Deck the Halls

Bailey with her stocking ;)

I was having the hardest time getting into the Christmas spirit this year and I wasn't sure why.  I thought maybe it was because I'm an North Carolina girl that is used to a much colder December than Charleston has to offer.  Or maybe it was because I hadn't started any of my Christmas shopping yet.  Or maybe it's because I've been trying to hang on to Fall for as long as I possibly can...

Well after a wonderful Thanksgiving spent at my in-laws, Brad and I came home and did our traditional post-Thanksgiving Christmas decorating.  After putting all of my pumpkins *sigh* back in storage, we busted out six large boxes of Christmas decor and made a day of it!  We played Christmas music and reminisced about sentimental tree ornaments.  Slowly but surely our house was transforming from Fall to Winter...and I finally started to feel in the Christmas spirit!  All it took was a little Harry Connick Jr. Christmas tunes, a lit tree, and time spent with my hubby decorating the house.  There is nothing like decorating to get you excited about the holidays :)  Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!

Willow Tree nativity scene.  

Simple decorating...

My Buyers Choice Carolers...a Jenkins trademark decoration!

This is SO easy to do...I got the pine needles and magnolia leaves from
my back yard.  Free decorations that are beautiful are the best ;)

Ornaments hanging from my dining room chandelier.

Our tree skirt was bought in Truckee, CA on a family vacation.  I think
of Cara and the Besio family every time we put the skirt out.

An easy decoration...and you get to eat it too!  My favorite ;)

My new $4.00 shutters from Habitat Restore.

My grandmother, Mama Ann, always had Andy's Mints on hand.
I bought these to remember every Christmas spent in Red Springs.

Red apples to accent the greenery...

Simple table setting.

I love decorating my tea cups each season.  

The Family Tree

New Uses for Everyday Things

Have you ever felt like you don't have enough room in your house to store your seasonal decorations?  Have you accumulated so much stuff that you feel like Clark Griswold?  I've felt like this for awhile now, so I've been working really hard at trying to get rid of some of my seasonal decor.  With Fall just around the corner (even though Fall in the Porter house officially began September 1st!), this is the perfect time to try and scale down your Fall and Winter decorations.  This past weekend we hosted a yard sale and I sold 10 of my fake pumpkins...TEN!  *Gasp*  Don't worry my fellow Fall fanatics...I still have 14 fake pumpkins on display around the house...but they are small pumpkins and I promise you they don't take up much room ;)

A few of my pumpkins on display...

In order to scale down my decorations, I'm taking up a new motto --- get creative and decorate with what you have.  You don't need to go out and buy new decorations when there are so many ways to decorate with basic household items :)

A cake stand can be used as a candle holder!  Shhh...don't tell my husband
that I used his hacksaw to cut the candle down to the right height ;)

A teacup can be used as a topiary.  Just put something
on top to add a little seasonal flare!

A plate can be used as a welcome sign!  Just use
an Expo marker and write a sweet note!

Anybody else have a new use for an everyday item?  Send me a picture and I'll post it on my blog!

Any Given Sunday

Any given Sunday our house could look like this...

Project central.

Spray paint is usually my weapon of choice...it can cure anything.  I learned this trick from my mama ;)  She spray paints everything.  This past weekend, however, I decided to put away my spray can and tackle something a little more....um...challenging...restoring an antique dresser!

The banged up dresser.

This summer I bought a beat up ol' dresser from an antique store in NC for 70 bucks.  Y'all, it looked awful.  It was beyond banged up and had more dimples in it than a golf ball.  Even though it needed some serious TLC, I decided to buy it anyway because of its oh-so-beautiful french drawers.  They were curved and had the most unique hardware I'd ever seen.  Needless to say, another project was quickly born and I was going to do my best to restore the dresser to its original condition.  If the restoration failed, I knew I could always paint it :)

Here's the step by step process...

Sanding with my mouse sander!  It worked like a charm!

Sanded top.

I love this little hook on the top...it adds so much character ;)

Sanded drawers.

Red mahogany stain.  Should have used gloves.

Stained dresser.

Stained dresser with semi-gloss polyurethane.

I filled in all the bumps and dings with wood filler prior to staining.
You can see the difference if you compare this picture to
the first picture of the dresser up top.

And I still love the hook!

And its curvy drawers!

We put the dresser in the front hallway and added decorations ;)

The project took 1 full day to finish.  I love how it turned out and I'm already organizing the drawers with all my knickknacks!

Tomorrow is a Very Important Day

Y'all, tomorrow is September 1st!  This is the day that decorators all across the globe have been waiting for...the first day you can actually start putting out Fall decorations!  Yippie!!!  My Fall decorations have been feeling like Woody from Toy Story...they've been packed away in storage praying that someone will "play" with them again.  Well I'm here to rescue them from their dark and dusty corner and display them all over the house :)

My new Marshall's purchase.

