Under a blue moon

Merry Christmas!

                       

Merry Christmas Eve!  I have a cranberry almond Christmas cake in the oven, all my presents are wrapped (except one that I HOPE arrives today) and all my errands have been run.  All that is left to do is dinner preparations for our Christmas Eve dinner.  I make the same thing every year - phyllo wrapped chicken breasts, green beans and some kind of carby side (sweet potatoes this year).  We are going to my mother in law's later this afternoon.  She normally stays the night at our house on Christmas Eve but she isn't feeling up to the drive this year.

I am going to take the rest of the week off from blogging but I'll be back on New Year's Eve.  I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

 

Christmas Table

We're a week away!  Keeping with my completely untraditional (for me) color scheme - this year's table will be red and green.  But to make it more me I'm incorporating my favorite decorating element, milk glass.  I do love me some milk glass.  

Isn't that plaid table runner pretty?  It's really a flannel scarf trying to pass itself off as a table runner and there is no way I would have paid full price for it.  It got it on sale for $12 plus some change.  

Greenery is from Trader Joe's.  I bought two swags and deconstructed them.  I set the table to take pictures and then immediately put the greenery outside in the cool, damp air to keep them nice.  They should last until Christmas this way.  

My "candle holders" are milk glass bud vases.  I have seen some really gorgeous displays using different heights of vases.  Milk glass will always be one of my favorite things to collect and, surprisingly (to me, anyway), the prices are so reasonable.  These bud vases were $4 a piece. 

Here's a collecting tip for you - no matter what you are collecting.  I buy most of my pieces from Etsy and since the pieces are heavy the shipping costs are quite often more than the item itself.  However, many sellers offer free shipping.  Do a search on milk glass, or anything you are looking for, and you will get 800 pages of items for sale.  I narrow it down by filtering it by those sellers that offer free shipping.  You can filter on eBay the same way. 

I made little wreaths from Rosemary from our garden.  It could not have been easier and it smells so lovely.  I used thread to tie the ends together and added a little red bow.  

Changing the subject - slightly - this morning I woke up, made my bed, turned on my tea kettle and then went to open the shades in the living room.  As is my daily routine.  And what should I see but absolute mayhem in the living room.  The floor lamp was laying on the floor, the Christmas tree was knocked over, ornaments were everywhere and it turns out my "non-breakable" ornaments were not so there was broken glass and glitter everywhere.  It must have made quite the racket when it all went down but neither Rick nor I heard a thing during the night.  Neither of the cats are talking.

I hope it startled then enough that they leave the tree alone from now on.  Glad I didn't have my precious, collected over the years, ornaments on the tree.  

Are you hosting Christmas dinner at your house?  We do Christmas Eve at our house with my mother in law and Christmas dinner at my Dad's with the whole extended family.  We'll use this table decor for both.  It works both for an intimate dinner for three and a more boisterous crowd of 20+.

 

 

Gift Wrapping

This will be a late and rather hastily put together blog post.  As I am scrambling to finish my Christmas shopping and gift wrapping I thought I would share some of the wrapping I have done over the years.  Some of the photos were quickly snapped with a cell phone years ago so excuse the quality.

While I generally don't go for a traditional red/green theme, I did this year.  After looking at some of these pictures I think I much prefer my own unique style of wrapping.  Take the picture above - I loved the combination of hot pink and red with some sparkle.  The sparkle is courtesy of some scrap booking embellishments I bought at a craft sale on clearance.  

The gold and white is more traditional but still very elegant.  I went a little crazy for Target's Sugar Paper line that year.  They do lovely wrap, I will say.

Okay that photo is really bad but the package was so pretty.  Black on black with lots of bling.  I bought the embellishments from this Etsy shop:  Simply Sassy Source.

