One of my goals before we leave for vacation tomorrow morning was to take down our Christmas decorations. I know this wasn’t a priority, but we’re not coming home until Sunday night, then the next weekend is my last precious weekend before I start up grad school again. So I’d really like to do something other than focus on taking down a tree… plus it will be mid-January by then, oy!

So today, I left work early and mission was accomplished…for the most part. I was hesitant to pack everything away because I didn’t know where to start. We have way more stuff this year than we’ve ever had and I wasn’t sure what type of storage we’d need. Plus I wanted to put it away as organized as possible, rather than hastily thrown in boxes. Then I saw what Megan from Honey We’re Home did with her ornaments yesterday…

(via Megan’s Christmas Organizing post)

She organized her ornaments by color. Back in our condo, we had tree ornaments and a couple of vase fillers and that was it. But this year I bought so many ornaments for our large tree and other projects that I was just overwhelmed. So I decided to use Megan’s method as a starting point and started collecting my non-tree ornaments.

I picked up 3 large Christmas storage bins at Target, since we only had 2 before. I, like Megan, like the Christmas colored ones because when they’re buried underneath things, you know exactly what they are! I also picked up some smaller containers for my small ornaments then packed them up by color.

I took away all of the other Christmas items on the mantle and in the dining room and just like that, the house was neutralized.

I still need to find a safe place for my coffee filter wreath and tree, so until I get back, it will remain hanging in the family room. I kept the wood pillar holders, as well as the metallic pillar holders I picked up at Target out because they’re not holiday themed.

For all of these extra things I accumulated this season, I decided to put my living room storage ottomans to good use (nicely furnished room, huh? This is why you never see the living room )

Most of my candles are in the entertainment center, but I store some larger pieces here, including the silver pillar holders.

Oh and we haven’t seen our Ikea Stornas table without an extension in it since Thanksgiving, it looks so tiny with only 6 chairs!

As you can tell I put the majority of our things away, even accessories that were out before Christmas. I just wanted a clean slate for when I get back from Disney. On to the tree!

I decided to keep tree ornaments separate from vase filler type ornaments, since I strung those ribbon things on all of the tree ornaments and I’m not doing it again next year! I had one ornament box from Target a few years ago, which I decided to start to fill even though I knew I had way too many ornaments on this thing.

This particular box is a little tight for my biggest ornaments, which is why I almost didn’t use it. So I only put large ornaments in every other opening.

Then I filled the remaining openings with 2 or 3 of the smaller balls.

I was surprised that a good majority of my tree ornaments fit in this one box! I put the remaining ones in one of the leftover boxes that some of the large ones came in. I actually had all of the boxes from all of my ornaments (even the ones that are 4 years old). I decided to chuck them all this year because they take up way too much space.

I packed my vase filler boxes, as well as my remaining tree boxes into a larger storage box and it was near perfect, until I remembered I had an unopened box of large green ornaments.

See that box of green ornaments messing with my plan? Whaaamp whaaamp. Of course it would have been too perfect to fit all of the ornaments in two neat boxes. The solution?

Um yeah, there was no solution. It’s called, I’m going to Disney tomorrow and I could care less if my ornaments are perfectly packed this year. I’m just happy I got it done I ended up sticking that last box in a storage tote with some mantel things. The tree is naked, but still standing. We’ll probably take that apart as well as bring all of this stuff down to the basement when we get back.

Despite the fact that my flight leaves at 7am tomorrow, I’m not planning on taking a blogging break. I will be bringing my laptop and hope to tell you about my favorites in the new West Elm catalog I received yesterday, as well as about my first time ever at Disney. Cinderella’s castle is considered a house right?

On to my packing!

First off a little year-end blurb

I’d like to thank all of you who have visited my little side project and sent me words of encouragement- whether through email, snail mail (thank you Laura ) or in person. I really lacked the confidence to get this thing going in the beginning (if you look at the archives, I half started this in February!), but because of the kind words from people I haven’t talked to in years, people I’ve never met, or people who want me to help them with their homes, I feel so loved and encouraged to continue this. I LOVE doing this and it’s so rewarding to hear that so many of you enjoy it too. So thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for helping me to keep this bloggy up. On to a new year of blogging!

Though we still have many, many unfinished projects hanging around from 2010, we’ve already begun planning some new projects for 2011. We often say that we have house A.D.H.D., we bounce from room to room, never really finishing things. Oh you’ve noticed? Well this is sort of intentional because it keeps us interested, gives us time to think and re-think of things we’d like to do and be really proud of our finished product.

So what’s new around here? Well first off, we received the Delta Pilar Touch 2O Single Handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet we were eyeing on our Dear Santa list!

It was a generous gift from Mike’s parents and we are very excited to put the final piece of our kitchen puzzle together! I am planning on recreating the commercial once it’s installed….

While we’re on the topic of Christmas gifts, my parents bought us a Cutting Edge Stencil. I had been eyeing up the Casablanca Allover Stencil for months and decided it would be a good gift to ask for. Since I love meticulous, detailed jobs, I am going to do something like this in our master bedroom…

Okay, I am beyond excited to do this. Though Mike has already warned me that though he is fully confident in my abilities, this project is outside of his skill set. He always manages to roll paint in his hair, never mind successfully applying a stencil….

