The 2014 Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

Blake has been hosting an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party for as long as I've known him (and I think all the way through college, so maybe 13-14 years?).  It's become one of our favorite Christmas traditions and we look forward to it every year.

It gives us the excuse to decorate the house and to make all of our favorite holiday treats that we couldn't otherwise justify having in the house (I have been known to eat a whole batch of cookies on my own...).

Bear is still at the "I will jump all over you, lick you, and steal your food" stage, so he spent the party in his crate, but had no shortage of friends petting him and sneaking him snacks through the openings.  I'm hoping that next year he'll be grown up enough to wander around the party un-watched.  But maybe that's wishful thinking.

The ugly Christmas sweater that my mom sent to me last year was looking perilously short after covering my growing bump (and love handles), so I had to wear a long undershirt so as not to flash our guests with any unexpected skin.

If I were better at remembering such things, I would have taken pictures during the actual party, but I'm sure it's not really that surprising that I didn't make it that far.  Frankly, after spending the day cooking and setting up, it's a miracle that was even awake through the party.  My bedtime has been no later than 10:00 lately, so staying up 'til all hours socializing was a welcome change.

I'm having a hard time believing that Christmas is less than a week away.  Is it just me, or does the Christmas season fly by faster and fast each year?  It's one of those times of the year when I wish things would slow down, but they always get so jam packed with fun activities that they proceed at a neck breaking pace.

We've got a handful of fun Christmassy outings planned for this coming week (along with another ultrasound - yippee!) and then on to the main event.  Bear's getting a new elk antler from Santa Paws, and I bought myself some luxuriously large Christmas jammies, so everyone around here is looking forward to the big day.

A sheepadoodle is the best home accessory

There's just something about the spring that makes me want to rearrange.  Maybe it's because it allows me to deep clean behind all the furniture.  Maybe it's because I have design ADD and love to change things up a lot.  Or maybe it's because re-arranging is a free make-over because I'm shopping the house instead of shopping at a store.  Pick any of those reasons.

Blake has been so patient with my ideas and requests for furniture moves.  We've lugged all sorts of things up and down our narrow, steep stairs in the past few weeks, but the rooms are really coming together.

I've wanted a navy blue velvet couch for ages.  We bought one last year for the basement, but once it was down there we realized we'd rather have it up in the living room.  Don't worry. It's only taken us a year to get it moved up to the main floor.  We actually had to hire some guys to do it for us because it had to be hoisted up our outside back stairs since our inside stairs are too narrow.

Even with two guys lifting and me directing, it was sort of a circus. Our house was built in 1951, so the doorways and hallways are small, and the staircases are super steep and narrow.  This does make for an easy furniture move.  I'd explained this all to the guys when I set up the appointment, but I think even they were surprised when they saw what they'd actually be dealing with.

Moving two couches took almost an hour if you can believe it!  We moved the brown leather couch downstairs and the blue velvet upstairs.  And we only mildly scraped the paint off the back wall.  I count that as a win.

When I handed the guy the agreed-up cash, he started to ask me for more, but then thought better of it.  I think he just wanted to escape while he was still standing.  Maybe he could sense that I was just about to ask him to move a few more things for me while he was at it.  Smart man.

We used some of our Christmas money to buy a new chair and moved the over-stuffed chair downstairs for comfy TV-watching purposes.  The new leather chair takes up less space, and I like that it gives us more of a walking berth between the entry and the living room.  Plus, it's comfy.  Comfy and esthetically pleasing.  You can't beat that.

I wasn't kidding when I said furniture was traveling all over our house.  We moved our garbage-found steamer trunk down here and moved our darker trunk up to the bedroom nook. I feel like steamer trunk really lightens up the space.

And now that I've droned on for two thousand words, here are some pictures to get me to keep quiet.

After all that moving and re-arranging, Bear remains the best accessory of the room.

A real tub o' lard.

I fell in love with this bin at an estate sale this fall - I loved the color, the shine and the patina of the metal.  When I asked the owner what it was originally used for, he said it was a lard tub.

So for anyone who remembers grade school insults and is curious what exactly a tub o' lard looks like, this is it:

Pretty, right?  And far less insulting a comparison than I'd always imagined.

Christmas around the house.

