Just Lovely

We are finally beginning the redecorating of our dining room and that means stripping wallpaper, ugh.



But beneath the striped and stained yellow wallpaper that we've grown accustomed to, look what we found!  Who wouldn't want their dining room covered in scenes from Colonial America?  A beautiful horse and carriage...

A woman with a fan going to church...

Just lovely isn't it?

Shed a Little Light on the Subject

I've always been a big fan of decorating my house using the least amount of money possible.  Johnny and I are definitely not above, say, pulling three patio chairs out of someone's trash pile, or stopping the car and backing up awkwardly to pull a bench off the side of the road.  My newest and best find, though, came from our very own basement.

We found this chandelier in a trash bag behind the heater in our basement.  We have the exact same one in our front hallway, and I'm not totally sure where this extra one was hanging before it made its way to the basement.



I've always wanted a chandelier in my bedroom, and the fan/light combo that we currently had in our bedroom wasn't working, so I convinced Johnny to hang this chandelier for me this morning.  I really like how it turned out, and the best part is that it was completely free.

Projects left to do in our room: Build and upholster a headboard, Paint walls, Paint trim, Sew curtains.
When this will happen: No Idea.

A Hutson Christmas

Johnny and I are big budgeters.  Pretty much everything we do is budgeted, including Christmas.  So this year, we made a pretty strict budget for Christmas spending, including gifts and decorations.  Here's just a few things that I found to do to decorate that didn't break the bank.



I found $2 cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby and mod podged (it's MOD not MODGE people) strips of fabric onto them.  I was decorating the "O" when Sydney asked me what I was doing.  I said, "I'm decorating letters for Christmas decorations." And she said, "Hmm 'Happy Holidays,' you are almost done!"

On our dining room table, I used left over sparkly garland from our wedding, cheap red ornaments from Michael's and cheap jingle bells from Michael's as well.  There's also my little graham cracker house sticking out in the background.

Johnny's favorite part is that I put out the leftover red and green M&Ms from decorating my graham cracker houses.  We'll see how long they last as "decoration."

Instead of spending money on wrapping paper, I turned Trader Joe's bags inside out and used fancy ribbon that I already had from other projects.  Each person gets a mod podged letter on the front, but I learned from past mistakes and wrote their names on the bottom too.  We have a lot of J and M.  I also wrote here about the Christmas tree skirt that I made.  It's a definite easy must-do if you're looking for a skirt.

 

To decorate our windows in the new living room, I wrapped some more of that garland from our wedding around the curtain rods and hung two of my large Christmas balls from Halls.  I already had all of this, so it was completely free!

All the greenery that I used around our house was the stuff that the man at the Christmas tree lot cut off of the bottom of our Christmas tree.  Even if you don't buy a tree from a lot of these places like Home Depot and Lowe's, you can still go and take all the free left over greenery that you want.



The last little bit of decorating that I did is sadly missing a mantel (2012 project).  I made the stockings for Johnny the Christmas before we got married.  All I did was cut out a template from newspaper, cut out that pattern from two pieces of felt, decorate the front with different designs using scrap felt and embroidery floss, stitch around the edges and badly embroider our monograms at the top and voila!  They each cost something like $5 to make. I still have the template, so Baby Hutson will be getting one next year!

Merry Christmas!