We’ve finally got our tree up and decorated! Once again this year we went with a ‘choose and cut’ Fraser Fir from Roan Valley Tree Farm. And thanks to our wall removal/renovation project, we can also enjoy the tree from the kitchen this year!
Which is really nice at night when cooking or cleaning up the dishes! You can just look up and enjoy the warm glow from the tree!
And that’s enough to put anyone into the holiday spirit!
It was a tradition in Craig’s house growing up to go out and ‘ choose and cut’ a Christmas tree each year. In my house growing up it was always a tradition to leave our tree up until Epiphany on January 6th (which marks the 12th day of Christmas). Obviously, this meant that we would wait until closer to Christmas to go pick out our Christmas tree.
Since moving to Tennessee, Craig and I have combined our two family traditions. We always wait until about 2 weeks before Christmas to get our tree. And when we do get our tree we always go to local Christmas tree farms and ‘choose and cut’ our own.
This year we went back to Roan Valley Tree Farm in Johnson City where we eventually found the perfect tree!
After cutting down the tree and loading it into the truck we decided to try out the Ole Barn Restaurant that’s located on the tree farm. Last year when we visited Roan Valley Tree Farm the restaurant was not yet completed, so we were very interested to see it all finished.
The food was delicious (and there certainly was plenty of it!). The atmosphere was great. And the people were so nice!
What a fun way to spend a day as a family! I think visiting Roan Valley Tree Farm and eating at the Ole Barn Restaurant may just become our family’s newest Christmas tradition!
I found this massive mirror (measuring 36 1/2” x 51” and weighing around 40 lbs.) at the annual Eastman Flea Market a couple of months ago for only $10.00! At that price it was definitely a steal, so I snatched it up as quick as I possibly could!
The mirror has a heavy wooden frame and beveled glass… definitely worth more than $10.00. The only problem was that it had been painted several times and the paint was in horrible condition (chipping, peeling, cracking).
So, I pulled out our trusty stripping brush and gave the entire frame a good rub-down. I was amazed to see at least 4 layers of paint uncovered as I brushed (brown, green, yellow, and gold).
Once all of the peeling paint was removed I cleaned the frame and placed a large square of masking tape around the edges of the mirror (to protect the mirror from the impending paint job).
Then I taped down a thick layer of newspaper to cover the remainder of the mirror surface.
After doing that I had Craig help me move the frame into the grass, where I placed it down on top of a large sheet of cardboard.
We decided to hang the finished mirror in the dining room, so we chose a more traditional color (than what I normally do) for the paint job… Oil Rubbed Bronze. The specific brand we chose was Rust-Oleum Universal Paint & Primer In One. We landed on this because we figured it would save us the step of priming the frame separately. I gave the frame two even coats of the paint-plus-primer, letting it dry for several hours between coats.
Then I removed the newspaper and masking tape. There were a few areas where some paint snuck onto the mirror, so I used a razor blade to carefully scrape it from the glass. The new finish is beautiful… so much better than the chipped, cracked finish when I bought it!
Then we hung it in the dining room, being sure to mount it directly into the studs (since it is SO heavy).
The only problem now is that the mirror is larger than the old dresser that we we’ve been using as a make-shift buffet for the last 5 years. But on the up side… I guess this means it’s finally time to upgrade the dining room furniture!
There must be a birthday party coming up soon in our house, because I’ve been busy making Pom Poms…
…and Paper Bag Flowers/Stars!
Who would have thought some plain-Jane tissue paper and colorful paper bags could turn into such fun decorations?!?
(Pom Pom Tutorial found here... Paper Bag Flower/Star tutorial found here.)
A good party always starts with a great invitation! And I must say, I’m in love with the sweet little invites I came up with for Bailey’s upcoming 2nd birthday party!
I sorted through the pages of adorable children’s poems and illustrations that I had left over from my antique chalkboard easel project earlier this year and found these two pages. They seemed to fit just perfectly with the Ice Cream Party theme we chose for this year.
I scanned the pages into the computer and with the help of some photo editing software I was able to retouch them and remove the poems and page numbers. This allowed me to have a “blank canvas” to create the invitation.
I then loaded everything into Microsoft Publisher and came up with this darling little invitation!
I just love the fun colors and the vintage feel! The whole thing makes me want to smile every time I look at it! Hope the rest of the party turns out as well as the invitations!
That’s right… our baby big girl is only 1 month away from the big T-W-O!
Photograph courtesy of Spangler Photography
It’s amazing just how incredibly fast this past year has flown! It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that I was planning her 1st birthday party… and now I’m working on her 2nd! Simply amazing!
Remember back in March when Craig accidentally stepped through the ceiling in the laundry room on the first day of our kitchen renovation? Well we’ve finally gotten around to fixing it.
Don’t get me wrong… we did a very quick, very temporary fix right after the incident occurred. However, there was still a medium sized section of plaster missing around the duct that connects to the HVAC unit in the laundry room.
And with winter coming we wanted to make sure that hole into the attic was covered up. Not to mention the fact that we wanted to add more insulation to the attic and it would be best if there weren’t a hole in the laundry room ceiling for insulation to fall through. So, a few weeks back we decided it was finally time to fix the ceiling.
Craig went into the attic and moved as much of the insulation away from the laundry room ceiling as possible. Then he removed a large section of the old ceiling (which the former owners had previously patched with wood paneling and sheet metal) in addition to some of the remaining plaster around the HVAC duct. This left him with a pretty significant hole in the ceiling.
He then measured and cut pieces of sheetrock to fit.
Next he very carefully screwed the drywall in to place, making sure he didn’t accidentally screw into a water line in the attic (like our sheetrockers did when hanging the drywall in the new kitchen).
Once the sheetrock was hung Craig used mesh drywall tape and joint compound to give the seams a rough patch job. He also filled in the small gaps around the HVAC duct and wiring with Great Stuff just to make sure that we wouldn’t get any cold air in from the attic this winter.
We’re not going to worry about sanding the ceiling and pretty-ing it up right now. We’re still planning to move the HVAC unit into the attic (which would free up almost half of the square footage in our laundry room for a mud/storage area!) and we figure there’s no point in smoothing it all out and making the ceiling perfect when we’ll have to do it all over again in a few months. So for now it’ll just have to do.
