Snowtorious B.I.G.

That was the *BEST* name given to our little Mississippi snow storm we had over the weekend/Monday by one of the local news girls. It's good, right? I apologize in advance if you clicked hoping to see pictures of our little family decked out in winter gear posing in the snow. We have no such pictures. I did however video the dogs playing in the snow, but we forgot and talked to them in our dog voices on the video, so it will not be shared. Christina says the way I talk to my dogs could be an SNL skit, but no need to try it out with you guys!

I LOVED being snowed in! It was fabulous to know I couldn't go anywhere and it was like the 2 day weekend I dream about having! We did a lot of relaxing, chili making, movie watching, but I knocked out several project and created more. After taking down all the Christmas decor, my house was flocked with glitter but felt oh so empty, so it put me into over drive!

First I sanded a night stand for our bedroom, sanded a mirror that I will be selling and then painted the night stand. Those items were on the list. Then I decided to paint the guest bedroom! It's been a major eye sore (to me), but not a major priority until yesterday.

Here's the night stand! Now we have matching night stands in the bedroom and the color inspired me to trade out the bed and paint a cute headboard I have the same color! Fingers crossed that I have enough paint left to finish. The headboard has the same spindle look of the lamp, so I think it will tie in nicely. Back to the guest room...

I had about 3/4 a gallon of Lazy Gray in my laundry room, so I went to town!

{Sherwin Williams ~ Lazy Gray}

Once I got started painting I was able to get some more ideas for what I wanted in this room.

I picked these curtains up a while back, because I knew that I would like them and eventually find a place for them. I originally thought, living room, then master, but at $8.99 for 2 panels of curtains... how could I not? It's hard to find inexpensive curtains period and it's really hard to find inexpensive curtains that don't look cheap and these are pretty good.

Anyway... I think they are going to be PERFECT in the guest room! I can't wait to show you the finished project, and I have a very special guest coming in 8 days, so hopefully I can be done really soon!

~Christmas Home Tour~

I've been collecting Christmas decorations since Justin and I got married 3 years ago and all they've really decorated were the inside of boxes in our storage! I bought everything after Christmas, and immediately put it away, so most of it I had completely forgotten about! This year I was more than happy to pull out my decorations and did so the week before Thanksgiving! We had about 15 guests in our home for the holiday and I wanted everyone to feel festive and cozy!

Allison sent me a link to a blog home tour and I was so inspired to share with y'all! I so loved getting to decorate for the first time ever, that I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do!

First let's start with the mantle and all the little decorated areas of the house and then we'll move on to the trees!

The stockings were hung by the chimney that's closed off... but still! I definitely would have liked to have done more here, and I probably will next year, but I have a strict rule about buying decorations AFTER the season when you can get them for the best price. I do like the festive touches that brought our mantle up to season. I like the glitter pine cones in the pink stems so much that they might just stay year round. Is that ok?

This is our entry way table with glitter tree that I've put our cards on. I took this picture a while back, so there are a few more that haven't made it on the tree yet! Can't wait until it's full of friendly faces! I filled my milk glass bowls with black, gold & silver ornaments and a Merry Christmas sign!

I snatched these gold candle sticks from my Gram's house a few visits ago. My mom hated them, but I just love them at the opening of my dining room and living room! These glitter pine cones and tiny birds have found their perfect home in the rim.

Funny story about this tree topper. I snagged in on sale last year and never actually put it on a tree! This year when I was decorating it wouldn't stay on top of either of my trees! Can't figure out why they would make a tree topper that wouldn't top a tree, but I digress. So, during the process of decorating this topper moved from room to room, but finally found it's home on the coffee table amongst the mercury glass, feathers and magazines! Now I think it looks like it always belonged there!

This was another thrown together hodgepodge that I thought turned out so nicely! This is on the side table of the couch. It's a gold and silver garland that I fastened together, threw some cream fabric in the middle and added some mercury glass. Like the previous topper, I was hoping to put this one on my gold tree, but it was too tall and too scary for hard wood floors. (Side Note: I've never dropped so many things in my life as I have on my hard wood floors! I am getting to a point that I need to buy extra of everything because I am bound to drop one and break it!)

On to the dining room. This is our green hutch and I thought this would be the perfect place to display the only red and green decorations that I have in the entire house! Can you imagine Christmas without red & green? Come visit my house and I'll make it easy for you. One of my Christmas trees is gold & one is black... I don't even have green trees here!

I picked up some of these Santa mugs last year at Justin's grandmother's antique store and picked up more of them and the jug from my gram! Gram's have little green rhinestone eyes. They fit in perfect with all the glitter and sparkle around here!

