Back in our condo, we had these lovely Pottery Barn crown molding ledges…

And I loved them.  We painted them to match our trim, they were 100% sturdy, easy to hang and looked great. Plus they were a place to keep breakable things away from Macky.  I can’t find the MLS pictures from the condo (they’re somewhere on a CD…), but I found some to share.

Shelves on Darwin’s first Christmas with us…

Shelves behind Mike and my best friend at one of our many parties…

They will both probably kill me for this, but this is how I can see if they actually read my blog 😉

So when we sold our condo, they were the one thing I really wanted to bring with us.  I envisioned them over my Ikea Stornas buffet in the dining room.  We didn’t have the buffet yet, but I wanted that thing for YEARS. We got an offer on the condo quickly given the market and it was a great offer.  Mike told me the news and then came the but……….they wanted the shelves written into the contract! My immediate reaction? No. At the time they were discontinued and I wasn’t sure we could find ledges of that quality anywhere.

I came to my senses and gave up the shelves. Here are some shots as we said goodbye to our shelves, the day we handed over the keys to the condo (iPhone quality)…

Of course I couldn’t be so lucky to find a single picture where the 3 of them fit in one shot!!

For months Mike and I considered making them, googled and came up with other solutions (hence the mirror over our buffet).  When suddenly, they were back! Pottery Barn had them again! So sometime in the summer, we went to Pottery Barn and picked up the same exact ones we had… a 2′, 3′ and 4′ ledge.

Flash forward to before Thanksgiving when Mike had a few days off.  One of the items on my Christmas To-Do List was to hang things we’ve already purchased, shelves included.  He nicely offered to hang the shelves while I was at work, but wanted to know where to put them.  In that moment, I walked into the dining room and had cold feet about our 2, 3 and 4 foot arrangement.  Over the past few months, I’ve seen my style change, which is a good thing.  I’m learning more, finding more sources and branching out.  I think this shelf arrangement has fallen prey to my evolution.

So here’s where I once again beg for your assistance, since you guys were so overwhelmingly wonderful with my area rug plea.  I think want to keep the crown molding ledge theme, since we have a lot of molding in the room and I think it would look nice, though these Rustic Wood shelves are fabulous…

Okay they both come in the same sizes, so how should I arrange them? Here are the approximate measurements…

I think I’m leaning towards two 4 foot ledges, so I have enough space in between them to put larger frames, taller vases, etc.  Plus I think it would look much cleaner than having multiple sizes.

How would you arrange them? And since I came up with a new question while writing this post, Crown Molding or Rustic Wood?

I hope I grow out of my indecisive phase soon… 🙂

This morning when I woke up, I noticed that our grass was completely covered in frost.  It was so pretty and sparkly that I just had to take some pictures before work.

Goodbye pretty landscaping, I’ll see you in the spring when I decide to come out of the house again. Because I plan on hiberating until April….

On Thanksgiving, my mom brought over this bottle of Luna Di Luna wine.

Yesterday I was about to put it in the recycling bin when I realized how pretty the blue bottle was.  I never thought of saving bottles since I’m not a big fan of the green ones, but I remembered Young House Love mentioning that they had previously done a post on removing labels.  So I hunted it down and found out that there was no miracle mixture, they just used hot water. I figured it was worth a shot!

Warning: I took more pictures than necessary, but I think that makes it more fun… like a picture book 🙂

FIrst I filled up our sink with hot, soapy water…

Then I threw the bottle in…

Added a little more water until it was submerged…

And then I waited… or maybe walked away and forgot about it for well over an hour…

When I took it out, it peeled off ridiculously easy.  And I was all ready to whip out the scrubby sponge…

The top piece was a little harder and I had to use some scissors…

Then tada! All clean!

I stuck it on our kitchen window for now, since I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with it, but it’s a pretty piece to work with.

This label came off so easily that I’m wondering if I should have tried to take it off before the soak? Hmmm.

Anyway, the result was great and now I have two criteria to use when buying wine….#1. pretty labels and #2. pretty colored bottles!

Our first Thanksgiving went off without a hitch.  My tablescape was threatened Wednesday night when the Macky Monster woke up and discovered what I had done….

Of course he went straight for the twigs, which was okay because a) they are fully organic and can’t hurt him and b) they were free.  If he chewed them off I’d just go pick some more!

But surprisingly, he investigated for a few minutes and then walked away, TABLE UNDAMAGED.  It was a Thanksgiving miracle! Even throughout the night, the table remained perfect.  This gives me hope for future decor…as long as I manage to set things up while he’s not around.  Once things are up he generally doesn’t care, but if you’re doing something and not paying attention to him? He will do his best to wreck your plans. Such a puppy.

Thanksgiving day was also our first snow while living here.  It did snow on the house once while it was being built, but that doesn’t count, right?

It started off as small flurries, so small that I thought I saw a single flake and told Mike, then I was like naaah, probably just something falling from a tree.  But then we started getting big flakes that were blowing about.

Here’s our kitchen in the midst of the Thanksgiving chaos, before dinner. Since we’re vegetarian and I really did not want to touch a turkey, my mom brought it.

Much to my delight, the centerpiece was not only pretty, but functional.  I kept it low enough that it managed to stay on the table all day, and is still there! Here’s the table right before we ate, made a little more functional with one of the table extensions in, placemats (to protect our solid wood, non-glossy Ikea table), napkins and utensils.  We put all of the food out on the island, buffet style, to save room.

And then I stopped taking pictures.  Until I sat down with my plate and thought MY GOSH THAT IS A LOT OF FOOD. This was taken with my iPhone, because nothing ruins a meal like getting up and being like wait, wait! I need to get my giant camera to take pictures for my blog!

Mixed in that plate there is… sweet potato casserole, stuffing, spaghetti squash, corn, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli and carrots au gratin. Yes I ate the gravy, it’s once a year and I can’t turn down my mom’s homemade gravy on my potatoes.  Not included in this picture is the cranberry sauce, appetizers or desserts.  Oh and the lasagna we ate before this meal.  I will never be able to button my pants again.

That being said, we have enough leftovers to last a lifetime. I realized this when I opened my fridge this morning.

We completely emptied our fridge before Thanksgiving, so all of those containers have leftovers in them.  We tapped into some of them tonight.

We will never go hungry again.

I hope all of you had a happy one!

Yesterday my family room was featured over at Kerry’s blog, First Time Fancy. I was dyiiiing to get on here yesterday to tell you all about it, but I was trying to be the hostess with the mostess.  Kerry holds a special place in my heart because she was quite possibly my first legit twitter follower waaay back when I started, a whole two months ago.  And now Kerry has hosted my first “guest blog”, so she has solidified her place as one of the sweetest bloggers around.  So thank you Kerry!

Cool things about Kerry… 1) she’s a design student …I’m jealous  2) she’s from Canada..I don’t know anyone from Canada! 3) she has a very cool blog with awesome features, such as dream homes and perfectly imperfect spaces, which is where I come in. No I don’t fall under the dream home feature, I fall under the perfectly imperfect feature.

Every Thursday, Kerry features a space that is not perfectly designed, but that is loved and functions as a space. When she introduced this feature, I just had to email her. So often when reading blogs and browsing photos, you assume the house is perfect.  Many people don’t realize that photos are cropped, objects pushed aside and rooms excluded just to appear “perfect”.  I loved the honesty behind Kerry’s concept and just had to show her this…

Those are my family room window treatments. I am not even embarrassed anymore.  You can read my entire post, complete with a bunch of non-cropped, full room views of my family room over at First Time Fancy!

ps- I’ll fill you in on how our first Thanksgiving went a little later 🙂