I don’t know about you, but I’m totally whipped.  Christmas is exhausting.  Fun and definitely my favorite time of year, but exhausting.  The kids are over-loaded and tired, the “Christmas Bomb”went off leaving bits of paper and tape and pieces to toys and candy wrappers and crumbs all over the place and I’ve eaten way too much chocolate.  I’ve enjoyed the surprises and presents and going through the Christmas story with my boys while we acted it out with the Little People nativity set, the music and the food.  This was the first year my boys were really excited about Christmas and “got” what was going on, so that was a lot of fun.  I feel like I’ll be able to prepare for it all a little better next year.  This year was very much done flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants.  But, we made it through and we’re blessed beyond measure.

After taking a break from projects and blogging for a couple of days, I was ready to get back to work.   My husband worked on the office built-ins, my dad burned trash and did some odd jobs, my mom and I cleaned blinds and windows, rearranged the furniture in my room, prime and painted a wall and I tweaked my Christmas decor in the dining room to get ready for the upcoming photo shoot.  I decided the dough bowl was a little too big for the table, so I swapped it out for an antique column base with a cloche on it, an oversized pine cone inside and a wreath around it.  I like it much better and the scale is more appropriate.  I also tucked some greenery in the chandelier (my $4.00 yard sale score) and hung some glittered birds from twine.

I purchased the birds on clearance at Wal-Mart last year for…I think…$.25/each.  I bumped up the glam factor with some German glass glitter.

I was going to put a bunch of greenery around my cow painting (Eulalie), but I decided to just flank it with two mini evergreen bushes and put out a few ornaments.  The room needs a “quiet place” with all of the other greenery and the tree.

While my dad was here, I asked him to fill in a doorway with drywall.  The door connected my office and our bedroom and it made both rooms awkward, so I covered it with tongue and groove paneling in the office and now it’s a smooth wall on the bedroom side.  It was covered with the fabric bed crown, but I decided to take it and down and try a different furniture arrangement.  I tell you…this room is so awkward.  The window is in a terrible place and it hardly lets in any light, it’s long and narrow and the doors are configured in a strange way.  It’s a challenge and I just can’t seem to get it right.  Anyway, enough complaining.  I think this new arrangement is going to work a lot better. I’ll show more when it’s finished, but here are some peeks…

Ha…excuse the vacuum, laundry baskets and curtain rod box.  Just keeping it real.  That’s how it looks right now.

I moved my dress form in there.  It works better in the bedroom, but we’ll see if I miss it in the living room.

 We have another full work day planned tomorrow and it’s great to cross a bunch of things off the “to-do” list.  In case you haven’t put two-and-two together, I sort of thrive on productivity.

I have to sign off to go build some more Lego’s…