It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

I'm not big on Christmas.  I am a summer girl.  Usually, the thing I want most for Christmas is for it to be OVER. 

However, in the true spirit of both Scrooge and the Grinch (a stuffed version of which is wired to the front grill of my car for the month of December every year), I do have a tendency to come around -- usually on Christmas Eve. 

This year, I am still feeling the usual financial and gift-buying stresses and the general overall dread, but a few things have been different for the better!

I put up the Merry Christmas sign by the front door on NOVEMBER 28th!  That's right -- still in the month of November!  This even violates my rule that says:  "Absolutely No Christmas until December 1st (at the earliest)!" 

We got decorations out on the 8th and did most of the decorating.  I'm not sure what got into me.  Oh yeah!  Sara-Grace got on my back about it and marched me up to the attic!

Also on the 8th, Mark and I went on a mission to find a pine tree I could cut a few branches from.  This turned out to be fun and boded well for my living room.  I think the thing I enjoy most about Christmas is the little, simple, old-fashioned, FREE stuff that is what Christmas was about before commercialization -- using the bounty of the seasonal things that are around and are FREE!

I love how the pine branches add just a simple suggestion of the season to my grandparents' 1939 piano with my mother's huge ceramic pot full of branches on it:

Here is my fireplace as I've done it for the past few years:

And here is my fireplace this year (can you tell from the draped fabric that I'm in the process of making slipcovers for my grandmother's armchairs out of burlap and white mattelasse?).  I like this MUCH better!

 

During the rest of the year, I have a big oil painting that belonged to my grandparents over the mantle.  It is a wonderful sea scape that they bought in the 1980's from a well-known artist in Laguna Beach (where I later lived) and, by a second wonderful coincidence, depicts my very favorite beach: Nuestra Senora del Refugio Beach which is north of Santa Barbara. 

Every year, for Christmas, I have to take down the painting (which is almost 45" square complete with large gilded frame -- you know grandparents!) and store it somewhere (that is hopefully safe) so I can hang up the Twelve Days of Christmas plates and decorate for Christmas.  And sometimes I just get tired of the painting dictating the mantle during the rest of the year too!

This year, an idea evolved.   I wanted something that I could put IN FRONT OF the painting so that I wouldn't have to move it.  I moved the Twelve Days of Christmas plates and hung them over the window which I like a lot.

Here's an older picture of the plates so you can actually see them.  Aren't they pretty?  (BTW you can still get them from Williams Sonoma if you happen to like them as much as I do.):

 I took a 45" square of particle board that was loitering around as a reject from another project and covered it with white cotton duck/canvas that I had on hand.  Then I cut an 84 cent piece of thrift store burlap to size and hot-glued it on.  I hammered in a nail and hung my mother's pine cone wreath (that's been around for my whole life and is VERY "my mother") on it and propped the whole thing up in front of the painting.  I LOVE THIS! 

Now I am entertaining fantasies of how I can decorate this board for other holidays and for the rest of the year:  a flag for the 4th of July, a wreath with eggs on it for Easter, something with a heart for Valentine's Day, something creepy for Halloween, maybe a wreath with pheasant feathers for Thanksgiving?, and it could also hold letters that could spell out things like JOY or SUMMER or HAPPY.  I have a whole basket full of assorted letters I've gathered over the years when I find them for a dollar or less.  Hmmm...

So, for now, Christmas is kind of growing on me.  I will REALLY like it once I have my shopping done -- IF that's before Christmas Eve.

And here are a few more glimpses of Christmas from around the house:

The Invasion of the Santas in the TV room (with another of my grandparents' sea scape paintings).

The Invasion of the Nutcrackers.  Actually, this year there is another shelf of them up above. 
You'll recognize Mother's pine cone wreath in it's previous location! 

 

Torpedo is not at all sure she likes this particular variety of Christmas humiliation!

 

 

This is how I like Christmas best -- CONTAINED! 
 

Merry, Merry!

Red Shelves for My Kitchen

I'm not even really sure how it happened.

Somehow, despite the fact that I have a MILLION other things I SHOULD be doing, I decided that I needed to build shelves for my kitchen.

Actually, I think it happened at the end of the domino chain that started when the house was built in 1995.  The contractor put a center island right in the middle of the work triangle -- you know, that scared cow of kitchen design that forms an invisible triangle between the stove, sink, and refrigerator.

At some point over the last 17 years, I detached the island from the floor and put it on wheels.  But, most of the time, it stayed in the same place in the middle of the kitchen and in the way.

Recently, I decided to jettison the island unit into the garage and replace it with Mark's vintage Coca-cola cooler which will go in a different, out-of-the-triangle position
.

I put a board underneath and put old metal freezer baskets under there.  Then I realized that an old red and while enamel tabletop from the 1930's that I had loitering in the garage would fit the top PERFECTLY.  So the cooler now has a top.  I also had a couple of white bar stools loitering around so they are now pulled up to it.  There's still a debate going on around the house about whether or not to paint the Coke cooler.  I think paint is about to win as what you are seeing above is the "good" side.

I think the shelves idea came with the realization that quite a bit of storage was going away with the island to the garage.  It dawned on me that I could put all my baking supply jars out in the open shelves (where I can enjoy looking at them!) and that would free up a whole upper cabinet for other stuff.

Here's the spot where the shelves will go (to the left of the fridge).  You can kind of see the table top on the Coke cooler in this photo too.

I took some careful measurements and made a plan and bought some boards -- $54 worth!  Ugh.  But worth it.  Free boards of the proper widths and sufficient lengths were not likely to come around anytime soon. 

Within two hours, I had this:

FOUR coats of red paint later, I had this:

And now, all decked out in jars, it looks like this:

I plan to put a bead board back on it as soon as I get the bead board painted.  Well, ok, as soon as I decide on a color.  Mark says turquoise.  I love the idea but have to work up the courage and convince myself not to wimp out and used the same yellow that's on the wall.  There are other red and turquoise things in the room, so it's not that far a stretch -- especially with the Coca-Cola thing going on in there since red and "Coke-bottle-blue" are the Coke colors.

The empty shelf/space in the middle is eventually going to hold a flat screen TV.  Until then, I'll make a framed chalkboard to fill the space.

The feedback from the girls has been good.  They all like the color and say it's much easier to get to things and they appreciate not having to climb over the cook to get to the baking supplies like they did when the baking department was in its previous location.  The future flat-screen space is currently being used as the "soda shelf" (since we stocked up on 84 cent 2-liters the other day) so the girls arre pretty happy with that!

I love, love, love having everything in matching, labeled jars!  This just makes my OCD happy!  (which almost but not quite balances out the unhappy from the fuzzy photo).

The bottom section of the shelves, is designed to hold two bins.  These trash cans fit perfectly but are WAY too ugly so I'm still on the hunt for the perfect thing.  Any suggestions?  They will hold either dog and cat food or trash and recycling.  

There's been an unforeseen benefit of the baking shelves:  more baking is going on around our house.  Yum!  A coffee cake appeared.  There are also some chocolate creations in the works.  And I noticed the oatmeal was askew so I'm thinking there are oatmeal cookies around somewhere!