I always wanted to do a fancy table setting, then last week Mike randomly told me I should try one of those fancy table settings, so I considered it a challenge. Up until about 2 hours ago, I had no clue what I was doing. I went to Michael’s earlier in the week and grabbed a few things, but they were mostly for Christmas. I was planning on just winging this.

So I began by cleaning out some old, reliable vases we have that got very cloudy from constant use (note: I use these 2 vases to decorate A LOT. My parents got them for free when they took home a centerpiece from a wedding)

I peeked out our kitchen window and had a revelation… I should go get some sticks!

So I went outside, with no jacket or plan in mind.  It was freezing out there, but our yard is very sticky…

(That sign on the tree way back there is a no hunting sign.  I’m glad there will be no bullets flying in my animal loving yard.)

In the midst of my stick search, I heard my neighbors come outside.  I am now the looney chick who picks sticks with one hand, holds camera in the other. Great.

My gatherings…

(another note: In the midst of taking these pictures, I complained to Mike about how the kitchen appears so orange when I take pictures.  So he showed me how to adjust the white balance on the camera, genius! From this picture on, the colors of the countertop/backsplash are much more accurate!)

We also had a bowl of apples from when we went apple picking in September. They’re not good enough to eat but they’re good enough for props!

And my vases are now sparkling!

So still, no plan.  But I began to throw things in this square banana leaf basket I got at Michael’s and things just sort of took off. Pine cones are from Michael’s, mini-pumpkins we had, apples we had and sticks from the yard…

That’s a napkin in there, it was all looking too brown so I had to improvise.  Then I stuck it on the table, on a ramie runner I picked up at Target.

The vases? They got filled with apples and sticks (oh yeah, I had to go back outside and get more sticks!) Then I wrapped a sparkly brown, thick ribbon that I bought for Christmas around them.  I taped the ribbon so that it comes off easily and stuck them on our buffet.  Oh and on the bottom is a mini-wreath from Michael’s, also bought for my Christmas decor.

Here’s my Crate & Barrel pumpkin I bought a while back, on a “mini-runner” of two napkins…

And the completed table, assembled mostly from stuff I had…

What, the heads of your table don’t get their own special wooden bowls? Okay we only have 2 of those, but they’re too great to leave out!

Mission accomplished! Luckily, Macky was sleeping throughout this process, so he still has no clue of what I did.  I tiptoed through the house so I wouldn’t wake him.  Not to shabby for our first Thanksgiving and it was lots of fun.  Now on to some cooking!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 🙂

This is a partial view our dining room…

You will be seeing some more of this room in the next few days since Mike and I are hosting Thanksgiving! Yay!

This particular wall is home to our Ikea Vurm wine racks.  Each side has two wine racks, holding 4 bottles each.  We have had these wine racks for years- we had 3 of them in a line in our condo dining room.  We knew they were definitely something we wanted to keep around, but since we have a larger space we decided to buy a fourth rack.

They are quite empty tonight, it’s been a rough few weeks okay! 😉 So before the holidays we are going to replenish.  I love going to the liquor store… no for the reason you would think… but because of this pretty label…

And this one…

And doesn’t this just sound like a party?

Yes, I choose wines based on their labels.  I also judge books by their covers. I’m sure a somewhere a connoisseur is cringing, but I like to think of them as art or conversation pieces.  My current favorite?

Is that our house??

I love it.  Not just the simplicity of the label, but that you come to our house and you get…. house wine.  Get it? Okay it’s a little lame… but it’s cute and I’m tempted to buy a case.

Maybe with just a slight revision…

🙂

*Update: House Wine is apparently made by Magnificent Wine and they have a bunch of fabulous other labels! Table wine is a goody as well!*

I’ll just cut to the chase here and give you the bad news… we didn’t organize the office this weekend.  But at least the kids enjoyed the mess…

In the middle of Darwin’s “I’m being adorable” photoshoot, we heard a bang…

“What was that???”

“Um… WHOOPS!”

