I’m not one who really gets into Christmas every year. I’m not a fan of red and green and lots of Santas, and I really don’t even like Christmas songs, (I know, I’m a horrible human being), but this year I was bored and about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving (!) I put up all our holiday decorations.

Target really killed it this year with all the metallic holiday décor, and adding in some of their hanging stars brought my own metallic game up a notch.


We’ll start in the dining room, which I think is my favorite decorated room in the house. I added some of the stars to the windows, basically because I bought them before I knew what I was going to do with them and it’s really the only place I could figure out how to hang them!

You can see the start of our holiday card collection along the window. I also added some fabric I’m going to use to make a pillow for the living room on the table, for the interim because I like it so much!


We used our older small tree that we bought while we were working on the kitchen. There was too much going on to fully decorate that year, but I had to have at least a tree – even if it is just a small one. I moved the plant that usually sits there to the living room and the lights gets plugged into a timer behind the curtain for a cute little nightlight every evening.

 
I added more stars in the living room, and from this view it doesn’t even look like Christmas decorations. I wonder if Mike will notice they don’t come down after the holidays are over, shhh!


I made some garland using wooden beads and simple cocktail straw geometric shapes. I think it needs more substance, so maybe next year I’ll add some greenery garland as well.


They were really easy to make, and I like to do some mindless crafting in front of the TV just to keep busy every once in a while.



Our front door got an old wreath passed down from my mom before they moved to Florida. We have enough to put one on every window, and while I love the look, I hate the scratchy noise when the wind blows, especially when I’m home alone!

I bought some black and white striped ribbon and made a quick bow to replace the red plastic ribbon that clashed with our door color.


Our fauxdenza got a little tree action as well.


This was the same set-up we had last year, but I never posted about it. I was able to get the same copper/gold ornaments and star set from Target for a few bucks right after Christmas when everything goes on sale, so I was able to fill it up more. Last year they didn’t have cute little tree skirts for these mini trees like they do now, so I grabbed a placemat and cut a hole in the center. The antlers are usually on the fauxdenza but it matched the little tree so I set in underneath for a second and I forgot to move it!


The lights are little LED with a battery pack which I placed underneath the placemat/tree skirt.

Our "real" tree, aka the one where the presents go, is in the family room in the basement. When we added the fauxdenza upstairs, it no longer fit in the space and we realized it would work better in the basement because we have more seating down there anyways.


We ended up getting a new LED pre-lit tree from Target, because we were tired of fixing the broken lights, every freaking year. At 7ft tall, it barely fits and doesn’t leave room for a star or topper, but I don’t care because I’m so excited to not have to deal with the lights anymore.


To make up for it I bought a bunch of the smaller paper stars from Target (I swear this isn’t sponsored I just shop there – often!). We haven’t wrapped any presents yet, I bought most of them this week so they should be arriving soon. Our mailman is going to get a big present this year getting all of our online orders to us!

We kept up our ornament tradition from a local artist, and this year we bought a eagle (we think it's actually a dove, but we're stretching here) to commemorate all our traveling we did this year.  They're getting harder and harder to find something with a direct symbolizism so we're working with what we had to choose from!

  
Our stockings get “hung on the fauxdenza with care”, which I’ve never shown the one down here before. I need to photograph this room once the decorations come down to update the home tour tab.


We keep the decorations pretty basic around here. Mike always hates the idea of decorating for the holidays, but as soon as they go up he comments that he appreciates that I get into it because he does like them and it gets us into the holiday spirit. Maybe I’ll even light some pine smelling candle or something and listen to some Christmas music on the 25th!

I mentioned last week that we stained the deck.

This has been a very difficult process since thanks to the time change we only have about an hour, at most, of daylight every evening. Last weekend we moved everything off the deck, and power washed it. Which, we’ve decided needs to be done every spring, because it was beyond gross. I actually fell one day off the top steps because it was rainy that day and I stepped onto a dirtier area that had become super slick. Not again folks.

After cleaning, we waited for the weekend to get our stain on. Last time we did it on a weeknight and we were out there in the dark until 10:30pm. We learned our lesson. Mike picked the color last time and he picked Warm Golden Honey, which I’ll admit was not my favorite. It definitely faded a lot after this photo, but it was always a little too orange for my taste:

So, this time I wanted to go with a dark color, Sherwin Williams Charwood (SW3542):

Via

We bought 6 gallons (the amount we used last time – thanks past Mallory for writing that note in the blog!) and went to work on Sunday.  When we started the stain looked really gray.  Like, light blue gray, but we had hours of work ahead of us, so I just assumed that as it dried it would (I don’t know, magically?) turn dark brown.  We used 2 gallons up when Mike opened the third and we realized the problem.  The 3rd gallon was the gorgeous brown you see up there, while the 2 we used were tinted Charwood using a weathered gray base.  What are the chances that we pick the 2 out of 6 that are mistinted to start with? 

We had all ready done a third of the deck at this point so our only solution was to return to Sherwin Williams and exchange all of our Charwood for the weathered gray color. 

Instead of my awesome dark brown deck, we have a giant light gray, almost blue one.  Womp, womp.

The more I think about it, the more bummed I get.  I told Mike while we were staining – as a sick joke – that the only good thing about having to stain every couple of years is that I’ll get my Charwood deck in 2-3 years when we have to redo this horrible process again!

I guess if we weren’t so pressed for time (no more staining in November!) to get this project completed, we would have opened more cans to see if they were all gray, taken the 3 seconds to see the bases were labeled differently, or freakin’ tested it on a piece of scrap wood!  Coulda shoulda woulda. 

The next 5-6 months the deck will probably be covered in snow, so we’ll see how I feel once spring time rolls around.  Hopefully the warm weather will make me forget about this feeling and I’ll get excited again about decorating the deck. 

I recently received a comment on our porch reveal asking what our deck looks like.  I admit I’ve been bad about sharing the updates back there.  Back in the day, I outlined the “zones” I wanted to create, and I’m happy to report not much has changed and we even purchased all the large items we didn’t have.  You may have noticed these in the drone flyover post.

And, my original “zone” plan:

We bought a dining set as well as a sectional and a coffee table.  Both are from Target.  The dining set is the Threshold Holden 6-Piece Metal/Wicker Rectangular Patio Dining Furniture Set.  We also bought a navy blue umbrella and granite base (seen here, but no longer available on the website).

The sectional is the Threshold Heatherstone Wicker set with 5 sections with a faux stone coffee table (similar to this set).

Since the weather is crappy more often than not, I don’t leave any of the cushions out full time.  So, instead of the “food set-up zone” I imagined, we opted for a storage container.  It’s fine because we actually have larger parties than the deck alone could handle, so our food tables are set-up down in the driveway with the eating areas.  With all the sectional cushions, dining chair cushions and extra pillows, the storage container alone couldn’t hold everything so we also picked up the Ikea TOSTERÖ for $20 and it’s held up surprisingly really well.  I leave it on top of the storage bin during the nice weather months and then we toss it in the attic of the garage during winter. 

I still plan to add string lights, which we already own from our wedding reception, but Mike and I have to build some supports, which I plan to make semi-permanent so that we’re more likely to use the lights if the supports are always there!  Since we’re 5 minutes away from snow here, this will be a project for next spring. 

But, before the snow hits (and with the freaky 75 degree weather we’re experiencing right now), we wanted to re-stain the deck.  We finished most of it yesterday, but we still have touch-ups and a few sections along the sides to complete, but I’ll be back later to share.  We had a huge hiccup happen, (one word: mistint), and I’m still not sure how I feel about it now.  Hopefully later this week we can add the furniture back on and feel a little better!