Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas everyone!  As everyone knows, I love Christmas.  Almost as much as Easter! 

My favorite way to celebrate the season is always a crafting party with my friends.  This year, my favorite project was this wreath.  Didn't it turn out cute?  It's made from paper octagons folded and pinned.  I think my inspiration was a Martha post somewhere, but I think my own version actually turned out pretty well!

We hosted 10 people on Christmas Eve for dinner.  It was our first dinner in our new dining room and on our new china!  To decorate for the event, I hung some silver garland in the bay window:

Flowers aren't exactly easy to come by this time of year, so I arranged a centerpiece of silver trees and tinsel on a cake plate.  The husband gave me a truly wonderful Playmobil animal advent calendar at the beginning of the month and some of the little critters snuck into my centerpiece.

Fox on the left, proud boar in the middle and baby deer on the right.  So cute!

Speaking of the dining room, I realize I haven't shown anyone the new house layout!  We finally reunited the two sides, and set up the dining room on this side.  Just in time for our inaugural dinner.

As seen from the far side.  Check out the festive swag around the opening!  (No molding?  No problem, slap up a swag around the hole!)

We swapped the living room furniture into the other side so that the tree could stand proudly in the bay window.  I am the luckiest girl in the world, as not only did we get the tiny tree for the craft room (see my last post), but also a big one for the living room.  What's that you say?  You'd like to see the tree?  Oh, OK!

Look at how festive it is!  This was on Christmas Eve, full of wonderful gifts underneath.

OK, so the tree is awfully pink for the new husband but they're mostly my vintage ornaments.  Maybe we'll try to dude it up a little next year?  (Or maybe not.) 

The new living room isn't totally fleshed out yet, but here's the initial cut at it.  We did manage to hang one large piece of art which feels like a big accomplishment.

Check it out.  Cuteness, right?  The tree is on the right in all its bushy glory.

The husband is surprisingly supportive of my weird antiques like the channel-backed chair, which actually looks charming in the living room.  (We're still working on where everything lives.  Like for example, where do the bicycles live?  For now, they live in the living room, behind the chair!)

I keep forgetting that it hasn't been very long in this whole process, it feels like we've still got so much work ahead of us.  But for now, it feels good to be bringing the year to a close as a married couple who have a living room AND a dining room.  What luxury!  Happy New Year everyone!  May the new year bring everything you are hoping for.