christmas deco and house projects!

as some of you know, oliver and i have been working like crazy to make our house a home.  when we moved in (almost 2 years ago this january, eek!) all the walls were white except the kitchen, and it just seemed very dingy and not warm/homey.  so we decided to start painting and flipping around furniture to make it more like US.

on black friday, we bought a new living room set from ashley, and it came with a rug, two sofas, a chair, and a coffee table. we are expecting the new stuff to come in on friday (we already got the rug) so in the meantime, we have been painting fools trying to get the walls done before the new furniture comes!

alongside the painting and swapping rooms, i have been in a crafty mood.  i made a few different christmas deco items that turned out pretty cute!  here's a rundown of what we have been working on:


house:
-paint entry way
-paint all arches
-swap dining room and office
-paint new dining room
-paint living room
-paint trim in dining and living rooms
-paint mantle
-hang new curtains in dining and living rooms
-new furniture!

crafts/christmas deco:
-paint dipped/spray painted pinecones
-paint chip garland
-re-paint chalkboard sign and write christmas quote
-tree, mantle, and overall decor up


so as you can see, the only thing left to wait for these rooms is the furniture!!  i am not so great at before and after pics, but i do have an in progress picture of the living room.  here it is while the blue paint is in progress of going up...

this paint is a smokey blue color called silent tide by behr.  it goes on really well and it had great coverage.  in the dining room, we used a hand-mixed color from home depot.  its a martha stuart green/gray but we wanted to use it in behr paint, so it came out a little darker.  i love it! 

here's the dining room all painted up:

as you can see, we left the entry way and the arches taupe. the only green in the dining room is the two walls that do not have arches built into them.  we wanted the arches to serve as a separator between the living and dining rooms, and trying to figure out where the green stopped and the blue began was really tricky. 


PAINT DIPPED PINECONES:
one of the projects i wanted to do for christmas was paint dipped pinecones.  i saw this on pinterest, and it looked super easy and cute.  i bought a bag of pinecones from joanns crafts for $5 and also got some floral wire for like $2.  then i set up a contraption that would allow my pinecones to hang upside down to drip dry. 

once they were all dried, some of the weight of the white paint was opening the bottoms a little bit, so i just put those at the bottom of the bowl.  :)  then i had saved some pinecones aside, so for those i lightly misted them with some gold spray paint.  i put them all together in a pretty red bowl, added a few christmas balls, and voila!  pretty as pie.

for the frames, i just googled chalkboard printables, and found ones that had christmas sayings, then  i put them in old frames i had around. the middle one was small for the frame, so i cut out some craft paper i had left over from my wedding and put that behind it.  i think it turned out pretty cute! 



HOLLY GARLAND:
the next project i did was pinterest insipred, but i dont know that anyone has done this exact same garland.  i have been at home depot pretty much every weekend (painting, ugh) and i had noticed these paint chip samples from behr that are in somewhat of a leaf shape. i thought they were really cute, so i snagged a bunch of those along with some normal square red ones, and got the idea for the holly garland.

my cousins and i punched holes out of the red squares, hot glued the red circles to the leaves, and then hot glued that to a length of ribbon.  it turned out pretty cute!

i saved a few extra little hollies for putting at each set dinner plate for the table.  :)

CHALKBOARD:
my last pinterest inspired project was to overhaul the chalkboard my dad made for me that i used at my wedding.  it was in the lemonade stand, and it had a white frame around it. 

see it at the bottom there?  it also made an appearance at the fondue night i recently had...

but the white was getting stained from all the chalk, and i just didnt think it popped against the dark brown of our laundry room wall. so i took it apart, spray painted the frame, and touched up the chalkboard with some chalkboard spray paint for good measure.  then once that was all dry, i glued it back together and found another pretty christmas saying online.  i printed it out and then freehanded the saying onto the chalk board as best as i could.  its not perfect, but i think its pretty cute for my first time.

so there you have it!  has anyone else been doing any home renovations?  any pinterest projects? 

i will leave you with pictures of our christmas decor....happy holidays!

kristin