I tried something new in my Christmas decorating around the house this year.  Each room had a color theme (more or less): the living room was red, the family room was green, and the dining room was silver and gold.

I had red plaid pillows on the couch in the living room, red candles and a red tree skirt.  In the family room I had green plaid pillows, green topiaries, and a green garland around the windows.  In the dining room I had my silver and gold candlestick collection down the center of the table (with all white tapers) and a new gold Christmas tree in the corner with silver snowflake ornaments.

It was probably too subtle a scheme for anyone but me to notice, but I had fun doing it anyway.  Nothing makes the house feel more cosy than a Christmas tree and twinkle lights.  We added more garland and twinkle lights to the mix this year because we just can't get enough.

You'll notice we didn't put lights or ornaments on the bottom portion of the tree - that's thanks to little Bear.  He's obsessed with the tree and the lights and we were worried lest he bite the lights and electrocute his fully self.

At least now when we catch him laying under the tree biting off the lower limbs (his new favorite past-time) we're not worried about sudden death.

Around the house

I know you've all been dying to see some grainy iPhone pictures of the current state of our home.  Well, your wish is my command.

Without further ado, I give you:

1.  The blue velvet couch. My favorite piece of furniture.  Also, a self-made parsons table and a pillow with inquisitive zebras on it.  Because who doesn't need a flock of zebras looking at you incredulously every time you sit down?

2. The entry way.  (For the record, this is not an iPhone picture...it is courtesy of Blake and his camera skills).  I love the way it looks when it's so sunny.

3.  Flowers from the garden on the kitchen counter.

4.  My new coat hooks.  Do I love them? You bet giraffe I do! (That joke never gets old.)

5.  New (cheap!) pillows for the living room couch.  I've since re-arranged them so that the patterns aren't both facing in the same direction. It's absolutely driving me crazy in the photo below. Alas. First world problems.

And that, my friends, is a quick tour of our house as seen through an iPhone lens.  You're welcome.

At last...my rug has come along!

A rug at last. 

I've been searching off-and-on for a rug for our living room since we moved in.  It's a long room that includes the entry-way and the living room, so I wanted to get something to define the seating area as a separate space from the entry area.

For me, rugs are always the hardest part of decorating.  Do I get something with a pattern? Something plain?  Fluffy?  Flat-weave?  Will I get sick of a patterned rug?  Will it conflict with other elements of the room?  Will it hold up to the foot traffic? The list goes on.

One of my primary issues is that to get a nice rug for a room this size would normally cost a small fortune. And I'm not willing to part with a small fortune...especially not for something I'm so wishy-washy on. 

I started contemplating a hair-on-hide rug about a year ago when I cruising the archives of some of my favorite design blogs.  I love the organic shape and the fact that they're true work-horses (pun?) in terms of holding up to wear-and-tear.  But again, other than the IKEA version (which I didn't absolutely love), it was an expensive proposition.

Then - cue the heavenly choirs singing - Blake and I were perusing Arhaus before dinner one night and noticed that they had a zebra-print rug and that it was on sale!  Drastic sale.  75% off to be exact.  That put it, mercifully, in our price range.  It only took a few minutes of my incessant chattering to successfully convince Blake that, yes, we needed this zebra rug for our home. 

20 minutes later we were home and eagerly re-positioning our furniture and the rug "just-so." 

Not the best (iPhone) picture, but it looks amazing in person.

It pays to wait for a deal.

Christmas Crafting

We're staying in DC for Christmas this year (Blake's parents live 20 minutes from us) so we've been going all out with the decorations. 

Christmas is really the only holiday I decorate for, but my budget and lack of time prevent me from adding more than a couple new things every year.  During last night's viewing of NCIS: Los Angeles (LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell? You know that's right!) I finished up my newest addition to our festive decor. 

Two dollars for the felt (with tons left over), four dollars for the faux cranberry garland, some leftover red thread and a couple hours of hacking away with my somewhat useless scissors, and voila:

Ok, so it's more like joy to France, Paris, Rome, London and DC...but close enough.

At long last.

I've been looking for a hard-bound copy of My Name is Asher Lev - my favorite book - for over 10 years now.  I've searched high and low for a copy.  When I did actually find copies they were way out of my price range (being that it hasn't been printed in hard copy for a really long time).

