there's no place like home for the holidays

it always feel like the holiday season goes by way too fast, doesn't it? even though we put up our christmas decorations before thanksgiving (yes, we were those people!), it still feels like it is too soon to put it all away.

it was nice having so much space to decorate this year in our new house. that said, it was important to me to keep everything tasteful, since it is so easy to go overboard, buddy the elf-style.

our living room and dining room were first on our list to decorate. the floating shelf in our dining room is one of my favorite places because it has lots of room to mix holiday with everyday. i started with my colorful twig tree from stumble & relish and built around that. oversized ornaments from my mom, crystal votive glasses from my grandma, beaded garland, and other cute holiday nik-naks were arranged thoughtfully with our day-to-day decor, including a "W" candle celebrating the cubs world series win and cute engraved clogs from holland, michigan.

jason couldn't wait to decorate the railings! it seemed like seconds after we moved in this past february, he was already talking about doing this. we found garland at a home store to wrap the railings with, and then tied our special handmade stockings (thanks, melinda!) onto it with twine. 

our 6 foot christmas tree is always the best to decorate. no, it's not real, but it serves its purpose, and that is to hold all of our ornaments! jason and i have so many that we can't even put them all up! last year our tree started leaning because we overfilled it. oops. we have ornaments from when we were kids, from when we first started dating, from when we first got married, from all of our vacations. the list goes on. 

these boots are at the top of our stair landing as you come upstairs to our living room. they were used as the centerpiece of each table at our wedding! year round, i have the natural colored sticks and eucalyptus, but i added some festivity with the red and white decorative sticks.

the shelving unit in our living room was also fun to decorate! i hate the idea of replacing everything with winter and holiday decor, so it's fun to leave some other contrasting elements on display, like i did with our wedding photo, burlap flowers, and vacation souvenirs. 

Our new holiday wreath is probably my favorite part of the whole house! It's so simple, yet perfect.

december ramblings + 6 new things

oh, hi there. i really suck at this blogging thing. sorry. i totally meant for this blog to be a fun way for me to showcase my interior design fun around the house, but now that i work for an architecture firm where this is sort of, almost, like, an everyday thing, i never remember to post! bad excuse, i know.

we are kind of on a "shopping" hiatus now that our home has reached a near-max capacity of furniture, and the holidays are here, so our focus has shifted from shopping for our home to shopping for gifts and... wait for it... ourselves. big shocker, right?

a few things have changed around here, though. we've bought a couple things since my last post in july (again... oops!), & have moved some things around, as we plan our next steps around the house.

1) the new bedroom desk!
you remember, right? that pretty table we used as a bar in our kitchen nook? well, that's moved upstairs into our bedroom to match our fabulous metal chair from arhaus (we got that chair during their end-of-season clearance for $40, woot!)

in true heather fashion, it's mostly a "display" piece, home to our wedding-vase-of-intertwining-sand (i'll pretend that makes sense), a nice yves saint laurent coffee table book, my upcycled fabric box of perfume, & jason's valet, among other things. you know, when it's not covered with those random things we are too lazy to put away. we are normal humans, you know.

2) the replacement bar! 

the ultimate plan is to make our kitchen nook into a nice sitting area with two comfy chairs & a pedestal table, & we knew our original "bar" wouldn't cut it. we also kind of felt like we were living in a frat house having alcohol just, well, everywhere, scattered on a table. (i won't lie, i can't even drink an entire bottle of beer if i'm not in a social situation.) so we did some rearranging once we found this cute wine cabinet online! it's still sort of a mess, but it's a functional mess that i can totally handle. plus, it takes up less real estate, leaving some room for our future nook plans.

3) the tennessee findings!
we took a road trip down to nashville in august & found some really cool pieces at the city's HUGE, amazing flea market, including this wood/hook/mason jar combination. it's on the wall in our living room & it most definitely matches the rest of our downstairs decor. i found some burlap flowers to fill the vase at hobby lobby for just a few dollars.

4) our front yard!
jason surprised me with an updated look for our front yard a couple months back! i went to work on a saturday & came home to this! mind you, this was an area of mud & moss & everything in between, so it wasn't easy to do in just 8 hours. now we have two little trees & some nice stepping stones for our guests to walk on when they come over.

5) dining room staples!

buying new flowers every week is fabulous, but expensive, so i decided to get some fake ones for fall! i am contemplating changing these out for christmas, but we'll see! i'm still totally digging these. i stuck them in a white pitcher i found at homegoods, which i filled it up with wine corks to hold the flowers in place. this has been our centerpiece for a few months now. the 'j' was also a cheap find from homegoods! (i wonder what it stands for!?)

6) linen curtains!

when we moved in, our kitchen had some brand new vertical blinds over the sliding door into the backyard. i didn't fully mind them, but they got really annoying, really fast, & jason had enough of them the day we moved in. we decided to replace them with new ivory linen curtains. i love how airy they are, & how they let so much light in! they are also the perfect length, less than a foot from the ceiling, down to the floor. (they are no longer as long as pictured because that was just way too long and irritating!)