Spooky Scary Halloween Planning

I've been in full Halloween Party planning mode for our sons upcoming Halloween Party. Hence, the lack of blog posts! I've already shared our Spooky Scary Entryway we decorated to welcome his guests, now I'm thinking about the menu and Spooky Scary decor for our dining room & front of our house and games. I guess this post is a mish mash of ideas.


I've gathered a slew of Halloween pictures from various sources over the last few months. I love love this spooky dining room, and would love to create a similar look in ours. I think this a perfect layout for a Halloween Party, a lot of spooky with out being to creepy to 10 year olds. 

I love this vignette, perfect ideas of our buffet in our dining room. 

Even though the table below is dressed more for Thanksgiving, The various size glasses covering the table look amazing. I've been storing our empty clear wine bottles in hopes of suing some for Halloween decor. 

I really need to find a large cloche to cover up books and trap a nasty spider! Icky 

Moving our to the outdoors, this weekend we'll be buying lots of pumpkins for the front our house and for a few on the inside. I love all the spooky crows greeting guests as they enter of home. I've stalked up on Crows like crazy this year, thanks to Dollar Tree. They are selling the same exact crows as Michaels for only a buck! Can't beat that price. 

Now that Halloween is only a few weeks away, have your started decorating? Are you planning on throwing a party this year?

Open Dining Room Storage

I've been thinking a lot about our dining room storage. In our dining room we have a simple white buffet that I refinished late last year. In our buffet I store numerous items: cake stands, platters, champagne glasses, wine glasses and desert plates. While I like that everything is tucked away, I really like open storage in a dining room. I guess its me inner Martha, liking dinnerware to be all pretty, but beyond the pretty is the ease of access to the dinner & glassware. Here's a reminder our how our current buffet looks, although it works fine for our needs. I would like to find a table that's a little longer which = more storage room.

For inspiration, I began my buffet table search at Pottery Barn by checking out their console tables aka sofa tables. I really like console tables that have a drawer and at least two shelves on bottom. I think two shelves would be esstenial in our dining room. On the top shelf I would keep wine bottles and wine glasses / champagne glasses. Since we have limited counter space in our kitchen, having wine bottles in the dining room would free up valuable space. On the bottom shelf I would have cake stands, cook books and vases. I really like the two console tables from Pottery Barn both classic looking { just the wrong color }

Although larger than want I want in our dining room, I love the look of this open storage.

{ via Apartment Therapy }

As you know I love projects and nothing beats finding a great deal, so I've been stalking Craigslist and trolling thrift stores in hopes of finding the perfect console table for our dining room. If I come across a credenza, that would also be a good thing, it would we longer and most likely have a middle door with shelves. I would remove the door and keep wine bottles inside there. Oh the possibilities! Now just need to find the right piece for our dining room on the cheap.

So what to do think about Open Storage vs. Closed storage in a dining room? What kind of storage does your dining room have? And why do I keep adding projects to my to do list.