Feng Shui

     I love to change things around, furniture and decor wise. I thing that your decor gets stale if you keep it the same way for years on end. Come on, admit it, you get tired of looking at the same four pictures on your walls, and if you sit in the same place on the couch every day you'll end up making that one place sag faster than all the other seats! Plus I'm a big believer in anti-packratism. Yes, I just made that word up. I throw things away constantly. I think it's because I've moved so many times, but I don't like to accumulate. Just having to keep paperwork like tax receipts and school records hurts me, because it's paper piled up in drawers that I'm not ever going to use. The only thing I don't like getting rid of is art supplies. That stuff is expensive! Plus, there's pretty much nothing you can't reuse somehow :) That's the beauty of up-cycling.

     Anyway, this week, I decided to get a little creative in my room. I have a pretty small room, and I really can't move the big furniture around, but I've been wanting to do some changing up with the little things like my bookshelves and my reading nook and such.

This is one new addition I just got back from getting framed. It's hanging over my bed now. I just loved the frame - it's like old barnwood, not smoothed out or finished.

My great-grandmother Angel Falkner was an artist, and I think every one of my family members has at least one of her pieces. I have this piece (Foggy Morning in the Spring) and a pretty aqua blue and cream one of dogwood blossoms (that my mama is going to have to give me back - it's hanging in her bathroom at the moment).

Don't you just love Hobby Lobby? Flowers 50% off means I get to make something for the naked corner of my room. I love the cream ostrich feathers against the plum here. And yes, my room is two different colors of purple. The long walls are the light color, and the short wall and the bay where my window is is the dark.

     While I was gone to Ecuador, my parents had a chaise and a rocking chair recovered for me. I had bought the rocking chair at an antique store and it just needed new cushions, but I inherited the chaise from my grandparents and it was in really really bad shape. As in, 'it's not coming in the house until it's fixed' bad shape. One of our neighbors does upholstery and builds furniture, so he took on the job. It came back a new being!

Isn't it pretty? And the fabric is devine. It's a kind of soft linen-cottony blend, but that creamy white color will match anything I ever want to use it with. And it sits like a dream.

I even bought new pillows. Actually, to tell the truth, that wasn't entirely my idea. The dog sort of befouled one of my other black pillows, and beaded pillows and washing machines don't go well together. Oh well, I like these better anyway!

      I had that nook built into my room specifically to make a reading nook like this. I've always wanted some place just to be able to curl up with a blanket and read for hours, and now I have it!

I just love the lamp in my nook. Isn't it just fun and quirky? I found it at Redesigning Women, a kind of thrift/antique/anything store in New Albany, for twenty bucks, and all I had to do was put the black shade on it. You never know what you'll find going hunting in there.

The mirror I got at First Monday years ago, for I think five bucks. Some clorox wipes and a few coats of paint later and voila! Beautimus.

Oh, and if I ever complain about needing more room for books, I ain't lying! I have this bookcase and another just like it on the other side of my room, and only about one and a half shelves left! I have more books than I do shoes and purses combined!

Now you've all seen where I live...or at least where I lay my head down at night. Hopefully one day I'll be able to start those dream house decorating blogs I'm already planning out in my head!

Christmas Decor

     This is a kind of long post, but since I've been kind of going crazy lately cooped up in the house, and spending WAAAAY too much a lot of time on Pinterest, and I only get to use the Christmas excuse for the next couple of weeks...ya'll get the pleasure of a good, long post! I've seen tons of amazing ideas for holiday decorating, and decided to try a few out. I don't have an apartment or house of my own to go crazy in this year, much to my dismay, but my mama is willing to let me have a little decorating freedom in the house. She just doesn't see the Christmas spirit in my purple lights and silver ornaments :)

     Okay, inspiration picture number one:

     We have a ton of red, silver, and frosted white ball ornaments from when I was a kid that we don't use anymore, and some extra 'filler' ornaments we bought a few years ago when we used to have a big tree (now we have one of those skinny ones). They still match the colors we use at Christmas, so why not dig them out again and make something pretty? So, here we go.

My pretty glitter sprayed pinecones...definitely want to wear gloves if you're going to do this. Pinecones don't stand up too well, so you have to hold them while you spray. My hand was solid glitter when I got done.

These are my glittery pinecones with the old ornaments. I just love them! I remember decorating the tree with these when I was a little bitty girl.

Dining room decor. The candle sticks are there year round - my dad brought them as a gift for my mom when he visited Africa a few years ago.

Awesome huge glasses from Wal-Mart!

I just found this random container of mini-presents mixed in with our ornaments. No idea when somebody bought them, or why, but they look cute in my bubble glass bowl!

     Fun story: This project was a little more labor intensive on the front end. The other day after we made dressing (check out my blog about it!) I went out with Mama and Grandmama to hunt for pinecones. That was an interesting experience to say the least. My grandparents live next to a whole strip of pine trees, and I'm totally expecting to go and find a billion pinecones on the ground I can just pick up. No such luck. Not a single pinecone to be found, except about fifteen feet up in the trees. I'm a very short human, and I'm not about to just shimmy up a tree just to get a pinecone. (My luck, I'd fall out and break something, and have to tell some ER doctor this story). So, my mama gets on top of my grandmama's truck, and drives up along the trees trying to knock them off. We get a few, then finally my (tall) cousin Rodney comes along on his way to his deer field and decides to take pity on us and help the crazy women get their pinecones.

     I also did a few more simple things to use up the filler ornaments. We have a ton of big glass hurricanes sitting around the house - my mom loves to put candles and stuff in them, so they're perfect for this kind of stuff.

The extra ornaments in one of my mom's big glass hurricanes for our mantle...gold and red for the living room.

Another hurricane of ornaments for our coffee table



Mantle decor this year...sweet and simple.

A few shots from our Christmas tree...I mean, I already had the camera on, why not?

I love swirly hand-painted looking oraments (who knows if this one was actually hand painted, I bought it at a Hobby Lobby after-Christmas sale!)

I love big ornaments too!

One of my favorite ornaments, it's so heavy we have to put it really close to the floor in case it slips off the branch!

And our awesome glitzy treeskirt made for us by my Dad's secretary :)

My FAVORITE ornaments on our tree. We have three, two little and one big. I may have to covertly swipe them for my tree when I get a tree of my own...

This is my room's Christmas decor. I didn't put up a tree, mainly because I have a small room, it's on the back of the house where nobody would see it, and I didn't feel like dragging the little tree down from the shop's attic. But, I do have a few ornaments out and about.

Gotta love a Christmas sock monkey :)

Favorite! I found the glasses and bottle at Hobby Lobby years ago, they live on that silver plate on my dresser. But when I found miniature ornaments to match the swirly pattern on them...awesome!