! 😉

Are you on-track or stressed the %#^& out? Do you have any tips on how I can create more hours in a day?

Want to see more inspiration? Follow me on Pinterest here.

Our Trimmed-Out Christmas Tree (and other decorations)

I shared my mantel on Monday, so now, it’s time to reveal the full monty tree. Here she is in all her nine-foot-majesty:

And lit up:

Lovely, right?

One of my favorite things about Christmas is remembering. There are so many memories that I associate with our ornaments and decorations that I love uncovering every December, like this one that we bought on our honeymoon in Maui…

Or this one to commemorate our big move last year…

But I think my MOST treasured set of Christmas decorations is our Nativity set, which my mom handed down to me last Christmas.

This set has been in my family for exactly 60 years. My grandfather purchased it in 1952, when my mom was 9 years old. It’s still in the original box, with the original postage stamp, and the original hand-written address.

I never met my grandfather. He passed away years before I was born. So I love that I have this little piece to remind me of him. Every Christmas, when my mom, dad and I would get out the decorations, I was given two important tasks: screwing in and checking each light bulb for the tree strands, and setting up the Nativity set. And I usually spent the rest of the holiday season playing with the animals, prompting my parents to exclaim that next year, they were wrapping up the Nativity animals instead of buying me toys.

What’s your favorite part of decorating for the holidays? Any special items that you’ve built memories around?

Dare to DIY: Deck the Halls

This is the last installment of the Dare to DIY challenge (sponsored by Two Twenty One, Newly Woodwards, Decor and the Dog, and Maybe Matilda), and I am sad to see it go! I really enjoyed each week’s challenge, and seeing all the great ideas that other bloggers came up with. Definitely found some great inspiration and some new blogs to follow! Whoo!

So, without further ado, here is how I’ve decked my halls for this holiday season:

I wanted to go for a “Winter Wonderland” theme, full of metallics and whites. It all started with the silver Ornament wreath I diy’ed a few weeks back, and from there, I started envisioning a mantel awash in mercury glass, silvers and golds. I would love to do our entire family room in silvers, golds, and whites (tree included), but… one thing at a time.

Some items I already had on hand, some are new additions, like the mercury glass pillars, metal reindeer, angel, and silver sequin tree (from Kohl’s and JoAnn Fabrics, respectively).

I used the branches on the far end in my Fall Mantel, but wanted to glam them up a bit for the holidays. I added glass vase fillers, a spray of white flowers, and swirly silver twig things that you always see in the floral section of craft stores. I have no idea what the official name is. Then I hung a few ornaments and mini-snowflakes from the branches to give them some festive flair.

The only items that don’t really fit the theme are our stockings and stocking holders, but they are too sentimental for me to switch them out, even for just one season. My stocking is the one on the right – my mom hand-stitched it for me when I was a baby, and my aunt made the Santa stocking holder. My mom also made Tom’s stocking. He’s always used whatever generic stocking we had stashed in with the Christmas decorations. But not this year! He’s finally got a personalized stocking 🙂

Check out more decked-out halls here!

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