Happy New Year to All

How are y'all doing ? I hope your holiday time was wonderful with family and friends. As you know, we had a loss of a very dear grandfather during the holiday . On top of that , last night our son came down with a high temperature and has been sleeping for most of the morning . You know he doesn't feel well because he is very grouchy and he's never grouchy . I hope and  pray that it's NOT the flu. We have decided since it's been so crazy and busy for the past 2 weeks that we are going to start the New Year off  Relaxing. Yes , with a capital R . We are all going to relax in our jammies on the couch and probably not last long enough to watch the ball drop . My  Honey will be getting the trucks ready and gearing up for the 16 inches of snow that's predicted we will get by the end of week . I did manage to change one of the bathroom's during the holiday which I will show in another post.

Merry Christmas to All

Merry Christmas to All from our family to yours. I hope your day is filled with love, laughter, tradition and lots of memories. I want to thank all of you who visit here and the kind emails that you send.  I will be busy up until Sunday as we have had a unexpected death of a grandparent who was very  near and dear to us. I hope you and your family have a very happy and safe holiday.

Rusty Antique Garden Urns and Fountain

Last week while we were at our favorite garden center shopping for our Christmas tree , I fell in love with this old planter that was out by the front gate.  It turned out to be a 2 hour trip because I just kept finding one piece after another and visioned it in our garden.

Let me show you some pieces that I was drooling over for my garden.

Decorated Christmas Tree 2013

We finally got our tree last week and finished decorating it a few days ago. Our tree is put up every year in our Master bedroom.  The room is about 20 x 30 and it seems the best place for our tree.  It has the large doors that go out to the balcony and a great focal point when you come down the driveway.  I use smaller trees throughout the rest of the house.
This year I added some porcelain and ceramic decorations and a lace bow/ribbon for a vintage look.

Holiday Gifts for the Teachers

Hello Everyone.   Today is the start of  Christmas vacation for our son.  They had a small Christmas party at the school with a Santa , snacks and small gifts.  As a way to say  '  Thank you  ' to the teachers , I made them a gift.  Although you can never say thank you enough to the teachers for all the hard work they do, a small gift as a sign of appreciation during the Holidays is always nice.

Decorated Kitchen Window for Christmas

I am so unbelievably late with decorating this year.  It has been so busy the past few weeks.  All my ' junk ' from that demo house is still loaded in the trailer at the shop , going to the Patriots games , and now all this snow.  He has to get all the trucks ready for plowing and it just snowballs from there.
I actually had a moment to get the kitchen window decorated today.  We went shopping for our Christmas tree this evening.  If  we didn't go tonight then  who knows when we would be able to go with more snow coming tomorrow.  Very hectic ...

Painted Wooden Sign and Post

I finished painting the post I made the other day. I made a sign for the Holidays . Paint the post white first and let it set for about 10 - 15 minutes.

Wrought Iron Gates for our home - my early Christmas present

Those who know me , know of my LOVE for anything old and iron.  Every year we go to this high end garden center for our Christmas tree that also sells expensive antiques , statues and fountains and so on . They sell the type of antiques for people with homes that are Mansions with gardens that are  listed as Estates for the wealthy people.  I can only dream when I go in there.  While we were walking through the garden center , I saw this beautiful wrought iron arbor with some rust showing throughout it.  I fell in love with it.  I looked at it over and over and then I saw the price.  I said to my honey,  " I would love this for our garden. . .  oh, maybe someday ."   Christmas morning came and he said your present is out in the yard. There it was flat on the ground.  I could not believe my eyes.   It took three of us to move it and set it up.  We set it up over the summer and added a lace vine to each side.  The vine has tiny white flowers and grows rapidly.  It is so gorgeous.

Wooden Sign Post for the Holidays

If you have no porch at your house to decorate for the holidays , don't worry , you're not alone.  Since I don't have much space to decorate when you come to my front door , I decided to make a post to hang a holiday sign and some decorations.  I had a bunch of scrap wood in the garage and out in the yard.  I grabbed the pieces that were the closest to the size I needed to make the post.

Pine Cone Christmas Tree for Den

We headed out early this morning to go to the Patriots game. We got home this evening and had some time to take some decorations out.  I started with this pine cone tree that I made a few years ago.

Christmas decorating is late this year

By this time in December , my decorations are out and on display .  I am late this year and lots of reasons why. Busy , busy and busy . Let me tell you why.

I went to this demo / hoarder house that is being torn down sometime tomorrow.  Just look at the  ' junk ' that I loaded into my suv.  It's times like this when I wish I had a box truck. 

Chalk Painted dresser with a stencil

Last year I got this dresser from a woman who was down sizing.  It's old and definitely shows it's age. The top was peeling and part of the hardware is missing.  I thought this would be a great piece to try chalk paint.  I let it sit for awhile out in the garage. That's where my projects await me.

I was looking thru some blogs that I follow and got my inspiration from Red Hen Home (www.redhenhome.blogspot.com).