I almost cried for joy when I struck literature gold on Saturday at the book sale at our local library.  We had wandered in to the basement of the library on my way up to find a copy of this month's book club book - The Alchemist.  And it was there, in the depths of library basement, after looking at every book on the fiction aisle for an hour, that I found it.  High on a shelf in the top corner.  At last.  My Name is Asher Lev.  And the price?  $1.00. 

It was serendipity!  I snatched it up and protectively (greedily even?) carried it around with me while Blake and I each collected a rather embarrassingly high stack of books. 

Over the next hour we filled an entire moving box with beautiful books for just $29.00 (!).  We picked up beautiful leather-bound copies of Virgil, Frost, Anderson and Hemingway along with newer (almost untouched) copies of Dan Brown, Michael Lewis and Cormac McCarthy.  The pretty books complete our living room bookshelves where we can enjoy their beauty and the recent best-sellers reside in the library where they'll become tomorrow's metro/commute entertainment. 

But my favorite?  It's up in the top corner of the shelf: a reminder of where I found it.  And though the spine is rather plain, I think it's the most beautiful of all.

1 week down, 11 to go.

Georgetown gives 12 weeks paid maternity leave.  This is great for my (don't get any ideas here) future, but not so great for my present.

While my colleague is on her much-deserved maternity leave, I'm covering two jobs.  Unfortunately for my stress-level, it makes the most sense for me to do so.  I know the databases that she works with and am familiar with a lot of her job duties.  However, I am now tasked with working with adjuncts and full-time and visiting faculty (think: Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My!).

Last week was crazy.  Several new and unanticipated projects reared their ugly heads.  We made it through the new faculty orientation luncheon that I'd been planning for months.  And Jimmy left.  It was all such a blur.

I'm trying really hard to stay sane and take it a day at a time.  I survived last week (barely) and after sleeping in on Saturday and a three-hour nap yesterday, I think I'm ready to face the week. 

Speaking of yesterday.  We had a horrific thunder storm.  Lighting struck just down the street from us accompanied by thunder so loud that it shook the house and set off all of the car alarms.  We watched nature's violence and House Hunters from the comfort of our couch...until that Goliath lighting took out our power for the rest of the afternoon. 

But have no fear, staring at a blank TV screen gave me the push I needed to get up and get productive.  Productivity in general makes me smile, and I can't help but grin from ear-to-ear when I look at the progress below. 

The wall above our couch has been blank for the past (almost) two years since we moved into the house.  Wow! Has it really been that long?  We've been busily collecting antique maps with a gallery wall in mind.  Two weeks ago, when our collection was complete thanks to the Courthouse Flea, we went to pick out frames and matting.  Two weeks later, here is the finished product:

In case you were wondering:

Top (left to right): Paris circa 1910, France circa 1871, Rome circa 1910

Bottom (left to right): London circa 1870, Washington DC circa 1890.

There is nothing better than seeing a project come together even better than you'd imagined. 

I'll be posting more (real/ non iPhone) photos on our house blog, but for now I'll enjoying looking at this photo every time I get stressed. 

A few pictures from December

Blake got me a new camera for Christmas (that seemed to be the theme...I got him one, too - different kinds though).  So, I'm dumping the photos from our old camera before I start using the new one.  Be prepared for better pictures in the future.  I declare 2011 to be the year of decent photos.

 This year's Christmas tree was a beauty.  As I mentioned before, it was like a scene out of Christmas Vacation: we turned the corner at the lot and it was like a beacon of light was shining upon it.  Too perfect to pass up.

Here we are at our annual ugly sweater party (I couldn't find an ugly sweater...whoops) playing a revival of girls v. boys Pictionary.  The girls won.  As usual.  

Special props go to Lindsey and her delightful thrifted Christmas cape.

Here I am prior to the party preparing some goodies.  

And here is part of the spread.  We forgot to take a picture of the complete set-up, but it was lovely (pats-self-on-back).

And here is a group shot (minus Lindsey) of me and the fatties at Cafe Rio in Provo over the break.  We got together for a quick lunch while everyone was in town (minus Gretchen, Erin and Jenny).  It was really fun to see everyone and catch up and ooh/ah over new babies, new jobs, new puppies etc.  

Note to self: don't try to hide gum at the side of your mouth for a picture.  It isn't actually hiding and it isn't actually doing you any favors.  Square smile?