Oh Christmas Tree…

It’s  beginning to look a lot like Christmas in our house.  If you remember back a few weeks, Alyssa couldn’t wait to get her Christmas decorations up.  I made her wait until at least the day after Thanksgiving because I was “defending November.”  Well obviously now that we are about two weeks from Christmas day, she has decorations up all over.  The last thing to go up was our Christmas tree.  We both wanted a real tree this year.  We love the smell and there is just no way a fake tree can truly look and feel like a real fir.  Monday night we went out in the cold to Storheim’s where we hmmmd and hawwwd for half an hour before finally picking the one we wanted.  We loaded it in the truck, brought it home and I struggled with my dull hacksaw to cut the end off, but finally we got it in the stand.  Since Alyssa was on call Tuesday night and we wanted to be able to have a glass of New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red while listening to Christmas music, we waited to decorate til Wednesday night.  Since this was our first Christmas after marriage our ornaments are a bit of a mismatch.  

We picked up a few at Presents of Mine, a few at Hobby Lobby, a couple at Shopko, and so on.

Our tree topper is the best mismatch of all though.  During our two years in Davenport we never had a true tree topper so last year I threw a trapper hat on top and called it good.  After looking at the ornaments we picked up this year and seeing how they all fit a sort of ski lodge theme, we knew that the hat had to go back up.

Guardian of the Tree

So now it sits proudly up on top of our real Christmas tree waiting to guard the presents.

Now if only it could protect the skirt from Ellie.

Skirt Thief

 

Developing our personal style.

Since we have a number of house projects and decorating ideas to post about in the next few weeks I thought I would write about our decorating style.  I guess the best way to describe it is a work in progress.  Since this is our first house, (watch for a tour coming up soon) we are new to the decorating game.  Living in rental apartments while we were in school we could do some personalizing, but it wasn’t the same as decorating a whole house.  For one, painting wasn’t an option and second, why put much effort into something that is very temporary.  As a result, we had a hodgepodge of “college” furniture and a select few pieces of art on the walls.  After buying our house we were very excited to put our own touch on it.  We were fortunate that the major renovations were already done when we bought it.  The kitchen, furnace, siding, windows, and air conditioner were updated in the past 3 years.  Since we didn’t have big projects staring at us we could put more of our efforts into decorating and window dressing type things.  This doesn’t mean we went hog wild, spending lots of money on furniture and accessories.  We are on a tight budget so we have had to be creative.  Plus, we didn’t necessarily know what we wanted to do with our “canvas” in many rooms.  As I said before our style is a work in progress.  This is actually a blessing.  Because we are operating on a budget we couldn’t go out and buy a coordinating set from Pottery Barn in each room to make our house look like their catalog; no matter how much we might like that.  Instead we have had to be creative and thoughtful which has allowed us to start to realize our own style rather than steal from corporate designers.  Perusing blogs has definitely helped us see what type of rooms we like and find common denominators in each of our styles.  Our work in progress style is starting to shape up and become defined.  If you HAD to pin us down I would say that we like clean, classic, but comfortable rooms with a few thoughtful uses of bright color and funky patterns.  We seem to like lots of rough textures like barnwood and burlap.  We like things that look like they are durable, mainly because they have a aged patina, some of you would call them antiques or vintage.  These pieces from older times are usually the focal point in rooms we like.  I’m not saying we want to live in an antique shop, but there are lots of things we like that you can only find at a flea market, garage sale, or thrift store.  Here are a few pictures of rooms we like.  Check out their blogs because they were our inspiration for starting Spring Dog This!

1. We love the reclaimed wood, vintage inspired lighting, and clean colors.

2. We LOVE the Petersiks, the colors, the art, the comfy chair, everything in this room

3. Shannan is Alyssa's favorite blogger and we love her style, this ladder is awesome

4. Another from Shannan. The lamp, the pillow, the blanket, the comfy chair. A great cozy spot to hang out and drink coffee.

5. Another from the Petersiks again we love the colors and the coziness. Someday I will have a space like this in my bedroom

 

Pictures courtesy of:

1. The Lettered Cottage

2.  Young House Love

3.  Flower Patch Farmgirl

4.  Flower Patch Farmgirl

5.  Young House Love

Defending November

The decorative “in-between” season is upon us.  The fall pumpkins, leaves and gourds can still be displayed, but Halloween has come and gone, and Christmas is not too far off on the horizon.   While putting away the sparkly spiders and witch shoes, it is so tempting to bring out the new Christmas decorations.  In fact, if I had my say they would most likely already be out.  However, the hubby has stated that we are going to “defend November”…and not succumb to putting out the Christmas items just yet.   My sister, Erika, was over this past weekend and said “I think that people who have their Christmas decorations out before Thanksgiving are a little iffy.”  Iffy?!  I don’t want to be iffy.

     Nevertheless, it hasn’t stopped me from putting out a few “wintery” items.  Ready or not, winter is coming.  This little moose was too cute to pass up.  I’ve taken a liking to the website pinterest.  I might even frequent it more than Facebook!  I recommend checking it out only when you have some spare time on your hands, because it is very addicting.  It has all kinds of recipes, DIY projects, house decor ideas, etc. etc. etc.  I recently found a simple way to make a rustic looking Christmas tree:  all you have to do is take a tomato cage and wrap it tightly with white lights = cute little tree for out on the porch or even indoors!

It may be pushing it, but I also put out some pre-lit garland over our fireplace.  I must say that it looks even better with Elf playing on the TV directly above it (playing on USA, I didn’t put in the DVD!).  If this movie doesn’t get you in the mood for the upcoming holidays, I don’t know what will!  Something tells me I’m going to have a hard time holding out until after Thanksgiving, but I’m giving it a whirl.  I’ll part with one of my favorite lines in the movie…

“First we’ll make snow angels for two hours, then we’ll go ice skating, then we’ll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse cookie dough as fast as we can, and then we’ll snuggle.”