I even treated myself to a new Fall decoration from Marshall's today.  I figured since I've anxiously awaited the whole summer to finally be able to decorate with pumpkins, straw, nuts, and berries, then I may as well reward myself with something new ;o)  I'm sure my hubby won't mind one bit.  He understands my anticipation for Fall...he's been anticipating Fall just as long as I have...but for very different reasons.

Think Black and Gold...

Jeff and Brad, 1982

Or better yet, Orange and Purple...

Blair, Cara, LA, and Brad at Clemson game 2008

I can already hear the Tiger Rag as I type!  C-L-E-M-S-OOOOO-N!  

When football season comes around, I can say goodbye to my Saturdays and Sundays because my hubby will be permanently tuned into ESPN.  It's ok though...I'll forgive him for his football antics if he'll forgive me for redecorating the entire house just because the season has changed.  ;o)  

Moral of the Story...no matter if you're a decorator, a football fanatic, or both...have a Happy Fall, y'all!

Window Mistreatments

The definition of a window mistreatment was first coined by my decorating heroine, The Nester.  She started blogging about window mistreatments years ago, but I like to believe that women have been mistreating windows since before time began :)  By mistreatment I don't mean women beating their windows with a baseball bat (though that would be hilarious).  I mean decorating your windows at a low cost using as little sewing as possible.  The official Nester definition of a mistreatment is as follows:

Mistreatment: (n). covering for a window that is quick, cheap and pretty. may or may not need hardware does not require sewing. a real designer’s worst nightmare.

Mistreating: (v). the act of treating a window with dignity and respect without use of the following: hundreds of dollars, sewing, time, crying, divorce, child neglect…

My friend Rachel was visiting me from Tennessee a few weekends ago and she had just hung the most beautiful mistreatment.  No curtain rod required...just tacked it directly to the door!  And...she used French Country fabric...it's so beautiful I about fell out the first time I saw a picture of it!  I made her send me those fabo photos of her mistreatment so I could share its beauty with the world ;o)  Don'tcha just love it?  I seriously want to have a tea and crumpets party right beside her mistreatment...I would be in heaven.  Thanks, Rach, for sharing!

As I went to the fabric store (The Fabric Emporium located beside the Old Mt. Pleasant Wally World) yesterday trying to finish up a last minute addition to our soon to be revealed guest room, the ladies that work at this wonderful place claimed that they were looking for someone with a little upholstery experience.  They knew that I had reupholstered a chair for my guest room and half-heartedly offered me a reupholstery job.  Mercy.  What were they thinking?  I've only reupholstered two chairs...ever.  One was a disaster and the other was a success.  Definitely nothing to brag about for sure.  I have to believe they were joking about the position because a) they don't know me from Adam  b) they've never seen my work (my two very simple chairs)  c) they don't know that I'm a product of The Nester, the queen of cutting corners and  d) they most certainly don't know my history of reupholstering a chair using a glue gun, along with hanging window mistreatments using clothes pins and potato chip clips.  I wanted to share my dirty little mistreatment secrets with them right then and there, but I saved myself the embarrassment and went along my merry way.

As I got home that evening, I was thinking why in the world was I embarrassed to share my story?  Why couldn't I tell these classically trained designer ladies the truth about my sewing secrets?  I think it's because I take pleasure in knowing that I can create something that looks like something they, the expert designers, would make...but I can do it at a third of the cost.  Have you ever seen the Pixar movie, Ratatouille?  The main theme throughout the movie was "anybody can cook."  What I'm here to say to you is that you don't have to be a classically trained designer in order to decorate.  If you know how to operate a glue gun, hammer some nails in a wall, and gather fabric using a safety pin, you are well on your way!  Please don't think that I'm saying never hire a decorator.   I love professional decorators (the non-snooty kind) and secretly envy their job.  If I could go back to school and do it all over again, I'd probably want to be classically trained too.  And...I love those decorator ladies at The Fabric Emporium.  They aren't snooty like the ladies from the "other" decorator store.  The Emporium ladies are so helpful and even have some wonderful ideas to share...and I love that their prices are perfect (ahem, cheap) for my kind of decorating.  But, for the time being, I believe I'll go on letting these women think that I'm just as talented as they are...It's our little secret ;o)

So, if you're thinking about decorating with fabric, now is your chance!  You can be a decorator too...make a quick trip to the Fabric Emporium, use your imagination, work with what you have, and bust out that glue gun ASAP!  For inspiration, here are some pics of the window mistreatments that are hung at our house.  All the trim is hot glued...and don'tcha just love my potato chip clips ;) 

If you have some mistreatments that you'd like to share, email me at mrslaporter@gmail.com and I'll post them on my blog!