A New Home Sweet Home

Hello!! Lots of changes have been happening. We moved -- again!! We quickly realized that the old farmhouse we were renting was entirely too small and didn't offer enough storage space, let alone room for guests, and then after a scary-snake-beside-my-bed incident in August, that kind of made our decision to move become even more urgent. 

After some stressful weeks where we were sure we weren't going to get our current place due to clerical errors, we finally received the call that the place was ours. We moved in a week ago yesterday and are IN LOVE!! It's much, much larger: we have 5 bedrooms as opposed to the 2 in the old place, and at 2700 sq feet, we can now have guests! It's still an old farmhouse, though this one is in MUCH better condition, and the views are to die for! 

We're still trying to unpack and get everything put away but it's much easier now that there is room for all of our stuff!! We're thoroughly enjoying fall here in Maggie Valley, too. It's so much quieter than Asheville and we love not having 6 lanes of traffic and 400 stop lights to sit through! My mom, niece and sister came up last weekend to help us move stuff from storage into the house and get started putting things away. It still looks like a bomb went off in here but we're managing to get it all done. Hopefully we'll knock another room off the list today and I'll have lots of new pics to share soon.

Farmhouse Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, again, and it feels like it all happened in the blink of an eye. I didn't get to decorate as early as I'd hoped, but I still got two trees up, the porch decorated, the hallway decorated and stockings were hung. It was a lovely Christmas here, just the two of us and the two doggies, and it was very low key and simple. I have lots of pics to share but let me start out with this one first:

Yes! This happened this past Saturday night at a local resort here in Asheville. After a really nice dinner, the man told me he wanted us to have our picture taken in front of this huge tree by the professional photographer, and much to my surprise, once we were in front of the tree and the photographer was busy snapping away, the man dropped to one knee and asked for my hand in marriage! Completely SHOCKED, as if you couldn't tell from the look on my face. lol 

Now, on to the holiday decorating pictures. My white office tree which is primarily decorated in minty pastel shades of green, blue and pink, with lots of vintage ornaments mixed in. 

 

 

 

 

 I've always had a 'themed' main room tree -- for several years it was blue and silver, then in 2008, I switched to copper and aqua and browns and that was my plan for my main floor tree this year until the man expressed his desire to have a colorful, non-matchy tree, which kind of gave me palpitations at first since I'm always so matchy-matchy on the main tree but after some thought, I decided why the heck not. I mean we live in this beautiful old farmhouse, so a mismatched, retro style theme would be perfect. 

Unfortunately, I requested my mom to bring my aqua and copper ornaments for the main tree, thereby leaving all of my retro, brightly colored ornaments in SC in their garage, but I scrounged up enough extras here that I've been hoarding for crafting purposes that I was able to pull off a retro themed tree!! I ended up loving it SO much that I doubt I'll go back to my formal-ish tree until/unless we move into a much bigger house that has a formal living room! 

 

 

Once I had the tree decorated with all the brightly colored Shiny Brites and West Germany and Poland ornaments, I figured I'd continue the vintage theme and use a vintage Christmas tablecloth as my tree skirt. I used one on the table too and filled my Tom and Jerry punch bowl with vintage ornaments and tinsel garland. 

 I've wanted to make a wreath like this for several years but never got around to it until now. It is huge and I love how it turned out. I used over 50' of vintage tinsel garland and over 70 vintage light bulbs. It is perfectly kitschy and I am tempted to hang it up inside year round! 

I continued the retro Christmas theme on the banisters of the stairs in our hallway. I put up green garland and then put ornaments every couple of spindles, hung from ribbons and topped with bows. I decided red and green was a good, old-timey look that went with the retro theme.

And I decided to hang up this vintage Santa Mail felt creation from 1957 by the door. I bought this thing back in 2011 at a rummage sale at an assisted living facility while I still lived in MD. It cost me a dollar but it is priceless to me. I love it so much!! It's holding all of the holiday cards I received this year! 

In our bathroom I put up my small tabletop tree and used pink and green ornaments on it. It's my tacky flamingo tree! I ended up putting the majority of my flamingo ornaments on the main tree because they are too heavy for the branches of this little tree but I still love it, even though it's mostly just the ball ornaments. I used some doilies I found last month at a thrift store to make a tree skirt for this one. 

