Colors of the Month: Blue and Green

Since our dining room is mainly blue, green and brown, I decided to try out blue and green in our great room as well this month.  I wanted to make both rooms flow together for our big holiday feast last weekend.  Even though blue and green are not traditional Thanksgiving colors, I challenged myself to make it feel like fall anyway.  Here is what I came up with:

We hung the sunburst mirror from this post.

And these antlers are sprayed gold (the same spray paint color as our front room sunburst mirror.) and are the antlers from Duke the first, our master bedroom deer that bit the dust.

This entry table turned desk is new to our great room.  We are enjoying it in this new location as it makes a great blogging station for me while keeping an eye on my kiddos at play.  We simply pull over a dining room chair when we're using it, and we're good to go!

Here is my paint chip art and my new wreath.

I don't know why the factory cart looks so yellow in this picture.  It's not in real life:).

So there you have it!  A blue and green great room for November.  I'm so ready to make some changes for December now.  Bring on Christmas!!

I've Got Forest Friends in High Places

Over turkey day weekend, our two tallest house guests brought us some wonderful goods from the forests they've been spending time in.

My 6'6" Dad brought us this wonderful stump:

I have plans to strip the bark and put many coats of polyurethane on it, eventually turning it into a side table.


And my 6'4'' brother-in-law brought us all these Christmas decorating goodies:

Our Christmas Tree

Birch trees which I got to chain saw into 18 inch pieces for decorating and stacking:).  Chain saw=tons of fun!

Longer birch tree pieces and red berry branches which I'll use in our planters, along with:

Pine boughs and:

Birch bark pieces.

Along with this $5 garland we picked up at Home Depot on Black Friday, we're almost set for our outdoor decorating (We still need a wreath for our front door.  We usually place an order with the local boy scouts for our front door wreath, although last year we picked up a beautiful boxwood wreath from Home Depot and I'm tempted to do that again.)

I'm telling you...it's good to have forest friends in high places!  Thanks guys!

P.S.  Why is it always so hard to get one decent picture for Christmas cards?

One Unhappy Elf Boy.

Don't worry...we did get some good pictures:

Gift Idea: Golden Pears (and Apples too!)

I hope everyone had a wonderful, long Thanksgiving weekend!  We greatly enjoyed our family time and are sad that it flew by so quickly!  We enjoyed so much fantastic food...we are still warming up leftovers!  And we certainly did our fair share of late night holiday shopping.  That's right.  We were in line at Target at 10:30pm Thanksgiving night.  Bill, Kiki and I had a blast in the balmy (for Minnesota in November) 50 degree weather waiting for the doors to open so we could fly down the aisles.  And, it's true, Target was actually our second stop of the night.  We stopped at Walmart shortly after it's 10pm opening and nearly lost our lives at the bargain DVD bins.  I did not get the DVD's I really wanted, but I got a few others and I'm alive to tell the tale, so that's good.

Since I have holiday shopping on the mind, I thought I would post today about a great, inexpensive gift idea.  While at Pier 1 a couple weeks ago, I came across these adorable ceramic golden pears:

They are priced at $3 each...and I had a 15% off coupon that I used to drop the price to $2.55 each.  I wish I had images of the apples, but I'm not able to find them on the Pier 1 website currently.  (If I'm able to find the link, I'll add it to this post.)  I can't help but think these would be an adorable teacher's gift, especially the golden apple!  I can just picture it sitting on a teacher's desk:).  And seriously, you cannot beat the $3 price tag!

Update:  Here is the link for the pears and apples at Pier1.

Happy Shopping!  Other recent gift ideas are posted here, here and here.

Bad News, Good News, Let's Give Thanks!

The bad news is first.  I didn't finish what I wanted to finish by Thanksgiving Day.  I had big plans to 'finish' our dining room by the time we served our feast of a meal to our family on Turkey Day, but I still have one big task to complete that involves lots of measuring and some paint.  I was hoping to post about it today, but since a few things came up that required our attention instead, my last dining room post (or two:)) for awhile will have to wait.

