More Holiday Decorations

Ok- so you've already seen a lot of decorations in our house. As I mentioned- I tried to put something festive in every room and got pretty close. So maybe you thought that I was done. [Sidenote, for additional context, you should know that it's been a really busy time at work for me- I'm working really long hours and through the weekends on high-profile, high-stress, quick-moving stuff. Plus, we have the usual holiday stress of trying to find gifts for everyone, get them mailed and wrapped, and find time and make arrangements to get together with our families. I'm pretty much your standard over-caffeinated, sleep-deprived, stressed out person.]  You might think that this would be a good time to just lower expectations, take a step back and chill out a bit. But you would be wrong. I say, let's raise those expectations and stress levels. You can call me "Captain Bright Idea".

So, the fireplace wasn't doing it for me. I went a little nuts over at Crate and Barrel and bought a bunch of hurricanes and candle-holding things to up the sparkle-factor.

 Fireplace mantel with extra bling.

I also got new placemats while I was there, but discovered they were out of the matching napkins.

 

Table with new placemats but no napkins.

In search of napkins, I turned to my favorite online fabric store and started looking around. I quickly got distracted and forgot about the napkins, but found lots of other fun festive fabrics. I thought for a bit about how to make a tree skirt, and came up with this:

Among other fabric I bought, I got crushed red velvet- (Santa in a leisure suit), and some basic white cotton for the tree skirt. It mostly worked as I envisioned above, but I had a hard time keeping the two pieces of fabric aligned as I sewed. This meant that my circles got slightly smaller and less circular as I went. It also meant that the fabric didn't lay perfectly flat. Turns out none of those are very important though. Total project took about 2 hours.

My new tree mini skirt.

I started noticing that our living room wall art (which is mostly blue), was clashing with the tree (which is red and silver). I stole some frames from upstairs, and put up anything red I already had, and a few scraps of wrapping paper. One morning I grabbed some red ornaments and put them on white fabric scraps, snapped a few pics, and printed the best one.

Festive wall art.

Along with the wall art switcheroo, I thought I should change the throw pillows on the couch (also blue). [For the record, I think this is the point where I officially went overboard.] I didn't want to spend money on new pillow covers, which would be expensive. Instead, I thought it would be brilliant to make holiday pillow covers, like envelopes, for the existing pillows to slide into. Thankfully, the fabric I ordered for this purpose didn't arrive in time, so this project will be delayed until next year.

And, if you were wondering - the little guy is still around. He's awfully cute and possibly named Max. He loves the tree and often climbs it. He loves to chew on the lights and the beads in the tree. I sweep up at least a cup of needles every day.

trouble.

Happy Holidays!