In my office I have a couple of shelves above my desk that usually hold my spaghetti poodles and other dog decorations but I took those down for the holiday and put up my Gurley candles in their place. 

Despite not having children, we were still up by 7:30 yesterday, thanks to Mr. Marty. I don't know how he knew that it was Christmas, but he did, and he would NOT go back to sleep. He sat by our bedroom door, whining, until we got up and told him we'd go see what Santa brought. He was so excited. He sat right by the fireplace waiting for us to get their stockings down and pull out the goodies. Santa brought him and Scarlett 2 new toys each, some cookies and some sausages for puppies. And then they each got new fleece material for their beds. Marty got 2 bow ties and his sissy got a new coat, since she's always cold. 

As you can see from the following pictures, Scarlett was not at all interested in being awake at 7:30, nor was she interested in gifts. Marty played with the toys and then took a nap. That was how the day went, actually. We opened gifts, ate breakfast, took naps, ate lunch, took more naps and generally were lazy like sloths! It was the perfect day. I said last Christmas that this year I hoped to be in the mountains having a nice, quiet, low key Christmas and that is exactly what happened!

I am so excited for 2014 and all of the wonderful new beginnings we'll have. We are planning to wed sometime next year, though we have no idea where or when. The man starts a new job in January, for which we are both very thankful and excited about. After several really depressing years, I have to say that this year has been amazing and I know 2014 will be even better. 

 

My Office is a Ridiculous Mess

And I cannot take it any longer! I have been struggling since last November to get this place set up in a functioning manner and I have failed miserably. Today, while I was emailing back and forth with my mama, I had one of those light bulb moments. I think I've finally figured out how to set it up in here so that I can actually keep it neat and organized AND be productive! Part of this light bulb moment included the realization that a couple of my favorite pieces of furniture that are currently in here just aren't going to work for this space. And that leads me to the second half of my day:

I'm switching out the two guest rooms upstairs. Currently, we have a larger bedroom which has two twin size beds and a chest of drawers. And then there is the smaller room that has the full size bed and a chest of drawers. Now, this probably seems like a ridiculous set up, given the sizes of the rooms, but last year when we moved in, I was certain we'd need to keep the two twin sized beds and I wanted to have more room in between them so I put them in the bigger of the two bedrooms. Having lived here for almost a year now, I'm realizing that we don't really have many guests and it's pointless to take up that much space when I could better utilize it by switching beds/rooms and taking away one of the twin size beds! Yay for that little insight!

Additionally, once the bedrooms are switched, I'll then have enough room in both rooms to put one piece of the furniture currently in my craft space! So, I'll have more space in the bedrooms plus I'll be able to take the furniture in my craft room and repurpose it to work in the bedrooms, thus freeing up some much needed wall space here in my office/scraproom. I should really stop calling it a scraproom. I haven't scrapped in forevah! Like at least a year! Okay, I think I'll go with craft room. Or maybe just office. I don't really do much crafting either! lol Decisions, decisions!

In other news, Will made it home safely late last Tuesday night and he came bearing a huge Leonidas box *and* some chocolate covered Belgian waffles! We relaxed a lot on Wednesday and Thursday and then headed to the beautiful Amish countryside in Pennsylvania on Friday. Of course I was hoping to leave rather early, giving me plenty of time to explore the area but we didn't even get on the road until a quarter til noon! I visited some antique stores, found a Salvation Army where I bought a couple of cute old suitcases and then found a fabulous Goodwill. We stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel on the way home that night and all in all, had a very relaxing day! It was great!!

I did some thrifting yesterday and had a little bit of luck. It seems that the thrift stores are getting kind of slim though. And what they do have to offer is so much more expensive than it was a year ago. I always get good laugh at some of their prices! Oh, and I roll my eyes a bit too!! I'm quite ready for some yard sales and church rummage sales. I always find good stuff at those places.

Well, I need to get back to the reorganizing or I'm going to lose my motivation. I promise I'll have lots of pictures to share once it's all complete. And yes, I realize I've been saying that for 5 months!! I'll do much better this time around.

A little spring cleaning in December!

