I Survived the Plague.

I’d love to be all cliché and say “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” around our house, but to be honest, it’s been looking pretty Christmas-y in our casa since Thanksgiving ended.  I was all set to reveal our holiday décor last week, but I fell victim to “the plague” {also known as a wicked sinus infection}.  Thanks to some meds, my new bff...the neti pot and some major R&R this weekend, I’m feeling much better.

Which is wonderful news for you guys because I’m sure you’ve been dying in anticipation to see entirely-too-many pictures of our house decorated for the holly, jolly season that is upon us. ;)  Last year, we moved into our house on Christmas Eve...so our house was truly lacking in the decorations department.  In fact, we were lacking in most things at that point.  So this year, hubby and I were ready to go all out for the occasion!!  There weren’t many areas of the house that we didn’t attack with lights and/or garland.

Hubby took care of the outside, and did a pretty fantastic job.  If you follow me on Instagram {retroranchreno} you saw this shot of his handy work.

I took care of decorating the inside of the house.  We have a skinny, little pre-lit tree that we’ve been using since we lived in our old townhouse.  It was perfect for that space because it didn’t take up much room, and it’s also perfect for this house since we have an open floor plan without a “great” spot to fit the tree.  I love the corner we tucked it into…and how we added some red lights to tie it in with the rest of the house.

I couldn't help myself and decorated our TV console...with an owl, of course.

The mantle is one of my favorite places to decorate...and shocker, I included an owl there too.  He was just too cute and furry to not come home with me from the store. 

And onto our buffet...turquoise and red...YES PLEASE!

Our dining room and console tables got new DIY winter-ish runners and some fun decorations.  The fabric was on sale and exactly what I was looking for...perfect!

Our kitchen got some pops of Christmas...



And so did our barn door...it's my absolute favorite.

And in case you weren't 100% sick of seeing pictures...here are a few more for good measure. :)

Anyone else looooove to decorate everything for Christmas?  I'm pretty sure we aren't ever going to be a glitter-free house again.  It's all over, no matter how much I vacuum.  Whoooops!

And since we DIY'ed some new runners and a bunch of displays, I'm linking up to the final week of Kim, Michelle, Chelsea and Rachel's Dare to DIY (Deck the Halls) link party!

Thanks so much for hosting such a wonderful series, ladies! :)

The Start of a House Tour.

I’m a very bad blogger.  I’m awful at posting regularly and I feel terrible about it.  I even managed to let my very first blogiversary pass by without positing!!  Boooooo me.  So since I’m almost a month late on that major milestone, I decided I’d try and make it up to all of you by finally starting a proper house tour of our casa.  I’ve shown some rooms here and there, and you’ve probably seen all the spaces while I was posting about projects and what not {because let's be serious...our house isn't that big}, but I just won’t be satisfied until I can add a “House Tour” tab to my blog. ;)

Plus, I really like taking a step back and seeing how far our little ranch has come in a year.  Sometimes you can get caught up in how much more you want to do, and easily forget how far you’ve already come.

Here’s a quick refresher on how things went down for us.  We closed on our home in August 2011, the day before Hurricane Irene hit.  We took out a rehab loan to purchase our house so we could buy and renovate the main floor.  We started working on painting and cleaning up the exterior in August and the interior demo began the last couple days of September 2011.  That is also when I started this lil' blog.  Our renovations took a couple months {although it felt like years}, and we were finally able to move into our home on Christmas Eve 2011.

I figure I’ll start our home's tour in the “great” room of our house.  This space used to have a defined entry/hallway, living/dining room combo and kitchen.  We quickly changed that closed-off space to make it more "us".  So without further delay, here are entirely too many pictures of one area in our home.

View from the front door...

View into the living room...

View from the corner of the living room...

View into the living room towards the front of the house...

View from the fireplace towards the front door...

View from the living room toward the basement stairs... 

View towards the front door...

View twoards the bedrooms and bathrooms...

View into the dining room...

View from the old kitchen entrance...

View from dining room corner toward the front door...

View from fireplace towards kitchen entrance...

View into kitchen from hallway entrance...

View from kitchen, towards the dining room...

View from dining room entrance to hall entrance...

View from hallway towards the kitchen/dining/living rooms...

So what do you say...do my bagillion pictures of the same-space-from-every-angle-possible make up for my sporadic posting schedule?!?!  I'm praying the answer to that is yes, and in return I will give you a totally non-creepy Internet hug and hopefully post more house tour pictures before Thanksgiving rolls around. ;)  Kidding!!  {Sort of.}