Welcome to Day 2!

I'm so glad to have you guys back for Day 2 of the tour. I'm excited about today's feature room, because it's had the most work done to it by far. It doesn't look like it, but in the 18 months we've lived here the room has been painted twice, and the dear sweet hubs let me. :)  I also remembered that Picasa has a collage feature. So there will be the same amount of pictures, but a lot of them will be in one picture. :) So hopefully that will save on loading time. :)

Let me introduce the Dining Room!

This year the kid's tree was moved into this room so that more people could see it. Last year we had it front and center on the upstairs balcony, but none of our guests really ever 'saw' it. I also brought it down because its the only tree that has really bright pops of color and the dining room is really the best room for those pops.

 I forgot to mention yesterday that I have a thing for lights. I like white lights, but you'll notice this tree has colored lights. This bothers me, but it makes the boys happy. I'm happy when the boys are happy, so we all win. Kind of. The tree is dark. The colored lights are not very bright at all. It doesn't help that this tree only has 300. You will see why I say 'only'. The living room tree has 600 lights and its still not even bright enough, but its not bad either. Oh well.

Ornaments -  1 & 2 are stocking that Dev told me how to paint last year. We usually try to put some sweet in them for the boys on Christmas morning. 3 & 4 are pom-pom reindeer that Dev made last year. They're too darn cute. 5 is a styrafoam ball covered in sparkly pom-poms that we made last year. 6 is the alphabet ornaments that we made a few weeks ago. 7 is a foam ornament that Dev made last year. We used these ornaments as favors for Christmas Eve dinner. We made an ornament for each of our guests last year and then we used them as placec cards and everyone took theirs home as a memento. :) 8 is one of my favorite ornaments. It reminds me of what this tree is supposed to be about. 

This tree has a lot of fond memories for me, because Dev and I made quite a few of the ornaments. Its been so nice to share my Christmas enthusiasm with him, and now he shares in all the glory. He sits back and tells me to get it done. Now. He's going to be a terrific manager/slave driver when he's older. :)

Not only did Dev help me with a lot of the ornaments, but he also picked  each and every fabric in the tree skirt. it was my first quilted project and I would not recommend it for a first-timer. To hide some of my {ahem} mistakes I asked my mom to embroider up some canvas and felt gingerbread men and then I added the jewels on top of every small pink square. I love this tree skirt, but its humongous! So the 12" box that Steve made really help eat up some of its volume. :)

I've had quite a few conversations lately with my girlfriends about Christmas ornaments and little hands. You might notice that I'm constantly followed by a small fry, and this small fry loves to grab things and bring those 'gifts' to Mommy or Daddy. Since the trees went up, he's been trying to 'gift' the glass ornaments to us. Well thats no good. So I try to keep several 'child' friendly ornaments that I don't mind them playing with. For the kids tree...meet the inflatable penguin. :) He's a savior, because any time H gets the inkling to take anything off  the kid's tree the penguin distracts him and he totes him all over the house instead of the ornaments on it. :) Score 1 for Mom! :)

The center piece for the table is simple in design. Until you try to make some faux mercury glass on a trio of candle holders that don't want to be, but I fought them and I think I won. :) The greenery is some fresh cedar and it smells wonderful! The ornaments are a couple of plastic ornaments from Target a few years back.

Here's my red table all decked out for Christmas. The apothecary jars are the ones that are usually in the family room and I just filled them with matching glass miniature ornaments. The porcelain house was a gift from the hubs grandparents. Its a little large for the village we have on the buffet, but its such a pretty piece that I had to put it out.

Growing up we never had a Christmas village, and I never thought I'd want one. I thought they were silly, but then my mother-in-law got us the Santa Clause piece and it just grew from there. The buffet is the perfect place for the village, even tho it has been moved around from year to year. H has not even noticed all of the trees he could be playing with.

Well I hope you guys have enjoyed the tour today. The dining room is one of my favorite rooms, and tomorrow I will show you guys the crown jewel of our decked out house! I'm so excited about this!

See you tomorrow!


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