Christmas Tour part 2 and Happy New Year!!

Yesterday I took you on a Christmas tour of my living room, kitchen, entry and powder room, you can see it HERE if you missed it. Today we can head upstairs and I will show you the guess room, kids room and my room. 

In the guess room I added a garland at the end of the bed and a couple Christmas decorative items to the empire dresser. 

Each kid's room got a little table top tree. The boy's one is decorated in red and blue. 

A HoHoHo pillow and some red deers sheets set a Christmasy tone!

Grace's tree is decorated in pinks and greens, a pink butterfly serves as a tree top! 

I keep things very simple upstairs and my room was no different. Just some greenery and pine cones from the yard in an antique ironstone chamber pot and some silver ornaments in an ironstone tureen. 

And there you have it! festive but simple!!

I cannot believe today is the very last day of 2015.

This was an amazing year!

2015 was my first year as a Bloger, and I have to say, how much I enjoy writing and showing you my decorating adventures! 

A few pretty unbelievable moments I had were when a few of my most favorite Blogers in the whole world featured some of my work in their Blogs. 

Marian, at Miss Mustard Seed featured my My dining room, and that put me over the moon!! 

Kim, at Savvy Southern Style featured a desk that I painted, and I needed to pinch myself a few times to realize I wasn't dreaming!

Martina, at Share your Style, a group of phenomenal blogers shared my family room and I just couldn't believe my eyes!

Elizabeth and Company also featured my dining room and my desk also was chosen by Something to talk about link party.

If you haven't visit this Blogs, you definitely need to go over and check them out, because they are so beautiful and such an inspiration!

My Blog reached to thousands of people in this past year and travel thru an incredible number of countries! 

I found that incredibly amazing as I always thought I was blogging for myself, my mom a a couple of friends!

 So Thank YOU so very much for stopping by and for visiting. It meant the wold to me! Please make sure to say hello when you are around I would love to hear from you!!

I know life gets in my way sometimes and it is hard for me to find the time and concentration to sit and write. But that is one of my New Year resolutions, to think more about myself and to find the time to do the things I enjoy the most. 

Happy New Year My friends I wish you the best in 2016!

XOXO

Cristina

Christmas Tour

Hello my dear friends! 
It is hard to believe that Christmas came and went. It seems like it was so much work, so much to do, so much to prepare and get ready for and it all happened in the blink of an eye! I feel like the whole month of December I was running around like a chicken without a head!! :)
I did took all my Christmas decorations down today, except the tree. We'll enjoy that for a few more days. 
Before everything came down I took some pictures to show you. 
I do have tubs and tubs of Christmas decorations, that by the way, were all cleaned out today and half of them went to Savers. Savers is a thrift store in my town where I donate all my unwanted items, and where I shop for other people unwanted treasures! and at the same time I am helping the Epileptic foundation. 
This year like last year, I used less Christmas decorations and more natural elements found in my yard. Such as evergreens and pine cones. 
So why keep so many things that haven't being out of the basement for years, right? that's my goal for the new year, out with the old, unused and unwanted stuff. My plan is to slowly by surely weed thru every closet, cabinet and drawer until I just have what I use and like and the rest can be donated.
Alright, I am loosing track here... without further adieu, like my buddy Chip says (I love Chip and Jojo, from Fixer Upper) let me show you my Christmas decor!! 

The first thing that went up, was the Christmas Tree. We put it up the weekend right after Thanksgiving!
I know it is very trendy the white or soft colors Christmas decor, but nothing says Christmas to me like red and green. So this year I went with red and green, vibrant and  cheerful!
I love trees decorated with a theme, but I have too many sentimental ornament to do that. I like to use all the ornaments that  tell a story or have sentimental value like the ones my little ones make in school. Last year I had a couple extra trees, one in my dining room and one in my kitchen and they were theme decorated, but this year I didn't have all that energy!!

So there you have it, jam packed with all sort of mis-matched ornaments! :)

To add a festive touch to the bottom of the tree, I like to wrap empty boxes like gifts!

