Relaxing
Hi everyone!! I hope you all had a lovely fun filled holiday with your loved ones! We had a great Christmas spent with our kiddos and family. My posting will be a little spotty until next week. I'm going to take some blog time off to enjoy my family and work on some new projects about our house and on the blog as mentioned in this post a few months back { here } We have a bunch of projects { in progress } we are working on around the house. I hope to get a few done in the next few days, just in time for the New Year. It's hard to believe it will be 2012 in a few days!
Holiday Movies
There's nothing I love more than doing a Holiday Movie Marathons with my family. In fact Movie & TV show marathons are a regular occurrence around our home. In the past we've done Die Hard Movie-thons (1-4) I'd never seen them before, and actually ended up liking the series. We've done Saw Movie-thons, Breaking Bad TV-thons, Elm Street Movie-thons the list goes on and on. Of course we save the scary movies / too young for Tabari to watch Movie-thons for us the adults :)
What are your favorite Holiday movies to watch year after year?
Built-in Bookcases
A few months one of my girlfriends mentioned to me, she's planning on adding built-in bookcases to her living room for more more storage for books, movies pretty much 'life stuff.' I loved her idea and started emailing her inspiration ideas, to come up with the perfect bookcase style for her home. Not too much later it dawned on me, that's what our living room needs! I started gathering ideas for 'our bookcase style.'
I drew up some plan drafts on paper, then finally on the computer. Here's what I've come up with so far. The lower section of the bookcases would consist of cabinets. Which is the perfect spot to hide clutter: DVDs, DVD player, cable box etc. The top section would be a mix of long shelves and a middle section a spot for our TV. The TV would hang inside the bookcases / on the wall. I want to bookcases to be floor to ceiling, wall to wall.
My bookcase plans are very rough, nothing is drawn to scale { right now } and no measurements have been taken { yet } But this is the overall idea of how we want them to look. We want the bookcase to be placed where our current TV and Ikea bookcases are now. It makes the most sense and its the perfect spot in our living room for them. I like the bookcases we purchased from Ikea awhile ago, however it just makes more sense to have built-in ones. I found the image below via Pinterest and love the simplicity and style of the bookcase. I want ours to feel clean lined and have faux feet, like in my sketch above and in the picture below. I think the chunky feet style really give the feeling of a more modern clean lined look.
Our plan is to do a mix of ready cabinets for the bottom bookcases { like Sara did } and the top make 3 - 4 long bookcases depending on measurements for the upper portion of the bookcases. My sketch below is an example of the individual upper bookcase unit we would build. Each bookcase portion then would be connected to the cabinets.
After we tweak our plans to achieve exactly the style we want ( with measurements etc.) the next plan is pricing and cabinet shopping for the lower portion of the bookcases. We'll be doing a lot of price comparing to get the best deal. Here's a picture of in stock cabinets from Lowes 36x30
Here's a look at how our living room currently looks. Can you see my vision? Floor to ceiling bookcases with long thick shelves and a perfect spot for our TV to hang.
I'm really looking forward to this project and the amazing transformation of our our living once its completed. I know they'll be many hours of sanding, painting, cutting and screaming { me } But I can feel the end result will be amazing!
Can you picture it?
I drew up some plan drafts on paper, then finally on the computer. Here's what I've come up with so far. The lower section of the bookcases would consist of cabinets. Which is the perfect spot to hide clutter: DVDs, DVD player, cable box etc. The top section would be a mix of long shelves and a middle section a spot for our TV. The TV would hang inside the bookcases / on the wall. I want to bookcases to be floor to ceiling, wall to wall.
My bookcase plans are very rough, nothing is drawn to scale { right now } and no measurements have been taken { yet } But this is the overall idea of how we want them to look. We want the bookcase to be placed where our current TV and Ikea bookcases are now. It makes the most sense and its the perfect spot in our living room for them. I like the bookcases we purchased from Ikea awhile ago, however it just makes more sense to have built-in ones. I found the image below via Pinterest and love the simplicity and style of the bookcase. I want ours to feel clean lined and have faux feet, like in my sketch above and in the picture below. I think the chunky feet style really give the feeling of a more modern clean lined look.
{ via Pinterest }
Another example of how I want the feet to look on the bookcase.
We decided to DIY our bookcases after seeing how amazing Sara via Russet Street Reno's turned out. Yup, Sara and her husband built the bookcases themselves! Lovely, huh! It really adds to much appeal and style in our 'Woman Cave'
{ via Russet Street Reno }
I'm really looking forward to this project and the amazing transformation of our our living once its completed. I know they'll be many hours of sanding, painting, cutting and screaming { me } But I can feel the end result will be amazing!
Can you picture it?
'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.
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.
{ 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 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?
