Ta-da!

My dining room is DONE!  My husband sweetly indulged me when he got back from camping and found the rest of my fall decorating. 

This dining room is particularly challenging because it is so small.  We barely fit around the table.  And yes, I have a formal dining room I "could" use.  But it has carpet.  And I have I have kids.  I see what the tile looks like after meals.  I don't even want to imagine trying to keep carpet clean!

I'm loving how the shelves look.  You can't tell from this photo, but there are wrought iron roosters on the two end corners.  I'm thinking about putting some nice serving pieces that have wrought iron holders on the shelves to carry the wrought iron through  - plus they're that same cream color as the pitcher, so it should create an eclectic blend of pieces that layer to match.  An added bonus is I won't have to store them in the garage and can actually use them when I need them.  Novel concept I know.

In this photo you can see the other rooster.  Miranda and I found the first one at Hobby Lobby.  They had ONE.  I knew I would probably need another one, but because it's a national chain, I wasn't worried that because I was in Austin, I'd have a hard time finding a second one.  Ha.  It took me almost a month and a search of 5 different Hobby Lobby's before I found a second one (also of which they had just one left in stock) but he quickly became mine.  And the second one was 50% off, so quite the deal to boot!

I'm posting these photo's now with my fall decor out but in two very short weeks, all the fall colors and the rooster things will be replaced.  With nutcrackers.  I'm already picturing them nestled in poinsettia garland, with soft white twinkle lights.  My only hope is that I have enough room for all of them!  But that will be another post...

PS

The nutcracker plates?  I have the first set!!!  Two more sets to go...

The Kitchen

It's almost done!!  Last weekend Mike and spent all day Saturday painting the kitchen and the last wall in family room.  We bought some plywood to do shelves above the windows and my plan is to move a majority of nicknack's up.  I just don't like clutter, and since the last kitchen was so BIG, I had things to fill the space without it being cluttery.  In this microscopic kitchen, my space fillers are now clutter, ugh.  I found a beautiful stain for the wood (I'm just not into painted wood) and Mike finished staining the shelves last weekend too.  Nothing got put up though.  No shelves, no curtains, and not the wrought iron roosters I bought. 

This weekend he's been at Boy Scout camp with our two oldest boys, so nothing done yet this weekend either (aside from some cleaning, which is always needed in a large family....)  I'm still so amazed that taking the hideous grape border down made such a huge difference in the kitchen.  Mike and I both swear it makes the kitchen seem bigger...yes, it could be just wishful thinking on our parts, but I'm going with it!

My goal, when he gets home, is to get those shelves up and determine how we're going to do the curtains.  He doesn't think the way I'm envisioning it will work because my curtain things from Ikea will bow the shelves.  I'd like to think he's wrong, but on matters such as this, he's usually right (darn it!).  So, we'll have to play around with it to see what's going to work best. 

I'm just excited to have another room almost complete!  Picture to come - the camera is at Boy Scout camp too, lol.