This was last years wrapping and it was great for a couple of reasons.  Very on brand for me (haha!) and a great way to economize on ribbon while not sacrificing style.  I bought the glittery snowflakes at Target (but you can find them just about anywhere) threaded the picotee edged ribbon through them and layered it over wider ribbon.  It's hard to tell in the picture but the white wrapping was striped or polka dotted tone on tone.  

After looking at years past I'm feeling a bit lackluster about this year's theme.  I do like that green and white wrapping paper though.  Maybe I should have gone with gold rather than red.  Ah well - I'm not about to rewrap a gazillion gifts.  

Here is gift wrap central.  Also known as the guest bed.  Luckily we aren't expecting any guests until Christmas Eve.  

I am almost done with my Christmas shopping.  I am still waiting for packages to arrive and I fear one may not get here before Christmas so I need to come up with a back up plan.  I also need to focus on stocking stuffers.  One of these years I will get all the shopping and wrapping done at the beginning of December.

At least the house is all decorated.  I keep moving this little tree around though.  Good thing it is portable.  Our granddaughter stayed with us this past weekend and I moved it into the guest room for her.   Looking at it I may make it my gift wrapping color scheme for next year.  I love the bright colors and the sparkly silver.

Vintage

While I was visiting my friend in Paso Robles we stopped in a few antique stores.  There is nothing I like more than finding a good antique store and just leisurely browsing.  

One new one to me was Out by the Shed.  It is a smaller shop but she had some great things and her prices were really reasonable.  In fact I would even say they were kind of low.  I picked up a sweet glass pitcher there.  I really like the shape of it and it is that type of glass that starts to turn lavender as it ages.

Another reliably good shop is Reminisce.  I bought a small Christmas tree topper there and it is the perfect size for my tinsel tree.  Most of the decorations on that tree are vintage inspired but a few are old Shiny Brite ornaments.  I love the elongated hot pink ones.  Those came from my mother in law.  

I also bought a wall sconce.  It used to be electrified but I don't think I'll rewire it.  I rather like it as it is.  I love the texture and the slight wonkiness to it.  

I love giving old things a new home.  I wonder where they started out and who owned them.   One thing I am noticing more and more is that antique and vintage stores carry a lot of stuff that I had or remember from my childhood.  When I imagine the era of the things I buy I'm picturing the 20's, 30's and 40's and not my childhood years.  Guess I'm officially vintage!

Morning Twinkle

I got up really early yesterday morning and the lights looked so pretty in the early dawn light.  This is our little courtyard.  The one that tricks people into thinking we have a duplex.  The front door is on the corner of the house and this is between the house and the garage.  That rose bush over the gate just finally gave up its last bloom and the leaves are starting to fall off.

Are you a white light or a colored light kind of Christmas decorator?  I like both but tend to stick to white for our decor.  

I caved and bought a new faux indoor tree.  I went with white lights where in the past we would always do colored lights on the tree in the house.  I bought the tree from Balsam Hill.  It is a 6 1/2 foot Balsam Fir.  I dithered back and forth on whether I should get the flocked or not and in the end decided not to.  I think it will be more versatile.  

First I put it up and left it undecorated for a few hours to see how the girls would react.  They were more interested in the box.  

I have decorated it with unbreakable ornaments.  I also made more star garlands using a smaller star punch this time.  I am really enjoying how they look and they are so easy to make.  I made five garlands, each six feet long or so with a dozen stars on each one.  

It's funny how some years I am just not as into decorating but this year I am full on board - probably because I have time on my hands.  I fully intend to enjoy this holiday season and not feel rushed or stressed about anything.

There's the real front door.  Too bad we can't have twinkly lights up all year round.  They sure are pretty.  

Today I'm heading down to Paso Robles to visit one of my dear friends.  She and I are sure to hit up antique stores in the area.  There are some good ones there.  I purposely made my visit for Wed-Fri because a lot of them aren't open on Mondays or Tuesdays.  We might visit a winery or two while I'm down there too.  

Happy Wednesday everyone!  Halfway to the weekend!