Family Room Decor

When going through my Chanukah decor pictures yesterday, I realized that I never posted pictures when I finished painting the family room/breakfast nook/kitchen! I painted it months ago, I can't believe we never actually photographed it! So for today's house update, here are some pictures of the family room.

I showed you this one with the nutcrackers and "Hanukkah" garland on the mantle yesterday:

Real life with a gray cat and off-white couches: we keep a blanket over her favorite spot at all times to make fur removal easier. Yep, that's a TARDIS blanket for the Whovian cat. The couches are slipcovered, so they are fairly simple to wash, but tossing the blanket in the laundry is even simpler and minimizes wear and tear on that one cushion.

Here's a better, less glare-y shot of the art behind the TV. Those are two vintage travel posters for Siena, Italy. Above the center speaker are a couple record covers, for My Fair Lady and Camelot.

The built in bookshelves have books, movies, art and other cool things. Here's our "superhero" shelf, with our collection of Marvel movies and our little Captain America and Baby Groot.

On the other side of the fireplace, I also have sections of shelf dedicated to Tolkein (both books and movies), Tamora Pierce books and David Eddings books. And a section of Arthurian legend/British pre-history since after doing my MFA "thesis" on Camelot I have a lot of Arthurian books!

And that's the family room! I'll take updated pictures of the kitchen and breakfast nook next and share those soon.

Chanukah Decorating (2015 Edition)

I had plans to post my Chanukah decor before the start of the holiday. But we were so busy with celebrations that I'm not actually getting it up until today, the last day. Oh well, better late than never!

This year, since we just finished the dining room and we were hosting a large group of friends for latkes and brisket, we did a lot of holiday decorating in the dining room.

The frames above the sideboard now have photos in them, but the package hadn't yet arrived from Shutterfly when I took these pictures.

You can never have too many dreidels!

And here's the dining table all set for 10! It was so fun to get out all of our wine glasses for a fancy party, it's not something we ever had room for in our old place!

We hung the felt menorah in the living room.

And did a little mantle decorating with nutcrackers and a glittery "Hanukkah" garland in the family room.

We also put some dreidel garland up the staircase, but with the snowy weather over the weekend I haven't had good light to take a picture. Hopefully the sun will cooperate so I can share that before December is over, but we will see.

Weekly Meal Plan 12.13.15

We had a busy weekend filled with parties and friends, so I'm planning on some simpler meals this week, and working on cleaning out some of our leftovers too.

Sunday: leftover brisket and latkes

Monday: quiche and salad

Tuesday: borscht

Wednesday: leftover chicken curry

Thursday:leftover borscht

Friday: finish off leftovers

Saturday: date night

Weekly Meal Plan 12.6.15

Happy Chanukah! It's time for latkes, applesauce and donuts around here.

Here's what we're eating this week:

Sunday: slow cooker chili & corn bread

Monday: leftovers

Tuesday: pasta with chicken & salad

Wednesday: menorah lighting at the community center

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: latkes and applesauce, brisket

Saturday: holiday party at work

Knitted Baby Blanket

One of my BFFs from childhood (we can never remember exactly when we met, we've been like sisters for that long!) recently had an adorable baby boy. When she got pregnant, I started knitting this blanket, but as always I underestimated how long it would take me to finish the project and baby was born before I was done. BUT I finally had it done in time to meet him for the first time, so I think it's still a win! Here's the finished product:

The pattern is from Bernat, the "Knit Blanket" you'll find on their Baby Coordinates yarn. It was a fairly simple repeating pattern, and I made it a little different by using two colors of yarn in varying stripe widths rather than single color like it was in the pattern. It's a bigger baby blanket, so baby will be able to use it well into childhood.

Since this project was so big, I'm not doing as many handmade holiday gifts as I often do. What handmade gifts are you working on now?

The Dining Room -- Nearly Done!

I'm almost done with the dining room! Yippee!

What started as a slow project simply because I was already in paint clothes turned into a massive day of painting Sunday. We had found a buffet and dining chairs we loved on super sconto (Italian for massive sale, it's a term I still use from my year abroad) at Restoration Hardware. We were told we would get a call around the 18th to schedule delivery. Well, they called on the 11th and wanted to deliver on the 17th! So my timeline got sped up a little bit, and we busted this room out. It helped a lot that Sean had the time to help paint, so he rolled the ceilings and walls while I did the trim and cut-ins.

Here it is, the nearly finished dining room!

What do I still need to do?

I need to finish the painting around the window -- you can't see it here because the blinds are closed but I have to do the window surround in sections as I carefully pull back the blinds. The way that valance above it attached to the wall, neither it nor the blinds can easily come down without destroying some drywall. But I can be careful enough that it's not a huge problem, just slow going.

I also need to finish getting up that collage wall over the buffet. And put pictures in the frames! That's a picture from our wedding as the large center one, and the plan is to put black and white family photos radiating outwards. I have more frames, but they don't all have hanging hardware yet, so that's why it looks lopsided. I spaced out the arrangement on the table, started hanging, and had somehow grouped the frames without hardware. What can I say, it looked good!

So that's where we are with the dining room right now! I'm so excited to have to looking good, and to have a place to store everything that had been under the china cabinet. It makes me want to host a holiday gathering in here!

Work on the Dining Room Begins

This past week I've been spending most of the day painting for a play. And since I'm already wearing paint clothes when I get home, I've started working on the dining room in bits and pieces:

I'm using beadboard wallpaper below the chair rail to simulate actual wainscoting. (A product that has a bit of a learning curve, but is fairly forgiving when it comes to fixing seams.) I'll then paint it in the same semi-gloss white that I've used for the trim throughout the house. Above the chair rail I'm planning on a deep navy like some of these inspiration images:

dining room inspiration from HGTV

dining room inspiration from 58 Water Street

The dining room still has a ways to go before I'll call it "finished" -- I still need to find the perfect chairs and buffet, and after the painting is done I have plans for a wall of black and white family photos that I still need to collect from the parents. But it's great to finally be making some progress in here, slow though it may be!