Christmas Tour 2014, Part 2

The boys and I had fun decorating the lower level of our house for Christmas in a more colorful way than upstairs. It is the boys' play area and the level their room is on. It looks a lot more rustic in style than the upstairs does. It came that way. ha

 The boys decorate this tree every year with their own special ornaments. :-)

 The kitchenette area and stair way got just a touch of Christmas, too.

Have a very Merry and Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!
                                       Jessica

Christmas Tour 2014, part 1

Just sharing photos of the Christmas décor on our main floor in this post. More to come later. :-)

 Our new electric fireplace. You can see our real fireplace on the blog header....

 The boys love warming themselves in the morning, etc. The new fireplace keeps our family room nice and cozy!

               I love miniature Christmas buildings!

                                Christmas tea cups

Oh, Christmas Tree

 The day after Thanksgiving we drove to the mountains and chose a Christmas tree to cut, as is our custom. This year for the first time, there was snow for our tree choosing excursion! The boys were so excited. And I may have been, too. ;-)

    It makes it seem so much more perfectly Christmassy, don't you think?

 We also brought sleds and the people at the tree farm let the boys use a hill behind their barn to sled. They had so much fun!

 Tyndale loved the snow, too. He even did a little sledding with Daddy.

 Two views of the tree, all decorated. A perfect North Carolina Fraser Fir.

I hope to do a post soon with all of our Christmas décor. Of which we have an extensive array. ha I think we may have gone overboard this year. But all the boys love it so much. And this is the first year Tyndale is old enough to notice. Christmas lights thrill his soul.

ORBing Our Gold Door Hardware

Before

 Our last house was a new build, and one of the things I loved about it was the Oil Rubbed Bronze door hardware (ORB). I love our "new" house, but one of the negatives about houses that are from the year 2000 or so, is that they usually have bright gold/brass colored door handles.
I searched online, and even getting a good deal on new knobs would be over $200 just for the main floor of our house! So, I decided to try spray painting our current knobs. They are nice quality, just ugly in my opinion. ;-)

 It's turning out pretty well so far! I have also been painting some of the hinges with black oil based paint. The hinges don't look perfect, that's for sure, but they aren't gold. ha

 I'm also very proud of myself for finally figuring out how to put the deadbolt back together. haha Took me a while....

I have all the knobs in the entry and living room painted now. Only 7 doors to go! haha Not including the downstairs- we'll worry about that later. ;-)

Mini Makeover in the Master Bathroom

 

 When we bought our house, there were these gold/brass strips framing the top and bottom of our bathroom mirror. They annoyed me right away, and I wanted them gone, but it took us almost a year to get to it. ha You can barely see the metal strips in the pic above and below.

Before: 

The vanity was white, which is fine. However the paint was not in good condition, and I thought I might as well make the color contrast with the white counter top since I was bothering to paint it. I used Diverse Beige by Sherwin Williams, since we had it on hand from painting the living areas. It is a shade lighter than our bedroom walls.

 Ben added some trim/molding to the top and the bottom of the mirror to cover up the gold, and I love the way it looks!

                                                           

In The Pink...

We bought an Ikea sofa with white covers and some lace curtains there, as well, last Summer.

I saw some light pink slipcovers for sale on eBay, but didn't decide to buy them in time. So, I got the bright idea to dye our white ones pink. Ha I figured if it didn't work out, the worst case scenario was that we could get another white set for $49.

It could have turned out better, but you can't tell in the picture. ;-) My washing machine is High Efficiency, which is good for the pocketbook, but not for dye jobs. ha Doesn't use enough water to dye evenly. But I'm still fairly happy with the effect. :-)

I

 I never really loved the lace curtains in here, so I switched them out for these valances I made in my favorite fabric, "Teacups and Roses". It's so much brighter in this room now!

                         I found this cute, vintage looking pillow at Hobby Lobby.

                                               Close up of the curtain:

By the way, my blogging is very sporadic on account of these little cuties:

 Especially the little one. ;-) Who is not so little. He is going to be 5 months old on the 12th! He is growing up way too fast.

                                                        Jessica

Joining in at http://www.thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/2014/03/march-before-and-after.html