Yesterday, we hit up Ikea and found another missing puzzle piece- extra long teal-ish curtain panels. These are something I’ve been thinking of for our family room for quite some time. Once we added our white roman shades, we knew we needed a little something extra there. Cue the Merete dark blue panels!

They are nearly identical to the color of my coffee filter wreath ribbon and they will add just the right amount of boldness and fun that we’ve wanted in the family room since we moved in.

Soon I will have the Hawaii inspired color scheme I’ve been dreaming of in the family room.

As excited as I am to do all of these things ASAP, we’re laying low this week, putting away some Christmas decorations, oh and HEADING TO DISNEY ON WEDNESDAY! Woooo

Anyone else scheming up 2011 projects already?

Incase you don’t live on the east coast, this is the current view of my porch…

Where are the stairs??

I took these through the window since I wouldn’t dare to open the door.. I attempted and the snow just blew in my face. The wind is blowing the snow everywheeere, as you can tell by the fact that our little pre-lit trees by our front door are covered.

Though I wish we would have had a chance to pick up some paint or curtains before the storm hit so that we could be productive, we are actually quite cozy sitting around the house eating all of our Christmas leftovers. It sure helped that we made these a few nights ago…

And these…

Aaaand these…

Mike’s creative side seems to come out in the form of pretzels. I think it’s the only decorating that is quick enough to hold his attention. He actually started the process without me while I was still throwing cookies in!

The best cookie of the night?

The Macky cookie. That is my husband’s handwriting. Quite scary that sometimes you can’t really tell our writing apart.

It may be scarier that it’s still snowing and we’re down to like, 5 cookies. I’m going to have to invest in some Pajama Jeans after this weekend. Thank God we finally got a snowblower!!!

Before we actually decorated inside this week, we decorated the outside of our house on Saturday. We actually planned out something simple for the porch a while ago, but never had the chance to put it out. We waited until it was brutally cold Saturday afternoon.

First I finally hung the outdoor wreath I made a few weeks back.

We also picked up two artificial trees for either side of the door.

We actually planned to use those trees at the bottom of our porch staircase, but I completely forgot that we had two pointy evergreen type trees there already.  So we strung those with white lights and put these artificial ones on either side of the door. Thankfully, my Christmas color scheme matched my spring/summer doormat so I just pulled that back out for the time being. The mess of wires was inevitable, we got the smallest sized extension cords they had. It was so cold out there that we tucked them in as best we could and ran back in! We added some pre-lit garland to the porch rails and wa-la!

There’s our simple little porch. I would have snapped more pictures and played with the camera settings a bit, but the neighbors came out and I got all embarrassed that I was standing on the lawn, taking pictures of my own house, with a giant camera.

And now our house is finally all set for Christmas!

This is my second turn at this tablescape game, since my first attempt was Thanksgiving. After my last run, I was inspired with so many new ideas.  I felt like there were a million things I could do, to the point where Mike told me to make up several options.  But I didn’t get a chance to finish up all of the crafts I had planned and when I set out to do this, I was stumped.  I had already put together our mantel, which was rather effortless, and I guess my creative juices were running dry.  It took a lot of rounds of changes, but I finally came up with something I was pleased with.

First, I bought this star shaped basket from Pier 1 a few weeks back.  I love using stars in my Christmas decorations, but I didn’t love the light color of the basket.

So I decided to spray paint it a darker brown.

I only did one coat so that some of the natural variation was still seen, then I put some ornaments in it.

I built my table area around this, using mostly candle type things to not take away from the pretty ornaments. Plus I didn’t want it to be too tall or too busy so that it can stay on the table as people eat, like our Thanksgiving tablescape did.

On each end, I used some star dishes I got from the dollar store and put a large green ornament in them to add some more green, since my Target runner is blue. I later saw these dishes at Pier 1 for $3. I’m not going to lie, I was hoping they were $10 so I could tell you I saved $9 on them, but I only saved $2.

Then I have the silver candle holders I used on my mantel (I replaced the mantel ones with wooden ones, Target was out of silver) and some in the same style that are blue.

One of those white candles on top is new and one is a few years old.  They are totally different colors of white when next to each other, but I think it’s interesting (and that’s what happens when you try to buy them 4 days before Christmas…)

Over on the buffet, I put my crooked coffee filer tree and some vases filled with ornaments and topped with sticks.

I’ve filled those vases with ornaments every year I’ve decorated for Christmas, but this year I wasn’t sure if I should put them on the mantel, table or buffet.  I tried them on the table, but I felt like with the star basket, I needed some shiny ornaments on this piece of furniture too!

All in all, I’m happy with how it turned out.  I gravitate towards the simple and clean and I think this conveys that better than my previous tablescape.

I’m thankful I have a large stash of neutral type candles that I can mix in when needed.  The round class tealight holders and the silver ornament candles definitely came in handy during my constant swapping!

Oh and there are some other new editions to the dining room this holiday season, but I will have to let Mike explain those to you. If I can get him to blog again..

ps- I just noticed that I didn’t actually put plates on the table this time.  I will be sure to snap some pictures when it’s all set for Christmas dinner!