I finally took the plunge and coughed up the $25 to upgrade my flickr account to pro so I could add more pictures without the constant reminders that my earlier pictures were being hidden until I upgraded to a pro account. It sure didn't take long to reach the limit on there for the free accounts! I also spent some time organizing and tagging my pictures and putting them in sets and spiffing up the place. I changed out my avatar on there too so now all of my avatars match on here and flickr and etsy. I also added some new things to the ol etsy shop and I have more to add but my camera batteries are charging so that'll have to wait!

Yesterday was a semi decent day at the Value Village. I managed to get there right after they opened which was nice because it didn't take long to get crowded. I picked up a few must-haves, tried on another fantastic coat but decided against it (wth is wrong with me?!) and signed up for their little card that gives me 25% off of everything on Thursday too! Wooot! Now I can go at least twice a week and find fabulous stuff and get 25% off.

Today, I think I'm going to spend a couple of hours this afternoon trying to get my craft room/studio/office space organized (finally!) and put out some of my Christmas stuff in here. I may even do a tree. What I really need to do is get dressed and go to the mall and try to find something to wear to the Christmas party this weekend at the VP's house. Yeah, time is running out and yet here I sit with no motivation to go shopping. Hmmm.

I'm not feeling very Christmas-y at all this year. It's looking more and more certain that I'll be spending both Christmas AND New Years alone. Will is flying back out to Wyoming and although I could do the same, it's just so freaking expensive to take a flight out there. I'm trying to remind myself that Will and I can always go somewhere together in January for a week or so but the reality that I'll be alone in this stupid state for the holidays is depressing! At least my best friend Andrea will be home alone too! lol Her husband is in the Secret Service and will be with either Bush or Obama for the holidays. Maybe we'll have a pity party together!

I think this is the first year I haven't had all of my Christmas and winter decorations out by now, but I'm just not feeling it this year. I'm definitely in a blah sort of mood right now. Maybe cleaning my room and pulling out all of my great vintage ornaments will help cheer me up!

Redecorating

I don't know about you guys but I feel like we are constantly redecorating this house. Which I don't mind one bit, by the way. I look forward to changing out accessories with the seasons. I blame it on being a Gemini. I honestly could not live with the same accessories, day in day out, for 12 months at a time. I get bored very easily.

I went to 3 different Targets this week. As many of you probably know, Target is having a HUGE clearance sale. HUGE. The stores around here marked down things to 75% off yesterday. Of course I spent the majority of the money on Thursday. Go figure! I totally scored though. I found a king sized dark brown velvet quilt for less than $18. The matching shams were $4 each and then brown "silk" curtains were $13 each. Yes, I know it sounds like a lot of brown but it's going to look fabulous once I pull it all together. And I have to admit that brown isn't a color I'd usually pick to decorate with.

I attempted to pick out paint colors today while the husband and I were at Home Depot. I'm kind of tired of looking at these white walls. At our house in SC, the first thing we did after closing on it was to start painting. Every room was painted. And then we moved to Maryland and rented a house and all of those walls were white. And we couldn't paint. So, although I'm used to living with white walls, I do want to paint here in our new house. I can't find a color I really love though. I need to keep the walls neutral because I do change out the accessories and slip covers with the seasons and need everything to match. I'm thinking a nice sandy color will work.

The weather is nice this weekend so I need to go tomorrow and pick up some mums and other fall stuff to decorate the porch. The husband has been busy today building a section of privacy fencing and he'll finish that up tomorrow hopefully. This weekend has been much better than last!!

I can feel Autumn in the air...

..and I freaking LOVE IT! It was definitely crisp outside this morning when I let the dogs out. Now, I will admit, crisp to me probably means something different than it does to you. Well, if you have lived in a place with 4 seasons your entire life anyhow. See, I spent 26 years of my life in SC where we only had 2 real seasons. Summer and almost summer. Haha! There were numerous times where it would be Christmas and still be warm enough to wear shorts. So, having moved to Maryland two years ago, I am thoroughly enjoying having 4 distinct seasons. I wish winter was a little more, well, winter-y with snow and whatnot, but it's still a very pleasant change from SC. I swear I can see some leaves starting to change color too. It's very slight but I can see it!

Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year. I wish I could just live in a place that was fall all the time. I have started putting out some of our Fall accessories around the house and I hope to get some mums planted soon. I think I need to call Merry Maids to give the house a good once-over because I am just not motivated at all to clean my house lately. I need to give it a good deep cleaning though so I can finish putting out all of the fall decorations.

Lately, I have been OBSESSING about a house Will and I put an offer in on last spring that we didn't get. I think about this house at least several times a day and I am feeling kind of heartbroken. I do like our current house but I really feel like we just settled because we were getting down to the wire as far as our lease was concerned and we'd already put offers on a couple of houses and didn't get them in the end. So, when we saw this house, we kind of jumped on it because we were just so burned out with looking and this place would work. The house I keep thinking about needed a lot of cosmetic work, but it was so huge and was on a couple of acres and I am just sad that we didn't end up moving in there. I do like the conveniences in the town where our current house is located. We're very close to a lot of things, including downtown Baltimore, so that's a nice perk. But the other house was out in the country and had so much room and I think that's the part I'm missing the most. I still feel like this house we're in now is just too small for us.

Now that I'm done having a pity party, I'll let you know about my fabulous time at the thrift stores yesterday. I was planning on going to the Ghetto Thrift on Tuesday but I forgot that we had to take the dogs to the vet for their yearly check-up that day. So, after the vet appointment, Will and I had to drive around and try to find matting for some prints we needed framed. The first AC Moore told us that if they had to order us any matting it would be over $100! They are obviously outta their freaking minds, especially considering I can buy it at Hobby Lobby for a couple of dollars. Never mind that we don't actually *have* any Hobby Lobby stores around here but I would rather wait until I'm back down in SC to pick some up at the HL in my parents town than to pay over $100 for some cardboard!

Anyhow, we drove to another AC Moore which is up above Baltimore and as we were leaving the first AC Moore, I found a new (to me anyhow!) thrift store. YAY!! It's a Value Village which is the name of the thrift store across from the base that I used to go to every week but is now too far away to justify driving to. Well, imagine my delight in seeing one that is only a couple of miles from my house!! Unfortunately, we were in a hurry and I didn't have time to stop but I knew I'd be back before the week was over.

And that's exactly what I did yesterday morning. I got up at a reasonable time and headed out to the Value Village. I should start using VV instead of having to type the whole name out. Man, how's that for lazy? Anyhow, this store is huge and so organized but the prices are kind of ridiculous on some items. I found a fabulous little wooden sewing box for $5 and saw a ton of milk glass stuff that I passed on. I think they have a sale on Monday's where everything is 25% off so that's going to be my regular day there!

Then yesterday afternoon after the husband got home from work, we had to run a couple of errands and I asked if he'd ride with me to the Ghetto Thrift (hereafter known as GT!) and bribed him into saying yes by offering to buy him a snowcone along the way! He agreed and even came inside with me! I get 25% off everyday at this thrift store so which day I go on doesn't really matter. I managed to spend 23$ and came home with two huge bags of stuff. I picked up 5 or 6 Blue's Clues VHS tapes for my niece. She's 19 months old and obsessed with Blue's Clues and it's impossible to find anything related to Blue's Clues in regular stores anymore. So, I bought those for her and they were only 75 cents each. Much cheaper than the ones my sister found on Ebay that had shipping costs of $40!! I also picked up the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown VHS for myself and I'm going to have Will burn it onto a DVD for me and then I'll send the tape down to my sister.

I also bought a cute little juice pitcher, one of those little chopper jars, a package of vintage napkins/coasters that have the Esso/Exxon Tiger on them but that tiger looks a lot like the Clemson tiger so I'll probably send the napkins to my sister since she's a huge Clemson fan. How come I never find any vintage Florida Gators items anywhere?!?

Well, the husband is gone for the day. He flew down to Tennessee for a couple of hours and I've been staying busy around the house. I'm currently sipping on some apple cider and trying to decide if I want to go back to the GT or not because as I was leaving yesterday afternoon, I noticed quite a few books that needed to come home with me but I could tell Will was beyond ready to leave so I didn't get them.
I'm thinking I need to go back, what do you think??