'Tis the Season

It's starting to feel more like Christmas now that we have Holiday Decor and our tree up in our living room. I like to keep Holiday decor sweet and simple, a little can go a long way. For a few years we've been decorating our home with blues & silvers, next year I want to go crazy with the color! Crossing fingers I can find lots of pretty colorful ornaments on sale after the Holiday. Here's our home dressed for the Holidays.

{ Can you see my reflection in the bulbs? That's just me saying Hi! }

I wanted a little Holiday tree on top of our secretary desk, so I used a manzanita branch and spray painted it white placed it in a large round vase ( left our from our wedding) and wrap it in sliver ribbon. Then I hung ornaments on the branches (instant pretty).

A few years ago I made a white feather wreath for Christmas, this year I made a wreath twin and hung them from our bookcases. I opted to only decorate the top of the bookcases, again keeping it simple. 

A closer look. Ornaments placed in vases and just resting on top.

More ornaments placed a pretty bowl! To more ornaments look pretty on the tree and scattered around the house in vases, bowls on wreaths wherever! 

Finally our tree! I let Tabari decorate the tree this year, he had to much fun and didn't break one ornament, but I did! lol 

My favorite ornament of all time is the gingerbread ornament Tabari made in Kindergarten, it still smells good years later. He placed his letter 'T' ornament next to it. We started a tradition last of buying a special ornament each year, he decided on the 'T' and got an 'A' for Avery. I opted for the pretty white owl { sitting on our secretary desk } Hasani also got an owl a cute felted one for the tree. 

A tree is not complete without a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, { heroes in a half shell, turtle power} lol

Some beads and snowflakes dressed up our entryway. 

Most of our holiday decor is done, I need a few more coats of white on my Goodwill deer and plan on making a few ornaments I saw on Pinterest with the kiddos this week. I'll share when done. 

Have you finished all your Holiday decor? Any projects your still working on?

Under Foot

Do you remember my little shipping trip to West Elm on Black Friday where I bought two new circle dot pillows for our living room? Well I mentioned I we also purchased something else, and would share when our shipment arrived. Our package arrived late late Monday night, seriously late. Our UPS man must have been doing some serious overtime, because we got a knock at our door a little after 8pm, then heard a truck speed off. Yeah our UPS guy never hangs around to see if we even open our door, he jumps in his truck and floors it. Now back to what we bought from West Elm. Ever since we re-finished our original 1956 wood floors, we've been wanting find a rug to go in our living room, to warm it up a bit. I love how our wood floors look, and have been enjoying their natural beauty, but with a baby that's now 6mos old its important to offer a softer soft to play on, site on, roll over on and eventually crawl on. 


So while we were in there, I decided we must look at samples and see if anything will work for our space. I really wanted to show Hasani the Jute Dot rug, the same rug I've been lusting over for months. 

Lucky for us they finally had a rug sample in the store { I wanted to see it in person too } I showed Hasani the sample on the floor, they have light faux wood flooring in the store and he hated it. I was sad but not ready to give up on the Jute Dot Rug just yet. I placed the rug sample on top of a dark dresser to show him how the rug would look on our floors. Like me he's a very visual person, so giving me an example of our it relates to our house made him fall in love with the rug! 

West Elm had a sale going on purchases over one hundred were 10% off, we saved $ 17.90 on the rug. The rug cost $ 161.10 + tax + shipping, but I ended up saving an additional $ 61.52 on my purchase. How? Price Adjustment, baby :) On 12/8 my exact rug went on sale for 30% off the original price! West Elm has a 14 day price adjustment, I called their 800# and they promptly issued me a credit our $ 61.52, Yay!! We ended up paying $ 136.48 for a 5x8 hand made quality Jute rug! Oh how I love Store Price Adjustment Policies. Here's a pic of our rug-less living room from a few months ago before I moved the furniture around. 

I was a bit nervous when we rolled the rug, what if we didn't like it? Should we have gotten a larger rug? What if its too neutral? My nerves proved to be wrong, because we LOVE the rug. It brings so much warmth into our living room. I adore the various subtle shades woven into the rug, and love the hexagon shapes ( its no a dot dot rug) I also love the subtle zig zag pattern in the rug for certain angles. Here's our new rug and first rug for our house, I can't believe we've been rug-less for almost 3 years. Patience pays off, I guess.  

We've had a few family members stop by last week and they loved it to, its an instant pow! Without being to in your face, ya know. I find the texture under my bare feet to be comfy, then again we haven't had carpet in 3 years, so maybe its just personal preference. 

Avery also gave it his approval. 

I'm glad we went with more neutral style rug, because I'll be able to change up our living room color scheme whenever I want to. Right now I'm loving navy's, greens, and goldenrod yellow. Our pillows feel right at home with our new rug. and here's a better look at my new green pillows we got at West Elm on Black Friday . 

We also made some more changes in our living room.  When we first bought our sofa at Scandinavian Designs we opted for maple wood feet, well as you know most of our home has darker wood tones. So instead of buying new feet, we spray painted of sofa's feet with the left over Metallic Spray paint. I did the same thing to Avery's vintage ottoman when I get it an update over the Summer, the spray painted feet our holding up well. Our sofa's new feet color looks so good. We're still looking for a large mirror or artwork to go above the sofa. We recently hung our son's artwork above our newly painted secretary desk, so the wall's not completely empty.   

I'm so glad we bought this rug, only 3-4 more rugs to go in our house! 


What so you think of our new rug addition? Is there a rug you've been lusting at for your own home? does your UPS also do a 'hit and run' ? lol