The whole family gets involved and we all decorate the tree together. There for it looks like everything is being thrown at it, specially the bottom of the tree, where the little ones can easily reach!! ;) But oh I love it so much and wouldn't change it for the prettiest tree in the whole world!! :)

These are some of my favorites, like this Santa made out of my daughter's hand print on her first year of preschool. 

My husband's aunt gave us a beautiful Christmas present hand made by herself. We just loved it so much. It was the inspiration and focal point for the fire place decoration. 

Then I layered a garland made out of cut evergreens from my yard, with gold sprayed painted pine cones and gold ornaments. with some Christmas candles. 

More pine cones and greenery add a Christmas touch to the antique desk. And the red blanket and festive pillow add a splash of color. 

At the entrance of my home I like to display a beautiful nativity set hand painted by my mom. 

Every year I hang the stockings from the fire place. This year I tried something new and I hang them from the stairs. I made the garland over the railing again, from cut evergreens around the yard and I added some ornaments, pine cones and ribbon for extra texture and color. My oldest son didn't like this idea. He was concerned that Santa will not find the stockings there, so we move them to the fire place on Christmas Eve! 

A fun touch in the kitchen window sill!!

A simple small tree and some pine cones add a festive touch to the powder room.

This is a divine room spray that a friend of mine made. 

Wow, this ended up being a pretty long post! So I am going to save the upstairs for tomorrow! 

Thank you for visiting!!

Sharing With:

Savvy Souther Style

My Thanksgiving Table

Hello my dear friends,

I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is Tomorrow!!! Time is sure flying by and before we know it the year will be over.

On Monday I stayed home and since I was caught up with laundry and other chores (yeah me!) I decided to play in my dining room.

One of my favorite things of hosting is to decorate and to set the table for it.
Although I will not be hosting the actual Thanksgiving fest on Thursday, I will be celebrating Thanksgiving at home over the weekend with my husband and kids.

Instead of using a table cloth, I opted for a runner, and six individual place mats. They all came from Spain with me thru the years.

As I said I had some time on my hands today, so I  actually set two different tablescapes.

For the first one I chose an antique European dough bowl filled with pine cones, small white pumpkins and bittersweet branches, that I found while walking around my neighborhood, as my center piece. I also use golden coasters for the plates and my fall dinnerware.

 

 Then I remembered I have some beautiful Turkey plates from Pottery Barn, and what a better time of year to use them than Thanksgiving, right?

I loved the result, it looked beautiful. However, I have a massive kitchen island that I also like to have a center piece for, the big dough bowl was perfect for that job.  

For the dinner table I ended up choosing an antique Ironstone tureen filled with greenery from the yard with tiny red apples for a pop of color here and there. 

Since the runner was white and the tureen was white also, I place it on top of a round woven straw rattan place mat, to make it pop from the table, I added some branches, again from my yard, and a couple of vintage turkeys to set the gobble gobble mood! LOL!! ;)

Mmmm, I cannot wait until tomorrow to see my family and to enjoy a delicious meal. I am thankful for so many things one in particular is this blog, I really enjoy to sit and write and document my passion and love for decor and most importantly YOU, for stopping by and coming and visiting and reading about my adventures in home decor, for your sweet comments, for being there, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart! 

I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving!

XOXO

Parting with:

Savvy Southern Style
Share Your Style

A Fall Wreath

Hello my dear friends!

I cannot believe how long I've being gone.

I didn't fall off the face of the earth, LOL!! Life simply happened and as soon as summer arrived and the kids were off from school, there wasn't a second or quiet moment around here to sit down and write.

We had such an amazing summer weather wise, and after the brutal winter we had, we pretty much spent the days at the pool or the beach. 

Since I left it at the Spring Wreath, today I would like to pick it up with my fall wreath. 

I loved the spring one so much that I decide to go for the same thing but with a fall look.

I purchased the wreath at my local thrift store for about $3 and a bouquet of fall flowers at Walmart.

All I did was take the bouquet apart and insert each stem into the wreath. 

Easy pease!!

I'm so happy to be back,  I hope you enjoyed my fall wreath. I'll be back soon!!

XO

Cristina