A Silver and Red Christmas Tablescape

Hello to you all.  I haven't posted anything in almost a week -- I've been deep into Christmas preparations, which are basically going pretty well.  I still have quite a bit left to do, but I'm doing much better than last year.  We also celebrated Mr. Forest Manor's birthday earlier this week.  I told him I was really glad he was born.  :)

I'm aware that I owe all of my blog friends a visit.  I have had very little spare time to do any blogging.  My husband is home on vacation right now, and we're staying busy.  But, I have been looking at your blog posts as time allows, and it's so much fun to see what all of you are doing during this Christmas season.

I've done another Christmas tablescape, and I felt kind of self-indulgent for doing that with just a week left until Christmas day.  But I did it anyway.  :-D  The main reason is that my mom gave me these reindeer a few years ago, and I wanted to feature them so she could see them on our table.  I spotted them when we were shopping together; they were already marked down to half-price, and my mom got them for me for Christmas that year.

Cozy Up To Fall

Hi everyone!  I finally got the fall touches added to our den a few weeks ago; I'm behind schedule for fall decor.  :)  We don't usually go out of town in October, and this year we went to the coast for three days.  So, now I'm working on fall and pre-holiday cleaning.  I want to get the house nice and clean before it's time to start dragging out the Christmas decs.

Classic Blue and White

Hi folks!  Back in August, I wrote a post about summer touches around our house.  In that post, I showed some images of our den, our front porch, and the blue and white dishes on our kitchen shelves.  Most of the comments I received said that the blue and white collection was a favorite.

I love blue and white, too.  I wanted to show you a little more detail of the dishes on our display shelves in the kitchen.

A Fourth of July Table

I don't know about you all, but our town seems to have emptied out.  It seems that everyone is traveling somewhere for the Fourth of July week -- everyone, that is, but us.  :)  My husband says there has been very little traffic to and from work every day, so no complaints there.  Those who have gone to the North Carolina coast may have their trip spoiled by Tropical Storm Arthur, but I hope not.  That happened to us one year, and it was no fun.

We're planning on staying right here for the week, but my husband has taken an extra day's vacation in order to have a four-day weekend.  Woo-hoo!  We'll be going to my in-laws' house for the Fourth, but I set a patriotic tablescape in my "new" kitchen just for fun.

Making A Pretty Bird Feeder

I've been feeling crafty lately --

Our Patriotic Summer Porch

Hi folks!  Can you believe June is already half over?  Honestly, I can't.  This has been the fastest spring and summer -- the days just fly by faster and faster.  I wanted to share the further progress that I've made on our front porch.  The three things I mentioned in my previous porch post that I wanted to do can be checked off my list.  I still have a couple more things, and then I'll consider the porch done for the summer (except for keeping the flowers watered, of course).

Flower Therapy

Happy Monday to you!  I just wanted to share a few pics of what I did this past weekend.

Our Wedding China

Hi everyone!  I have been absent from blogging for about a week and a half.  Not only have I not posted, but I haven't had time to visit anyone else's blog either.  I always feel like I'm out of the loop when that happens.  We've had family things going on and the puppy is still keeping us very busy.

This week I'm participating in Cuisine Kathleen's "Let's Dish" party.  Her challenge this month is for us to set a table with wedding china.  It can be our wedding china, or the wedding china of a mother or grandmother, etc.  I just realized that the challenge was actually to use formal wedding china in an informal arrangement so, Oops, I guess I didn't get that memo.  The story of my life these days.  :)  Anyway, I was glad for the opportunity to set a table with our wedding dishes.  Those of you who are regular readers of my blog have seen this china before, but here it is again.

A French Catholic Missel

Several years ago, my in-laws traveled to France, and when they returned, my mother-in-law gave me a little book as a memento.  Actually, there were two books, and she let me choose which one I wanted.  I was instantly taken with this one...

Fall Cleaning and Organizing

I'd really rather be going to the North Carolina mountains to get fresh apples, taking pretty outdoor pictures, or decorating my house and porch for fall.  That will come (sooner rather than later, I hope) but for now, I'm cleaning out closets and drawers and trying to re-organize everything.  Why am I doing this?  I'm afraid the people from "Hoarders" are going to show up on our doorstep any day now if I don't do something with some of this stuff.

The late George Carlin famously said that "A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff."  :)  So funny and so true.  At least it's funny until you're forced to have to find a place to store all this stuff.

I've mentioned before that our house was built in 1972, so that was before the time of really big closets.  Our first house, the 1924 bungalow in Greensboro...

Our Kitchen -- Before and After

I noticed yesterday that a post I wrote early in 2012 is now being viewed again.  The post was written at the time that we were just beginning our kitchen remodel, and I showed lots of pics of our kitchen as it used to be for the first 15 years that we lived here.  Then I showed some more pictures of the ongoing renovation, but I've never shown a real kitchen "reveal" since we've completed everything.  That's mainly because we waited about three months to hang anything on the walls because we couldn't stand the thought of messing up that pristine paint job.  :)  By then, we were into the 2012 holiday season, so again, I put off showing the kitchen until after the holidays.  I wanted everything to look perfect for my reveal pictures, so I kept putting off doing the post, and I finally realized that I just need to show you how everything turned out.

*WARNING*  Picture Heavy Post

There are several pictures here (the understatement of the century).  They were taken on different days at different times during the day with two different cameras, so please overlook the fact that the quality of some are not as good as others.

