Christmas Decor + Basement Pics!

I love decorating for Christmas every year, even if it is a lot of work! I love how special it feels and the sparkling lights throughout the house. Here's my decorations this year...

one of my favorite decorations is this little snowman that Gigi made a couple of years ago! She is quite the little artist!

And I finally remembered to take pics of our basement decorations...

love this little ceramic penguin that Gigi painted!

the gallery wall with some tinsel garland...

a little Christmas village on top of our entertainment center. The houses light up at night!

and of course I had to have a little Christmas tree to make it more festive!

So that's our home decorated for Christmas!

Valentine's Decor

A simple mantel for Valentine's Day. I painted the heart on canvas a few years ago, an easy and cheap decoration to make! 

and some Valentine's hot chocolate!

Kitchen Reveal

I loved how my kitchen looked all decorated for Christmas, so I finally got around to taking pics of it since we remodeled it. To remind you, here it what it looked like after we moved in...

and here it is now. We replaced everything--the cabinets, countertops, floor, backsplash and all the appliances. Adam and I did all the demo and tiled the floor and backsplash. We closed the window on the back wall so we could add cabinets, a countertop and some open shelving. It's so much more functional now and it still gets plenty of light from other windows!

Before:

After:

and the other direction...

One of my favorite features is the open shelving. I love the focal point they bring to our small kitchen and it's a great place to display some cute things. And it sure makes it easy for me to unload the dishwasher!

Before:


and After. One of my must-haves was a farmhouse sink. I love the casual vibe and that I can fit lots of dirty dishes in it!



Before:

After:

Before:

After:

and a view going to the basement, if you turn left you'll head downstairs to our basement...

Before:

and After. It's hard to see from the before pic but we added more cabinets here (it was just a pony wall before) and lowered the countertop to one height (it was choppy with the pony wall being at bar height).

love the little Christmas touches of tinsel garland, pinecones, and vintage ornaments!

A view of the kitchen from the dining room...

So that's our updated kitchen! I love how light and bright it is and that we added more cabinets (it was really lacking storage) and more countertops. I think we really maximized the small space and made it work so much better for us!

        

Christmas Decor

I LOVE decorating for Christmas! I went with the same vintage decor that I've done for the past few years since I love it so much! I switched up the mantel a bit from last year with some lit garland...

the tree is decorated the same as last year...

I love stringing tinsel garland on all my pictures to make it a bit more festive!

a bowl filled with pinecones and vintage ornaments...

my bookshelf with a few Christmas accents...

You can never have too many bottle brush trees!

I forgot to take a pic of the Christmas decor in the basement, so this is the best I have! It was taken at night so the lighting is bad but you can see my little lit village, mercury glass christmas trees and more bottle brush trees! I'll have to take better pics next year! Oh, and of course I was watching Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel. :)

Halloween Decor

I love decorating for Halloween and had fun this year. I found these cute little skeletons at CVS for like $4.00 each and so I had to get a few of them...

bats on the gallery wall, and Buddy keeping watch!

and a little skeleton couple on the mantel...