Lots to be thankful for

I absolutely love the holidays.  I love decorating, entertaining, and all the cooking that this season brings.  Darrell and I hosted our family Thanksgiving this year at our home.  This was our first Thanksgiving in our new house and it was nice to actually have space to entertain.   My parents drove down from Kansas, and we invited one of our friends over for dinner that couldn't go back home for the holidays. 

I didn't have a ton of baking to do, but I did start Thanksgiving day off by making my favorite pumpkin roll.  If you are like me and love pumpkin, you have to try one.  They are super easy to make and yummy!!!  I'll post my recipe later this week.  

My brother found the turkey recipe that we made this year, Herb-Roasted Turkey with Apple Cider Gravy.  It was by far one of the best ones we have ever made.

This year, I decided to decorate our table in a more rustic theme.  I love the look of burlap, so I went to our neighborhood JoAnn's and picked up 6 yards of tan burlap and 2 yards of a dark tan burlap.  I recently figured out how to use my mom's sewing machine, and all projects lately have revolved around it.  Since we have a square table, we had to sew the table cloth together to make the yards fit.  One of the first things we did with the burlap was wash it.  If you work with burlap, make sure to do this because they treat it with a chemical to keep bugs from eating it.  I decided to do the table cloth in the lighter tan and place mats in the darker tan.  I had a stump that my brother had made for me and I used some of the decorations I had around the house to put together our over all look.  I used pine cones as the stand for the place cards and used the extra burlap to make a  string of flags to go over my make shift buffet.  I basically just covered up our bathroom vanity that is currently in our bay window.

I also had gotten some curly willow that was on our fireplace mantle that needed to be tossed.  My mom really didn't want me to throw it away, so I decided to use it as a front door wreath.  We used some of the light burlap to secure the branches together and my mom brought down ribbon she had found, and I made a few flowers for it as well.

I am so thankful for my absolutely amazing husband, my loveable little bully Bella, my two crazy cats, my family, friends and all the blessings I have in my life.  I am so lucky and blessed.

Love B

Never too late to celebrate!

So even though we moved into our house, oh, five months ago, we finally decided to have a housewarming party.  Initially it was to show off our finished master bathroom, but we were not able to get it completely done.  Never the less, we decided to celebrate.  We wanted to thank everyone that came out to see the house last night.  We had so much fun.  Here are a few pictures to show everyone else what our current house looks like, missing a few rooms, but you get the picture.  :o)

 Our delicious spread of the evening.  

 My mini pumpkin cookie pies.  If I haven't made these for you, you might be missing out.  I'm just saying. 

 My attempt to make mini blueberry pies.  Everything mini is always better.  They turned out pretty good! 

 Bella bear was SO excited for the party.  I LOVE her. 

 She did pretty good and helped 'clean' the floor with all the guests there.

 This is the view from our front door.  We rearranged our living room.  SO much better.  My parents brought down one of their chairs that I will attempt to reupholster.   Thanks to my amazing family for helping get the house ready for the party!! 

Our dining room.  New addition was the place settings and the fabric on the wall.  I took 2 pillow cases and made these for the wall.  They were the perfect color to match my theme in the living room.  It's so hard to find good patterns at the fabric stores with out ordering, so pillows were the next best thing!  I want to get a 'dresser' and repaint it and place it in the bay window.  So many projects. 

 The view from the dining room.  New front door from the break in.  I have SO much wall room that they still look empty, but we are getting there.  

Our bedroom.  Finally got the boxes and tubs out of my room.  I forgot how much space we have in there.  Found the perfect lamps and picked up the chairs by the fire place at a garage sale.  We are thinking about reupholstering them in black leather and I'm hoping to order yellow curtains for the windows. 

The new additions to our mantel.  Since we have not tested out our fire places, we just put candles in them.  I LOVE the chairs and they are so, so comfortable.  Best part was that the two of them were only $20. 

 I had to take a picture of the flowers I got for the evening.  I think they are gorgeous. 

Sadly we did not get our chairs done for the evening for our breakfast nook.  We are hoping to do that tomorrow while my mom is here.  New curtains that I'm obsessed with.  They are amazing.  

Love B