Christmas Decorations

And here is my final Christmas post for 2014! I like to document what our house looks like at different times of the year, especially Christmas. I didn't crop or edit any of these pictures at all, so Mattie made it into one or two, but that's okay. :) 

Here's our house at Christmas 2013

Fall at Our House

This week, the fall decorations came down and Christmas started to take over. 

Since we will be gone all of Thanksgiving weekend (and bringing home a new puppy) we wanted to be able to enjoy the decorations for the whole month of December and focus on things other things during that time! So we decided we'd better get a head start!

Before the Christmas goes up, I wanted to document want our house looked like for fall this year. I still need to read how to take good pictures inside, so these will just have to do for now - and it's so fun to see how it changes from year to year regardless of the quality of the pictures.

This is my favorite part of the living room. These drawers came from my mom's newspaper office and I love having both sides of our family sitting in the same place so I can see them every time I walk into the room!

These pictures of our family room and kitchen also show our new paint color that we painted with the help of Trent's parents back in August. The color makes such a difference from what it was last year.

 Now all those pumpkins have gathered on the dining room table and by the end of the day they will make their way to the basement for another 10 months!

And now the tree is up and waiting to be decorated, by the end of the day, the outside lights will be up and waiting to be turned on after Thanksgiving, too!

Fall Decorations and the Tree is Up!

Last night, our Christmas tree took it's place in the corner of our living room, where it will sit for the next six weeks or so. We are officially "those people" who put their tree up before Thanksgiving... Sorry!

 

 

I guess our reasoning was that since Thanksgiving is later this year, and since we would be busy all next weekend, we wanted our tree and decorations to be up right when we got back from Thanksgiving so we could enjoy them for the whole month of December. So the tree went up last night and the decorations will go on it this weekend along with all the rest of the Christmas decorations in and outside the house. It all makes me very excited for all the fun stuff that goes along with this holiday season!

 

When we started talking about putting the tree up, I realized that I never took any pictures of our fall decorations that we had up this year. So in true Kendra-style, I took pictures of everything at the very last minute before I took them down and the tree went up. (Trent actually had the tree up in the living room before I was even done taking pictures of the fall stuff in the family room, so I really waited until the VERY last minute. And he wasn't kidding around about getting that tree up!)

 

 

Since I waited until last night to take pictures, they really aren't that great since it was completely dark outside and my phone doesn't take the best pictures with all the lamps and lights on to light the room. I did the best I could, though, and hopefully I've learned my lesson and will take Christmas pictures sometime during the day light before it's time to take them down.

 

Although I didn't take any pictures of what the house looked like last fall (because it really wasn't much to look at, I'm sure) I know that this year was a big step up just because I had a lot more to work with in terms of decorations. We just happened to be at Trent's parents house earlier this fall right before Trent's mom was preparing to bring some fall decor that she didn't want anymore to a consignment shop. She let me look through it and pick out anything that I wanted, and I think I ended up taking about 90% of it. It was very exciting! She has a beautiful house so I was very happy to be able to decorate our house with all the things that she no longer needed!

 

So here are some pictures. Again, not the best quality (I think that every one is blurry...), and it's nothing fancy, but it's something to look back on next year and check out how things have changed! 

 

Trent thought he'd be funny and try to stand in all of my pictures for a while.
Thankfully he got bored with that very quickly!

 

And THIS picture.

 

 

This is from right when I was sitting down to have supper last night. Trent made chicken and noodles.

He really likes chicken and noodles if you couldn't tell by the mound of it on his plate.

He is very serious about it...

Despite him being a super dork, supper was great! (Just kidding, I love that he's a dork!) I'm very grateful to have a husband who has supper ready when I get home from work most nights!

Our House Right Now

Here are some more pictures that I took right before people arrived at our house for the party we had at our house for the "CPA Celebration." I was happy that we had a reason to finally get some projects done and get a few things hung on the walls. I'll be putting together a few posts to detail those projects, but for now, I am just going to document what the main rooms in our house look like as of right now! (Sorry the pictures aren't that great, they're just from my phone - but you get the point!)

Family Room

Dining Room and Living Room

Mattie was on the lookout for everyone to arrive and the fun to begin!

I don't have exact before and afters, but here's a little comparison... I have a feeling it will always be a work in process!

The living dining room didn't have furniture until December, so this is the first comparison I have.

 

I'm excited to keep working on these rooms over time! It's really fun to see how they change!

 

Have a great weekend, everyone!