Have Yourself...

...a merry little Christmas!  I hope you all have a wonderful holiday filled with loving family and friends!  I just wanted to take a minute and tell you guys how thankful I am for each and every one of you!  The fact that you take time out of your day to pop into my little corner of the blog-o-sphere means the world to me!!

So from our house to yours, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!  I'll see you in 2014! :)

Oh, and I surely couldn't let the holiday pass without sharing hubby's fab lighting skills!  He made our house perfectly festive. :)

Isn't he the best?!?! ;)

Winter Mantel.

Hubby and I want to start a new trend.  We are determined to make it totally acceptable to keep Christmas lights up throughout the winter.  And no, I’m not talking about our icicle lights hanging from the gutters. ;)  I am referring to the lovely glow that indoor Christmas lights create in a space.  We had so many lights up during the holidays that after we took everything down, it never felt quite right without that cozy factor during the dark winter nights.  We missed it like crazy.

My solution for our dilemma?  Decorate our mantel in a wintery theme, and buy a strand of white lights to give us our cozy back!  {I couldn’t use the strands of white lights I already had from Christmas...the cords on those were green, and they would have stuck out like a sore thumb.  I needed white to work with my winter theme.}

To begin the process, I wanted to transform the mirror we already had on our mantel.  The size and pattern of the frame was great, but the plastic-ish, black color just didn't do it for me.  I tried to remove the frame, keeping the mirror in tact.  I was going to use some 1 x 5's I had cut down at Home Depot to create a new frame, but for the life of me, I could NOT get the frame off of the mirror.  They used some major league, permanent adhesive on that sucker.  So it was on to plan B...spray paint.

You saw me priming the mirror here {when I transformed the quatrefoil mirror from Tar-jay}.  I'm not sure if it was the weather, or if I didn't clean the frame up enough, but the spray paint didn't seem to stick that well to the beaded part of the frame.  After one coat of spray primer, I decided to switch to my tried and true Behr Paint and Primer...in white semi-gloss.  It gives great coverage, and I already had an entire can of it leftover in the basement from when we painted our trim.  {Free = awesome.}

I painted several coats and after a few days of curing, I put the mirror back up on the mantel.  Hubby and I both agreed...we loved it 10 times more in white.  It was much more “us”.

With the mirror back in place, it was time to add some accessories from around the house, some snowy branches I found at the grocery store {Stop & Shop's floral department has some great things at even better prices} and the pièce de résistance...the white lights.

I am super happy with the mantel and we adore the light it casts at night.  Until we can get a gas fireplace installed, string lights will give us the ambiance we want at night, and for a WHOLE LOT LESS money. ;)

Anyone else want to jump on the “use Christmas lights allllllll throughout the winter months” bandwagon?!?  Come on.  You know you want to! ;)  Or do you think we are being totally tacky?  You can be honest. 

Signs.

I think someone is trying to tell us it's time to take the holiday decor down.

Our outdoor Christmas lights are on a timer.  They are set to come on at dusk.  I had to come home early on Thursday to accept delivery of this baby {can't wait to share...and no, unfortunately it's not our rugs}.  That meant the sun was still out, and our lights hadn't switched on yet.

Hubby came home about an hour after me and said he had some bad news.  We had become his nightmare...we were "those" people who had sloppy lights hanging off of our house.  He couldn't take it, went outside and shut them off immediately {after I took pictures of the evidence, of course}.

We are taking it as a sign to get our butts in gear.  Hopefully, we'll get our house de-Christmas-ified this weekend, but I wouldn't place any bets because tomorrow is this little guy's 1st birthday celebration.  How the heck did our Godson turn 1 already?!?!

Have a great weekend everyone! :)