I love glass ball wreaths, but forgot to buy balls last year so I could make my own! I ended up going to a thrift store here and finding bags of glass balls for right around $8 total. Add that to the $1 I spent on tinsel and I have a fab new glass ball wreath for less than $10. If you look at this one up close, you can see how old and eclectic all the balls are and that makes me very happy! You'll see this one again in our Christmas picture!

Here is the "Diva" Tree! This was a green tree that I got last year and spray painted black. It was $40 cheaper to buy it green and buy the paint to make it black rather than just buying a black tree! It's a 6ft tree and I love how the mesh netting and over sized ornaments turned out! Wouldn't this be perfect in a sassy little girl's room? For now it's just perfect for our master bedroom where the colors are mostly black, white and pink.

This is the gold tree that's in the living room. I die a little inside every time I see the red wrapping paper, but I didn't wrap those presents, and I felt a little wasteful to unwrap them all and re-wrap in my paper, so you must forgive just like me. It's really hard to get the full effect of the gold tree without it looking white, and if I could invite each of you over for hot chocolate you could see all it's vintage glory with your very own eyes.

Here's the entire room lit up at night so you can get a better picture. I keep wanting to apologize for the quality of the pictures, but really, I'm not a photographer with a fancy camera, so this is a good as it gets and it could be a lot worse, right?

Family pictures inside the cottage.

Family pictures outside the cottage. It was actually snowing outside when we took this. Thanks for indulging me and looking at my house! From our house to yours... Merry Christmas!

Kitchen video tour

I was so inspired by Ryan's Halloween tour that I bit the bullet and did a video tour of our kitchen! She was right ~ it's so much easier to video than to photograph! Our kitchen is definitely a work in progress, but aren't all of our houses a work in progress as far as decorating and design are concerned?

It feels very nice to rest after going full speed for so long. Now that our Labor Day company has come and gone it feels like there isn't as big of a need to hurry around painting and arranging things. Of course I'm already thinking about Thanksgiving and starting to plan for that! Thanksgiving in our own cottage kitchen. Less than 2 months!

Day 1

I promise I'm NOT going to go day by day on what we've accomplished at the house. Can you even imagine? I'm not even sure that I would care to see that, so I promise I'll spare you and hit the highlights.

From the moment I posted that last post up until right now we've been working like crazy on our home. For an older home, it is not in bad shape, but it did need some work. Thankfully, it mostly needed a fresh coat of paint. And luckily for me and Justin we had 3 more than willing friends who moonlighted as painters.

One of those friends actually moonlighted as a general contractor. The previous owners had installed "tile" paneling and I preferred wainscoting. I told my friend Craig that I eventually wanted to take the "tile" down and replace it with wainscoting and he said, "No time like the present!"

And all of the sudden ever man in the house gets the opportunity to live out their demolition dream and the walls came tumbling down. Ok so the walls didn't come down, but that nasty "tile" came down.

I'm sure it looks fabulous in your house, because you are all smart stylish people who know how to work it. The "tile' installers that came before us were not you.

The actions of the first night called for our first trip to Lowe's first thing the next morning to pick out wainscoting & chair rail. I am very lucky that Craig owned his own custom cabinet business at one point in time, so he's very handy with the saw and the installation.

And while the boys handled the hard stuff... I tackled the cabinets.

I love the open cabinets, and I like the idea of a different color inside. Unfortunately, I have nothing that is blue, so it had to change too. Out with the old, in with the new.

I'm excited to share all the before and after pictures with you, and trust me there are a LOT! Please be patient with me, as we are running our business (had a GREAT 1st month ~ Thank you, God!) and doing all the work ourselves with the help of our dear friends.

2p.m.

As I live and breath, I NEVER thought this day would come this summer. Would you believe that it is easier to buy a restaurant/start your own business in this great country than it is to buy a house? We learned that the hard way, and perhaps I'll take the time to write that story out, because it is WILD!

In an effort to NOT jinx us anymore than we have already been jinxed because we are sole-proprietors, I've refrained from sharing this info and picture until now. This is our cottage that we are closing on today at 2 p.m. Not a great picture of the house, but I wanted to get Justin and the sold sign in the shot.

The next time you see our little cottage it will look much different! My neighbor is the project manager and lists and time-lines are already on paper and we have a team of 5 that is ready to get to work!

The same as this blog didn't turn into a wedding blog, it will not turn into a design blog, but I will be tracking our progress and sharing updates. This has been a long time coming and it thrills my soul that in a matter of hours I will be settled.