Christmas and a Little DIY

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas! I had a great time celebrating the holiday with my family. On Christmas Eve, we had my side of the family come over for dinner and to exchange presents. It's always such a fun night with lots of food and drinks. I never got around to the silver and gold tablescape I had planned on, but I didn't stress about it until I realized the only tablecloth I had left was my orange one from Thanksgiving. That wasn't going to work! I ran up to Target and found a silver and gold one on clearance for under $9. I was absolutely thrilled. I had nothing else to go with it so I started pulling all sorts of decor from other parts of the house. Here's the result!










I was able to reuse the napkins and runner from Thanksgiving since they're gold. I grabbed the mercury glass candleholders from the mantel and you couldn't even notice they were missing because of the obscene amount of decor I had piled on there. The glass hurricanes had colored ornaments in them so I replaced those with pinecone vase filler from the family room and poured sugar on top to fit the theme. My family thought this was a brilliant idea, but for those that are pinterest followers you're probably nodding your head and thinking that's what you would have done, too. The huge snowflakes are from the Christmas tree and since those weren't obviously missing from the tree I left them on the centerpiece all through Christmas. It's still hard to believe that I pulled this off in about 10-15 minutes!

I have to say my Holiday Gift Guide: For Her post was a great way to let people know what I wanted for Christmas! I was pleasantly surprised to find a few of those items under the tree for me. Maybe I should do a "What to Get For Her Birthday Gift Guide" when my birthday rolls around?

Here's the Anthropologie apron I thought was so adorable that I got from my brother and his girlfriend.



My husband surprised me with the Kindle Paperwhite I wanted even though I had already picked up that ZGallerie fur throw that was on my list for him to give me (because I'm helpful like that). I was a very happy girl this year! I'm sure my husband is happy now that he can go to sleep with the light off while I'm reading from my new kindle, too.

The only member of our family that was not happy on Christmas Eve was our new puppy, Mario. I bought him the cutest little Santa sweater, but he was not thrilled to say the least. He immediately became flat as a pancake and thought he couldn't move with it on. He stayed like this until we took it off. Don't worry, it only took him seconds to recover from his "pancake syndrome."




And, I have to share my good deal with you. I got these champagne flutes at Ikea a couple of weeks ago and they were on sale, two for $5. I don't know if they still have them, but they would be perfect for New Year's Eve. They remind me of the Kate Spade ones that are much more than $2.50 each.



One thing I love about Christmas Eve is that it's the only night of the year my kids will go to bed without argument since Santa doesn't bring kids presents until they go to sleep. My four year old son climbed right in his bed without us even telling him. That NEVER happens. Of course, that means they were up bright and early the next day to see what Santa brought them while Mom and Dad were exhausted from a long night up.



See that carpet? It is being ripped up as I type. I can't wait to show you our DIY staircase redo. The top half is already done and ready to be painted.

Then, the kids finally got to open their presents after waiting what they think is forever!







They couldn't wait to show Mario his first Christmas present ever!



Then, we started the procession to other relative's homes to open more presents and eat even more food! It was great. My wallet is lighter and my waistband is tighter. Well, maybe that part isn't so great, but we'll recover because we really don't go overboard with presents and I try to indulge only on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We have more important things to do with all those dollars, like installing new wood on our stairs!



How crazy are we to start this the day before Christmas Eve? Oh, well. DIYers don't stop for Christmas, right?







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