Yes, balancing your Ikea desktop thingy on top of a box, and then stacking things on top of that is not a good idea when your cat is Macky. He used it as a diving board. Anything to be the center of attention!

Anyway, we got caught up with some family stuff over the weekend and since we’re weekend warriors, losing a good portion of our weekend leads to zero progress.  But before we knew we wouldn’t be able to work on the office, we were out running some errands on Saturday and decided to run to Office Max to check out an office chair I was thinking about.

Our current office chair situation is quite pretty, though not meant for office use…

We actually ordered these chairs from Target.com for our dining room, but we received two and then they were discontinued.  They had already been assembled, so we kept them.  Plus they’re good to have as extra dining room chairs.  Mike has sat on this chair since we moved in and for a while he didn’t mind it.  This made me super excited because I wanted a classy chair to balance all of the modern Ikea furniture in the office.  I was going to reupholster them and keep them in the room.  But for the past few weeks, the chairs have been uncomfortable for Mike. (Sidenote: For our new friends, Mike spends much more time in the office than I do, since he’s busy running his own lil website that could)  So we began looking for actual office chairs, though I was extremely hestitant and well, nervous.  Then I found this nice little ditty…

DiVoga Managers Chair, Office Max, $139.99

I liked that this chair was white, sleek looking and had chrome feet to go with our Ikea desks.  We wanted to sit in it before we decided and figured we’d check to see if our local Office Max carried it.

Before we hit up Office Max on Saturday, we were near a Staples and figured we’d check it out.  I didn’t expect to find anything but we spotted this..

Once again I love the sleek, modern lines, the white color and the chrome feet, but I especially love the squared back of this one. I am very happy that I snapped a few pictures of it because apparently, it is not available online.

So it was on sale, but we hadn’t yet seen the Office Max chair.  I couldn’t remember exactly what the Office Max chair looked like that the time, so we held off on the Staples one and headed to Office Max.  One look at the first chair and it didn’t hold a candle to the Staples chair.  Pretty good for just walking into Staples without doing my usual internet research!  We were busy, so we didn’t head back to Staples right away, assuming it would be on sale throughout the week.

We went back to Staples tonight and it is back to full price! $179.99! Hopefully it will a) go back on sale soon or b) we will get a coupon or something!

Note to self: the next time your drywall guy comes for a ‘final trip’, cover all furniture and be prepared to clean forever.

It was even worse in our sitting room (yes, that is a giant scratching post with tension rod laying on the floor, we are THOSE people)…

At least now the new bedroom wall is officially done and when time permits we can paint it!!

After our garage project this past weekend, our office seemed to become even more cluttered…

(I know my husband is cringing at the lighting in these photos, but it’s 10pm, I left the house at 7:30am and I clearly missed the opportunity to take pictures in natural light)

A good amount of the boxes in the garage belonged in the office.  Since we didn’t have a “true” office area until now, we held off on unpacking any of our supplies.

Apparently, when I’m away from the house for as many hours as I was today, the kids suffer. They must have been very excited to see me because they seized any photo bombing opportunity they could get their paws on…

“Hi Momma!”

“OoOoH FOR MACKY??”

Attempting to circle her birthday on my new calendar.

Due to the bad lighting in the office and the presence of photo bombers, I decided to take my party to the kitchen.  Hence the out of context pictures that are coming.

So Saturday, as we were cleaning the garage, we ran to Walmart to get some more garbage bags.  In passing I spotted these great desk organizers…

I picked up two of these, it’s hard to tell but they’re a dark purple color and have my current favorite pattern on the inside…

I also picked up an organizer with cute little compartments on the inside (which are removable)…

I have mentioned before that the lighting in my kitchen appears orangish in pictures.  So yeah, moving my new office organizers there wasn’t my brightest moment. Someday I’ll learn how to control for that.

Anywho, the moral of this story is that the next item we are tackling on our pre-Christmas list is #4: finish organizing the office! Hopefully we can do it in one day and the furry party crashers will be on their best behavior! 🙂