Whoa there, 2013! I hope you guys had a great holiday week! Because we were so chaotic just trying to get ready for Christmas, I majorly failed at posting anything Christmas related. But it’s only January 2nd, right? Better late than never?? Maybe?

Since I changed up our Christmas decor this year, I couldn’t just skip over it like it didn’t happen. I planned to start decorating early (and did). I also planned to do a less is more approach (which I did). Even with all of that, I still didn’t do everything I wanted to. But that’s okay, no one noticed that I never DIYed that new wreath for the front door.

Anyway, I started by wanting some felted wool garland and at first I was going to make it. After a day I realized I was insane and I would just buy some felted balls and string them myself. After another day I realized that was also a bad idea with all I had on my plate so I just bought some. I had a Land of Nod gift card from last Christmas (I’m a serious gift card hoarder), plus I caught a sale and got free shipping. In the end I ordered 3 strands of goody gumball garland in red, green and white for about $20. I originally wanted to do a mix of fun colors for Easton’s first Christmas, but then I changed my mind and went traditional.

I first hung a strand on the mantel (right after Thanksgiving, this decorating thing literally took me a month to nail down), then everything just kind of evolved.

The second strand of garland went on the entertainment center, after realizing that I didn’t have enough to decorate the tree. I put my white spray painted deer bookends up here and planned to add some ribbon or something to make them more festive, but never got around to it.

I bought some red pillows at Target to stick on the couch. They ended up being one of my favorite parts.

The red stockings are new this year and from Target. I replaced Easton’s newborn pictures with some Christmas pictures we took for our Christmas card. I already told you guys about the chalkboard that’s on the mantel.

The two small trees are from Target about 2 years ago and the large tree on the floor I got from West Elm last year on super clearance (I think it was $7).

My other favorite part this year is our stockings. I was going to make some chalkboard tags or something until I found these pins at Target.

Mike and I had stocking pins since our first stockings and I just love them. They’re so clean and minimalist, thankfully we all have different first initials. Oh and the “M” and “D” are mommy and daddy, that one confused a lot of friends and family.

Since I didn’t buy these ones the week after Christmas when I usually buy my new decorations, I didn’t have to buy a “W’ and flip it upside down to make a “M” like I did last time 🙂

If the memory card our Christmas pictures are sitting on will cooperate, I can show you the outtakes and behind the scenes shots from our Christmas card. We took some of the additional shots we loved and placed them in the frames that were holding some of Easton’s newborn pics.

One of my ideas I never got around to was to cover these mats with wrapping paper to add some more color to the mantel. In the end I think I like them without it.

I also updated our chalkboard for Christmas Eve (which we hosted). I seriously love this thing. It takes me 10 minutes each time and it’s so much fun for me.

The tree this year was something I was just winging, but I love how the color scheme worked out.

I used the dark blue/gray ornaments from about 5 years ago only because I wanted to use our old tree topper and skirt. I’m usually not one to change up Christmas decorations too much since you use them for only a few weeks a year. I mostly repeat color schemes and just move things around. Last year I used a combo of the dark blue/gray, green, silver and aqua, which I loved. After Christmas last year, I picked up the red snowflake ornaments, which were 25 cents for 4. They jump started this whole red revolution (redvolution? too far?).

Since the playroom is in the entryway and it is now the room we spend the most time in, I decided to take the last strand of garland and hang it over the door. I loved it right away.

Easton had a great first Christmas and I’ll have to share some of his pictures in another post. He was a pro at opening gifts after 3 days of celebrations.

I hope you all had a great last week of December, full of naps and good food!

ps- Dear god why am I up past midnight??

I’m back! Can I tell you it’s been a hectic and crazy week? To top it off, I worked until 8 tonight and our family room tv just died. I had such big plans of relaxing tomorrow night and catching up on all of the How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family and Jersey Shore that I missed this week. RIP Plasma, you were our first major purchase back in 2005 and you will be sorely missed. Especially by me. Especially this weekend. Because really, who wants to drop all of that cash on a new tv unexpectedly?? Not me.

Anywho, while we’re on the topic of the family room, I came across the coolest idea ever on Pinterest a few weeks ago. Remember our fireplace?

We originally wanted a chunkier, more dramatic fireplace surround that the builder offered, but it was too wide for our floor plan. Since then we’ve been trying to come up with ways to make it a little less generic builder looking. We added the tile to it (the same tile from our kitchen back splash) and we plan to paint the slate, metal and gold hardware one of these days.

Going back a few months ago, I spotted another image on Pinterest that got the hamster in my head running on his wheel. Why don’t we add some molding above the fireplace!