Adding Summer Touches To The Family Room

Hi everyone!  It seems that I've disappeared from blogland recently; but not by choice, I can assure you.  Life has certainly changed since our son graduated from college and moved back home -- more dirty dishes, more trash, more recycling, and less time for me on the computer.  We have two desktop computers in this house and two laptops, but my son and I both want to use the same desktop computer.  Sigh.

What have you been up to during these rainy summer days?  I hope you all had a great Fourth of July holiday.  Ours was very nice -- a family reunion on my husband's side of the family, and a cookout at my parents (with homemade ice cream) on the Saturday.  It was a busy four days.

I've been making a few wee changes to our den just for the summer months; I felt it needed some lightening up.

Updates To Our Living Room

Hi everyone!  I want to share some recent updates we've made in our living room.  I showed some pictures of our living room back in February, with a few snowmen here and there. The snowmen are packed away for another year, and I've replaced them with some rabbits.  I have a fondness for rabbits -- you can tell I don't have a vegetable garden.  :)

The bigger changes I wanted to share are what we've done around our piano, including new window treatments.  For years, I displayed about four or five accessories on top of our piano.  A treasured plate from my sister, a baby picture of our son, a Royal Doulton vase, and a few other items adorned that spot. 

I don't have a picture of the piano as it was at that time.  There was nothing wrong with the way it was, but at some point, I just wanted a change.  I decided the room needed a touch of silver.  I had lots of good black and white family photos, and so I set about getting silver frames for them to be displayed on the piano.

In addition, I wanted to hang something different on the wall above the piano.  This is what I had there for 16 years.  This picture was taken at Christmas, so I had ceramic Christmas carolers on the piano, but you can see the swag that hung on the wall at the time.

Winter's Still Here

Hi everyone!  What's the weather like where you are tonight?  Thursday nights and Fridays seem to be our days for getting wintry weather this year.  Right on schedule, we got sleet and freezing rain Thursday night and into Friday morning.  It was cold and dreary, so my husband decided to brighten things up a bit.

Our Home in Winter

Hi folks!  Did you all watch the Super Bowl, or did you opt for Downton Abbey?  We always watch the Super Bowl at our house, but we recorded Downton Abbey.  I'm planning on watching it tonight, so I hope I don't accidentally see any spoilers today.

Last week I showed you our foyer, and this week I want to show your our living room.  Like our foyer, I've only shown a few pictures of our living room on my blog, and those were mostly little close-ups of Christmas decor.  This is the living room in winter.

Welcome To Our Foyer

I took all my Christmas decorations down over two weeks ago, but I'm still working on putting all of our rooms back in order.  I've never really shown you our foyer, except a glimpse of it decorated for fall or Christmas.  Like the other rooms in our house, it has changed and evolved over the 16 years we've lived here.

Foyers can be tricky to decorate, don't you think?  Our foyer is by no means large at, 11' 8" x 4' 4," but it's not really tiny either.  This is the first house we've owned that has a foyer.  We liked our little Craftsman bungalow in Greensboro, but it didn't have a foyer.

I think the first order of business in decorating a foyer is to have a few pieces of furniture for your space.  When we moved here from our first home, we didn't have any furniture that would have looked right in a foyer.  We were very fortunate, because my husband's grandmother gave us her lyre harp table with a marble top, and it's the perfect size for the dimensions of our foyer.

Pretty In Plaid

I'm re-posting a Christmas tablescape that I originally published on January 6th of this year.  I didn't get it up by Christmas last year because my dad had been in the hospital, and December was a stressful month for all of us. This is one of my very favorite tablescapes, and I hope you enjoy seeing it.  I'll be linking this tablescape to Let's Dish, hosted by Cuisine Kathleen on Wednesday evening, and Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch.  Thanks to both of these ladies for hosting.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Our Dickens Village

"It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child Himself."~Charles Dickens

I've always wanted to see England at Christmas.  It makes me think of plum pudding with a sprig of holly on top, roasted chestnuts, and those charming old buildings with bow windows and snow decorating the window panes.  I picture centuries old fireplaces with crackling fires, wassailing, and voices with Cockney accents singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."  In essence, Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

The Last Roses

Fall seems to be well and truly here now, in our part of North Carolina.  We definitely had an Indian Summer this year, because after a cold snap around the middle of October, we then went back to temps in the 70's later in the month.

Our David Austin roses have been continuously putting out a few blooms all through September and October.  We've had this Gertrude Jekyll rose for three years, and this is the first year it has bloomed  into autumn.  In addition, there were buds, promising more blooms to come (as long as they didn't get caught by an early freeze).  You can see previous posts on our David Austin roses Here and Here.

Well it's been cold and windy here this week, folks, and yesterday I was amazed to see two beautiful blooms still on the stalk, along with several unopened and partially-opened buds. The temperatures have been dipping into the 30's at night, but apparently they've stayed just above freezing, so these flowers were still healthy and intact, rather than brown and drooping.  And best of all, they still have their wonderful fragrance.

Fall Fireplace

Hi all!  I haven't posted in a few weeks, and I'm determined to show some fall scenes around the house before we start decorating for Christmas.  I cannot believe Thanksgiving is next week -- Yikes!

I have so many things to share with you; I still haven't posted on my trip to the Southern Bloggers Conference in Raleigh back in October.  I'll be doing a post on the conference very soon because I got to meet two bloggers that I've really wanted to meet in person -- Barbara from Two Birdies and a B. and Shirley from Housepitality Designs.  These are two very sweet ladies!