Christmas Decorating 2015

Anyone else feel like they just put last years Christmas decorations away?

Yea?

Me too!

But, here we are again with another edition of Christmas decorations in the Turner house.  The reason I started taking pictures of my decorations was so I could look back on them when decorating for the new year and remember what I liked/didn't like from the previous year.  I've yet to actually do that so each year is a new adventure of trying to find the perfect place for decorations.

Some things never change, like my trees for instance.  I always have the big tree in the family room; that's the only room it will fit, and I always have a tree in the living room.  The kids get trees in their bedrooms and I started last year putting a tree in our master bedroom.

This is the big tree that goes in the family room each year.  I've been adding ornaments to it every year and I love how it is starting to fill up.  I remember when we first bought this tree, we didn't hardly have any ornaments and it looked so bare.

This tree is one that I got from goodwill last year.  I bought it because my son and his wife wanted a different tree but it was too tall for their ceilings.  So, it just had to come home with me.  For the past several years I had my husbands family tree that his parents gave to me in this room but it has gotten so old and every year would lose more and more needles that it was time for it to retire.

This tree holds all the ornaments that belong to my husband and myself.  I buy ornaments from any vacations we go on and those also go on this tree.

This is my daughter's tree.  She had a 7' tree for her room originally but felt it had taken up too much room so I got her this little 4' one a couple years ago.

It holds all the ornaments from her childhood that were given to her or that she made.

{My youngest son had not put up his tree as of this post so I'll have to add that one later.}

The tree that I put in the master bedroom was our family tree when my oldest son was little.  It's only 5' tall so as he grew bigger, the tree got smaller and smaller.  I think it's a perfect size for our master.

This tree has become the owl tree in the house.  Which reminds me, I need to hit up the stores for some new owl ornaments for this tree. :)

Other than a few little trees, that's all the trees that we have put up this year.

And now on to the rest of the decorating.

The mantle and fireplace, as always, has gotten a little Christmas cheer.

I have done a little to the breakfast area.  We always put up the window clings and have since the kids were little.  I have the little fiber optic tree in here and the lights around the window are blue.  It is so peaceful in the kitchen during the wee morning hours before the sun comes up. I love the serenity of it while I'm having my morning coffee.  Do you think I could get away with leaving the blue lights up all year?

I am using the entryway table to display my nutcracker collection this year.  Last year I had them on the floor in front of the table and one of the cats would knock them over.  I was afraid they would get broken so they had to come up off the floor.

This is a close up of my collection so far.

I made this advent calendar for this year.  I love how it turned out.  I cut it out with my Cricut and got the svg files from svgcuts.com.

In the living room I have put my Christmas village.  I actually just got most of these pieces.  I happened to find them at Goodwill for like $2 a piece.  I was super excited.

The dining room gets a little touch of Christmas cheer.

And Santa always has a place.

 

Another little table with our nativity scene on it.

I always love this view over the edge from the upstairs hallway.  Forgive the dogs, I tried to get them to move but they weren't listening to me.

Oh well!

That about sums up my decorating for the year.  I hope you enjoyed it!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Kitchen Renovation Part 1

I have been wanting a new kitchen for years and years.

When we bought this house, this is what the kitchen looked like

It was very basic and white.  My other house also had an all white kitchen and at first I loved it.  But after 20 years of having white cabinets, white counter tops, white floor and white appliances; I'm ready for a little color in my life.

Once we got settled, we did get some paint on the walls and the kitchen looked like this.

A few years later, we got new floors and I started putting in black appliances just to get away from everything being white.

 

We changed out the lights and I was happy to live with it like this for awhile. 

However, like all cheaply new built homes, the cabinets are not real wood.  They are particle board with laminate doors.  As you know, cheap things tend to fall apart after many years.  My cabinets were starting to come apart from the wall and the laminate on the doors was starting to peel off.

One day my daughter and I decided to pull it all off the doors and we were going to paint the cabinets.

It then looked like this.

 

Beautiful huh!  Oh, and hubby had already taken off a couple doors so he could start painting them.  I think it was the next day that he mentioned the idea of going ahead and getting the new cabinets and counter tops since painting them would be such a huge job.

So we started shopping around and coming up with ideas.

We finally settled on what we want and they will be delivered Monday!

I am extremely excited.  

I have spent this week clearing out all my kitchen stuff so that we could start tearing everything out this weekend.

Here is where we are now:

  

My kitchen seems so empty.

 

 

We are working on taking the appliances out tonight then tomorrow the cabinets will be coming down.

 

We have set up a "command center" if you will that has paper plates, cups, plastic utensils.  I'll also be able to put my crock pot there because we will be eating lots of crock pot meals over the next few weeks.

 

All of my kitchen stuff has been boxed up and moved to the living room.  I also have a table set up in here that has some things out that we may need.

 

     

I am really excited and can't wait for it to be finished.  I just hope it doesn't take forever!

Wish me luck!