The good news is that our basement window treatments surprised us yesterday (half of them anyway), and Bill worked hard to get them installed last night (Thank you!!).  It's exciting, because we no longer have the makeshift shower curtain window treatment in our guest room anymore...yeah!!  Pictures will come in the near future:).

Finally, Happy Thanksgiving!!  I hope you have an enjoyable and relaxing long weekend!  We are going to have a blast with family, good food and some Midnight Black Friday shopping too:).

I'll leave you with one more turkey day project I'm working on that involves these wishbone charms that I purchased on Etsy recently for 50 cents/charm:

 And these clearance napkins that I purchased to stage our old house and never opened:). $1.74 for 4 napkins x 2 packs.

 Also, I used the bottom of an old cup to trace a circle on black construction paper:

The little white nubby thing is a tiny piece of chalk:).

Put everything together, and what do you get?

A wishbone charm napkin place card holder:)!  I just love the wishbone charms.  I think they would look darling on a necklace or bracelet.  Wishbones remind me of Thanksgiving and family and good luck!

Bring on the yummy food:)!

Getting Guest Ready: Sunburst Style

Back in April, I introduced our basement guest room in this post.  Not much has changed in this space, except for a little furniture rearranging in one corner and one big wall addition.

For a quick refresher, here is our guest room:

This is the view as you walk in the room.

Here is the view of the wall you see while on the bed:

Nothing too special was going on here.  

With the help of Janell's sunburst mirror tutorial (Isabella and Max Rooms), a couple bundles of sticks (one was from my mom when she sold her house last year and one was a Target clearance bundle for under $2), a $2.48 Target clearance mirror, some spray paint and my hot glue gun, here is what I ended up making:

I wish I had more before and during pictures of the project, but if you guessed that I lost them in the great photo card tragedy of 2011, you were right.  So here are some more after shots:

It was really an easy project, but it was a bit time consuming.  I'm not sure the mirror will stay white for long, I'm thinking a nice grey may look nicer in the space against the yellow walls, but for now, it works!

Project Cost

Mirror $2.48

Sticks $1.48

Spray Paint $3.24 (Primer on hand already)

Total Cost: $7.20

General Ideas to Get A Spare Bedroom Guest Ready

And while I was in the guest room yesterday getting the room ready for my parents, I thought it would be nice to do a quick post about what I like to do to make sure guests are comfortable while staying in my home!  Here's the run down:

1. Write a welcome note:

This may seem a little silly, but I love doing it!  I think it sets the tone for a nice visit, and lets people know that you really want them to be comfortable and enjoy their stay!

2. Leave water and a few snacks:).  Our guest room is in the basement, and since we don't have a bar area set up on that level currently, I like leaving a few snacks and some water.

3. Magazines/Books

I know I love reading a bit before bed, and it's easy to forget night time reading material when you travel, so I like to leave a few magazines in our guest room.

4. Lots of Towels

We have towels out on a bench at the end of the bed, in the bathroom and spare towels in the closet as well.

5. Closet

Our guest room closet has two sides.  One side is not camera ready.  It's full to the brim with our suitcases, camping gear, etc.  The other side is all about our guests.  There is hanging space for clothing and a shoe rack.  

There are spare sheets, towels, blankets and pillows.

There are also spare toiletries in a bowl, as well.

6. TV and Computer Access

In this corner of the room, we've moved our sun porch television in for the winter.  An in room TV is always a nice bonus in a guest space.  We also have a computer station for our kids and guests that is set up in our basement.

Other general ideas include having an area for guest suitcase storage (think a dresser top, a bench or a suitcase rack) and also a nice mirror (bigger than my sunburst mirror ideally) so that a guest can get 'ready' in their room if they so choose.

One area of our guest room that I would have really liked to address before our holiday guests arrive is this:

...our curtain is still the make shift shower curtain that we have had up for about a year:(.  The good news is we've decided on and ordered permanent window treatments for the entire basement, including this room.  The bad news is that they won't arrive until later in the week, which means they won't be installed before Wednesday.  Sometimes progress is slower than we'd like...but we'll get it done nonetheless!  

Window treatments aside, here's hoping Oma and Opa enjoy their room for the long weekend!

Linking up to Finding Fabulous.

Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick.