Christmas Sparkle Family Room: We Live Here

In every home there is a room that every one spends their time in, that you bond as a family in, that really embodies your family life. In our home it is our family room. We watch movies here, play games, eat dinner in front of our favorite shows sometimes. This is where we argue and the kids rough house and it is also the hardest room to keep clean. I have been known to refer it to it as a sock farm where smelly dirty boy socks seem to grow right out of the rugs and furniture. I mean seriously, where do all these socks come from and why are they always in this room??!!
 This is the room I have the hardest time decorating because it has to stand up to serious abuse! It can't be to fussy and certainly not delicate to withstand flying remotes tossed from one couch to the other, to withstand pizza paws on Friday movie nights and the wear and tear of muddy shoes and wet doggie feet.
 Delicate Christmas decorations and our cherished mementos do not feel safe in this room but it is where we will enjoy them most so I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to insure that we can decorate, enjoy our favorite things and the room will still function as it must.
 Today I thought I would share some of my decorations for this so so special area of our home.

The fireplace and mantel are the heart of this room and after last year's facelift with new surround, hearth tile and marble surround tile it is still looking fabulous! 

Our special family ornaments are all unpacked and ready to hang 

I know our gallery wall is a bit busy for most but I love family photos and all the memories they inspire! 

This is just a little wink to the past when my middle son was insanely obsessed with trains! 

The red truck seemed to be a big decorating thing this year, this is my version of it tucked in to our bookshelf in our drop zone.

I really loved the combination of white velvet wibbon, faux fur ribbon and red plaid that our family room tree had this year! 

Our family always waits to hang our special ornaments until we can do it together. Here are a few shots of my little helper elves! 

Well I hope you enjoyed my little tour of the family room. It is such a special place for our family. Merry Christmas to all from The House On Cover Ridge!

Cheers and Christmas Cheer! Dining Room Christmas 2016

Cheers my lovelies,
    Some years I go over the top with the decorating. This year I tried to practice a teeny bit of restraint. The dining room is one of the areas where I tried to achieve that goal. I went with a restrained color palette and I did not go overboard. I did a very simple tree this year. A adorable silver tinsel tree on a stand and very simply decorated.

I just love the way light colored trees glow! I only used gold balls on the tree and our beloved canvas photo ornaments I made a few years ago. I accented it all with a beautiful gold glass topper and some shiny red berries!

I love our family picture canvases on this tree. It just gives me warm fuzzies! 

I added shiny metallic red berries to tie in the touches of red in the living room and family room. I do love the warmth they add to my metallic tinsel tree. 

I think it works for our home to inspire happy Christmas memories and set the stage for all our holiday meals!

Tablescapes and Centerpieces for Christmas:Dining Room 2016

Trees, and pine boughs, stars and reindeer....it is so hard to decide what to add and what to subtract sometimes.  Especially in rooms that don't get used everyday. It is awfully easy to "overdecorate" and make it a little to fussy to be convenient to use it. This year I tried to keep our spaces light and functional even with all the excess of Christmas decoration. Our tablescape is simple too. A silver tray with an evergreen arrangement and two metallic Christmas trees. I kept the color scheme easy too with silver and gold and only small touches of red.

 And we are all set for a beautiful, easy Christmas brunch or a family dinner.

December....in Blue

Hey everybody, 

I know December is supposed to be full of happy posts full of elves and babies and pinecones and Santa but I have to be honest. This December is off to a crappy start. Our youngest child has been sick with pneumonia, we are on med #3 and he is still sick. Now hubs and I are both feeling the breath of this nasty virus on our necks. The middle child is dragging himself out of bed and off to high school. I have been stuck in the house waiting hand and foot on a tiny tyrant until I seriously want to grab the gallon jug of Fireball Whiskey and a bag of Oreos and make a run for it. Not to mention there has been no driving around to look at lights with cups of cocoa, we missed the Santa breakfast in town, we haven't ventured to the zoo for the Festival of Lights or even gotten our family Christmas card picture taken. I am behind on all my shopping and if I don't order something for my Secret Santa recipient tonite she may not get it before Christmas. 

Right now I am feeling the holiday blues and I just want to hop a plane to somewhere full of sunshine and warm breezes and booze. Plenty of the last item. Sigh... I know I sound Grinchy, not at all like my natural elf like disposition but today I am really struggling. And I feel like it is important to be real with my blog, my life, my friends. Today is a bad day. A no-good, rotten, yucky, sucky kind of day. Sometimes people message me and want to know how I am juggling so many balls and doing so much...all the more reason to have posts like this where I just tell the truth. My life is not a perfectly staged blog pic. It is hard and messy and I have bad days. Today I do not want to be the mommy, I do not want to hold the head of my vomiting child and soothe his fears and try to coax him to take his medicine. I do not want to be stuck in the house wondering how long this will last. I do not want to worry about my child until the tension leaves me with achy muscles and throbbing temples. I just want him to be alright, I want to go back to the normal chaos of my life where I am fussing about chores and homework and taking the dang earbuds out to listen to me!  

I know lots of people are sad at the holidays because they have lost family members and are just trying to get through the month and into January. My heart breaks for them and I know my problems are small in comparison but they are MY problems and they are a big deal to me. And right now all I want to do is turn off the Christmas lights and cry. 

Sure hoping my little one is feeling better with the coming of morning light and we can put this yuck behind us and get on with being merry. :( 

Christmas Baking.... a yes or no???

Hey everybody!
I was noticing that my Facebook On This Day app was telling me I am way behind this year. Typically I would have our cards ordered by now...we haven't even taken the picture and I just realized I have lost my list of picture ideas I spent hours making the other night. Sigh...Facebook also rubbed my face in the fact that typically I am either in full out baking mode or I am finishing by now...haven't begun.

As I was feeling the requisite mom guilt I realized that it seems stupid to make a ton of sweets and junk my family does not need to be eating. Hubs and I are trying to eat healthier and two of my kids really need to cut the junkfood back and focus on getting their veggies in! So am I not just sabotaging the good eating I have been preaching at all of them by filling the house with plates of cookies and chocolates and treats???

Last year my compromise was to make three things that are family favorites and one batch of each would be rationed out throughout the season. So I am considering this as a good choice this year too.
If you could only have three treat items the whole holiday feasting season what would your three treats be?

I think we will do home made peppermints, buckeyes and christmas mice this year but I haven't polled the troops to see if they agree with me, yet!

I would be happy to share our family favorite recipes with all of you if you are interested! But to be honest most of them came from Taste Of Home magazine when my kids were small!

A pic of my babes about five years ago now helping to make the Christmas Mice. 

Christmas in the Living Room

Good evening, my dears! Welcome back to our little home on the ridge. I shared my Christmas tree in the living room recently and wanted to share a few more decorations in that room.  Every year one of my biggest tasks is the garlands. I like to have them over the main doorways, outside around the front door of course and this one in the living room is always the most ornate and most work!

This one took me over two hours to get just right. I like to take my time and try to space things evenly and twist enough garland strands and light strands together that it looks full and pretty. This year I was going to use just the metallic garlands I purchased but when I put them up there I knew it wasn't going to work. I added in the greens and then some extra bits to spread the color scheme and then I fussed with it a bit till I had it the way I wanted it.  I like the warm glow it gives the room in the evening.

..anyone else just love a gorgeous garland???

I love the champagne metallic shimmer! 

Perfect Pictures

I know you mama's will know how I feel.

 You want just one good photo where everyone has their eyes open and is looking in the same direction. No one is grabbing their parts or picking their teeth or biting, hitting, kicking or pulling the hair of a sibling........it eludes most of us though and when it does happen it is usually an accident. Its the mythical unicorn of parent's dreams...the perfect family photo.

 This was my dream and the process of it on Thanksgiving, after the cooking, feasting and clean up and the guests went home and it was just us....

you can see it started to fall apart here......

is he licking me???

what the hell was that?

the moment when the why me phase begins

Now there is really no hope..

awwww Mama, we love you! 

ok, ok, let's try again

yeah....nope!

they love me! to death!!!!!

why can't you just be normal!

Can you please be serious for one moment!

yeah, that a big fat negatory on that one....and giggles break out

and it is contagious and we all give in to the giggles.....


and you think to yourself, "surely one of them is good, right?"
nope.Not a single one with everyone looking in the same direction, with both eyes and a smile!

I give up!

Sometimes What You Need is a Star!

            Every year as I do the decorating I have one tree that doesn't pan out quite the way I expect it too and I have to rethink it. This year it was the living room tree. I was planning a champagne metallic color scheme with lots of white and aged parchment. Inspired by the lyrics of Christmas carols I planned white feather garlands and rolled sheet music and gun metal grey balls and lots of gold balls in matte rubbed finishes. As I started pulling it together it just felt chaotic and confused. So I got to this point and was just unhappy. I was trying out new LED lights we bought at the end of season sales last year and the color was off from what I am used to and it just felt.........cold, lifeless. The crown topper, while in my head screamed "King of Kings!" looked small and irrelevant on the tree. So I stripped it back down and started again. After spending hours placing mesh, ribbon, lights and ornaments to strip it and do it again was a bit disheartening but I wanted to get it closer to my vision.

This photo I snapped at this point in the process and sent to my husband expressing my frustration. He was no help. So I began again. It is closer to where I wanted but I found the ribbon I should have used several days later but just didn't want to tackle taking everything off again, lol. It's close enough for this year. Next year I will use a different tree and slightly different color scheme. I think I might be happier with some champagne colored ribbon and some copper accessories for next year but who knows!

I am happy with how I put the ribbon on and the pheasant feathers came out the way I wanted so there is that!

My favorite thing is the map and banner but I am content with the tree after a trip to Hobby Lobby for a better topper. The crown felt off, forced and overwhelmed but the new star still reflects the meaning behind the carols I was inspired by and reinforces the color scheme and gives the tree some presence and that makes me happy!

I think the scale is better and I kind of like how it floats above the tree a bit!

 I love this little Santa ornament!  And I picked up these white word ornaments for the tree for this year to reinforce the joy to the world, peace on Earth thing.The gunmetal grey balls were new this year too and I think they are stunning!

 I reused the magnolia clip ons from last year's family room tree here this year, I like them! I even used them in the fall decor on the dining room table this year!

I think it all works. Stop in tomorrow to see the garland I put over the doorway, it took me hours to get it just how I wanted it and still had to go back to Hobby Lobby for more supplies!