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My House

Decorating

Christmas decorating | the living room

I’ve been sharing the Christmas decorations in my house room by room over the past few days.  In case you missed it, here is the master bedroom and family room decked out for the holidays.   And now, in the tour, we come to the living room.   As with the other rooms I’ve already shared, I used mostly fresh greenery with a few wintry/festive touches. (And I finally made a scrunchy linen cord cover for my plug-in chandelier.) I have a live blue spruce in an antique bucket on the coffee table and some mixed greenery tucked in the chandelier. The pom-pom garland is from Anthropologie and I just let it swag over an antique screen door.  I love how it looks like a garland of snowballs, so it will transition beyond Christmas to be winter decor. I made a loose wreath for my my milk-painted rocking horse. The primitive hutch

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Decorating

Christmas decorating | family room

I am not detail oriented when it comes to picking out a Christmas tree.  I figure one is just about as good as the next, so I don’t angst over it.  I had the guy at the tree farm hold out one and it was clear that the bottom was a bit mangled, so I asked if he could show me another one.  He lifted it up and gave it a turn to fluff the branches.  Jeff was standing behind me and the boys were yelling from the next aisle over that they wanted an 11′ tree.  I looked over the tree the gentleman was holding out.  “What do you think, Jeff?”  “I think it’s fine.”  He is even less detail oriented when it comes to picking out a tree than I am. “Okay, then.  That’s the one.”  We had it wrapped up and on the roof of the van

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Decorating

Christmas decorating | master bedroom

I bought some greenery over the weekend (and clipped some from obliging trees as well) and we picked up the Parsons’ family Christmas tree yesterday.  The intention was to have it all decorated by the evening, but that didn’t happen.  As soon as we got the tree in the room, I realized it was the largest tree we’ve ever had.  The diameter at the base is almost six feet and it is very full!  We had to trim down the top and reshape it just to make it fit in the room.  It’s beautiful and I absolutely love it, but it’s so big that I ran out of lights 3/4 of the way up.  I made a trip to the store last night and we’ll get it finished today.  I’m enjoying taking my time with it, though, and running out of lights forced me to slow down even more. This

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Dining Room

tips for sanding floors

This is my second time refinishing floors and I learned a lot through my errors the first go-around.   Since scooting around on diaper boxes to wipe up excess stain (you can read about those antics HERE), I have learned a lot about finishing wood and have done a lot of reading on sanding and finishing floors specifically.  There are so many ways to approach it…everything from sanding an entire room with a palm sander (yes, some people do that), to spending hours getting each piece of wood back to the way it looked the day it was milled.  Our approach?  We wanted the floors to look nice, but weren’t concerned with perfection.  There are already tack marks from carpeting, large holes from old radiators and gas pipes, gouges, scratches, knots, chips and dents, so I didn’t freak out at sanding marks or inconstancies in the wood.   So, take

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Before and Afters

the sanded floors

This weekend, we finally took the plunge and sanded down our floors.  I’ve been wanting to for a long time…well, and not wanting to at the same time.  It’s a total pain.  It’s messy and it’s really hard work, but I got it in my mind that I really wanted it done before decorating for Christmas and then closing out 2014 and Jeff went along with it. In case you haven’t seen them before, this is what the floors looked like before sanding them.  They are the original oak floors from the 1940’s.  When we moved in, we removed the berber carpet that covered them and a year later refinished them in a dark walnut stain with three coats of poly. They looked great for a few years, despite the fact that I really didn’t know what I was doing when I finished them.  That finally started showing when the

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My House

there's no turning back now…

Thursday morning I got a bee in my bonnet and decided to get a head-start on sanding the floors.  I’ve had refinishing them on my to-do list for over a year now, but it is a very not-fun, messy job and I’ve been putting it off and delaying and procrastinating.  I’ve been on a mission of late to get things in the house finished, so it’s time to tackle the floors.  I want to get them done before Thanksgiving, so after I can just enjoy decorating the house for Christmas without it looming over me. We’re refinishing the floors in four rooms in the front of the house (dining room, living room, home office & Jeff’s office), plus a small hallway.  These are the original oak floors of our 1940’s house.  My plan was to sand the perimeter of the rooms and then rent a floor sander to finish the center

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Favorite Finds

epic craig's list find

I have found a lot of great pieces on Craig’s List over the years…chandeliers, dressers, hutches, cupboards, chairs, sofas…you name it.  I’ve bought a lot off of Craig’s List.  When I’m getting ready for a market, I troll the local antiques & furniture sections daily in our local areas to see if I come up with anything good (and I often do.)  And I have another ace up my sleeve when it comes to shopping CL…my dad.  He has a truck, likes to drive and likes to meet new people, so he’s in charge of coordinating the details of the pick up and then he delivers it to me.  It saves me a lot of time and he enjoys helping out. So, I was browsing through Craig’s List a few days ago and came across a listing for a French armoire.  I have been looking for one for my bedroom

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Living Room

a slip turned into a slip

I found a pretty antique petticoat a few months ago at an antique store and decided it would make a pretty pillow cover.  I would turn a slip into a pillow slip!  Two, actually. Since the ruffle was only on one side, I made it like a slip-on pillow case instead of a traditional decorative bolster cover.  It worked out perfectly, since the ruffle hangs over the sofa and it’s tailored on the back side. It always pains me a little to cut up antique linens, but the detail on this piece was too pretty to not use. You can see a peek of the pillow form under the pillow case, but it’s white, so it’s not distracting.  I might make a simple muslin cover for it at some point, but maybe not.  I’ve even thought about putting blue and white ticking on the end that shows as a fun little detail.

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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