(via Design*Sponge found on Pinterest)

I liked it, but the arch just isn’t us. I liked the idea of it much more (plus the curtains and the rug). Plus the layout is identical to ours. So I searched a bit and found one much more my style, enter contender numero dos.

(via Bethany Christensen Design found on Pinterest)

I love the squareness of it and that chunkiness we’ve been aiming for. But, the style of this mantel is completely different than ours. We have that funny dental molding and our opening is framed out with a thinner molding. I wasn’t sure if this would translate well for us, so I pinned it and went about my life.

Then recently this showed up in my Pinterest feed…

(via 6th Street Design School found on Pinterest)

Not only does the fireplace itself (at least the mantel part) look like ours, but the whole getup looks like ours. When I first showed Mike from a distance, he thought I had worked some photo shop magic. The best part of this one (besides that I can totally get how ours would look like), is that it is probably the easiest to do out of the 3. Those straight pieces of wood? No ridiculously raised part that would eat my mantel? The fact that my mirror would work with it? Love it.

Admittedly, the only thing I’m missing is a nice chunk of crown molding at the top to mirror the mantel. But I guess that’s a tweak we could add on our own. You know, whenever we get around to finishing the other molding projects we’ve started around here 🙂

Now I’m off to stare at a dead tv… 🙁

Confession: Remember that coffee filter wreath I made back in December? Well as of today, it was still hanging above my mantel…

It wasn’t still there because I’m one of those lazy people who leave Christmas around for months, since all of the Christmas stuff was packed away the first week in January. We just didn’t have anything to hang above the fireplace and I figured why not keep it around! Plenty of people use their coffee filter wreaths year round and I thought it made a decent placeholder. But I was getting sick of looking at it’s awkward, disproportionate-ness.

This area remained naked because of our constant flip-flopping on what to put up there. First I planned to reuse a rectangular mirror from our condo, but when we held it up over the mantel, it didn’t look right. Too small, too square, just not right. At that point we considering adding a round mirror but we thought since we have a ceiling fan in the family room, maybe a mirror wasn’t the right choice. Even though we have a pretty ceiling fan (if one exists), we didn’t necessarily want to see it’s reflection.

By the way, that fan has never made it to this blog. We got it on eBay for less than $100 and all proceeds went to a children’s charity. Pretty cool right?

Anyway, at that point we decided to hang some pictures from our Hawaiian honeymoon over the mantel. We just never got around to choosing 4 to hang, then we decided to do an entire entryway gallery and thought we might be overkilling the photo arrangments in the house. Back to square one it was!

While searching for an entryway mirror, we stumbled upon a large, dark, round, chunky mirror at Lowe’s that I loved. Problem was that it was too big for the entryway. I was fortunate enough to find a smaller, yet similar mirror at Target for the entryway, but I decided I wanted the Lowe’s one too. For over the mantel 🙂

We picked it up a few weeks ago and never got around to hanging it. Tonight was extremely stormy and we decided to take advantage of the rainy evening.

When we opened the box, the mirror had a few little blemishes.

We could have marched back to Lowe’s and demanded a new one, but that would have required time and energy. Plus, those little marks were nothing a Sharpie couldn’t fix!

We took turns filling in and wiping excess marker while it was still wet. We’re all about gender equality 🙂

Meanwhile, Macky looked on and admired his mug in our new mirror.

This one is his bridal portrait, because it makes his neck look skinny…He needs a veil.

The command strip we used to hang the wreath peeled the drywall off the wall. I have honestly never removed one of those things without issues. I wanted to hang the new mirror on the low end and we were worried that the spot would show. Thankfully, we could cover it and still hang the mirror where I wanted it.

I love the way it worked out, now we just need to hang those curtains we bought 6 months ago…

(the coloring in this picture is yellowy due to the setting sun and the recessed lights on in the room :()

I even purposely took a picture where you can see the fan’s reflection, which was only when I was sitting on the floor. Most of the time you see the kitchen cabinets.

Not a single imperfection can be seen 🙂

While I was futzing around with the mirror, I figured I’d put some accessories on the mantel. Sadly, I never really “styled” anything on our entertainment center or mantel. I’ve slowly been accumulating things and just sticking them wherever. The books, well, Mike was supposed to post about them a while ago, but we bought most of them for $1 off of Amazon. They’re used hardcover books with the jackets removed. These were totally Mike’s idea since he liked the way Crate & Barrel staged our entertainment center in the store and he wanted to create it himself. He’s a keeper. I moved some books and other things from the entertainment center to the mantel.

Note to self: Remove sticker from back of that book.

I thought I had a lot of accessories, but I apparently don’t since now my entertainment center is nakey. I asked Mike to order some more used books to replenish my stash. Maybe now I can get him to write that post on decorating with books? 🙂