Come on In!

Welcome!  If this is the first time you've stopped by my little piece of Holland, then I'm pleased to meet you.....and I should warn you that I don't actually live in Holland.  I live in the Midwestern USA.  So why do I keep making references to Holland in this blog?  Go ahead and click on the link underneath my header if you want to be in the know.

Now, let's get on to the good stuff.  I've gone through phases of my life where I just haven't had the brain space or time to energy to really enjoy homemaking.  Now is not one of those times.  It is such a remarkable experience, that I'm documenting it.  So, take a look at what I did yesterday.

This is the room you enter from my front door.

It is fun to have a fireplace in my front room, but it's a lot of pressure!  That mantle has to look gooood, since it can be seen from the front door.  So do the shelves.  I tend to think of the shelf tops as an extension of our mantle.

I love words, can you tell?  I use way more of them than I should in my writing, and my decorating.  Here we have three complete sentences on one fireplace!  I guess I'm a chatterbox, and so is my house.  These three phrases are particularly meaningful to me.

This one is our family motto:  "Choose the Right and Hold on Tight."  It's meaning?  We want everyone in our family to consistently choose right over wrong, and we want them to hold tight to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to each other.  When the children leave the house, I just say, "CTR!" and they know what it means.  

I custom designed the lettering (it's vinyl, not paint) through Uppercase Living.  The sign board is actually a maple cabinet door, which I discovered in the basement of this house after we moved in.  What a find!  Two maple cabinet doors....completely unattached to anything....just waiting for me to turn them into signs!  (I wonder, what were the previous owners planning to use them for?) This one sits on a plate holder and stays in front of our fireplace most of the year.

 

The quote above our fireplace is one that keeps my husband and I focused.  It was first said by Harold B. Lee, "The most important work we will ever do is within the walls of our home."

I can't remember where I found this saying, but the box reads, "Unshared joy is an unlit candle."  I love that one.  It is a great Christmas quote, but I like to keep it for my winter decor, too.  The box I made myself.  I'd seen some like it in magazines and online, and I decided that it wouldn't be too hard to make.  I had my husband show me how to use his chop-saw, then I just a 1x6 board for the base, cut 1x4 boards for the sides, nailed them all together, painted it with leftover paint from our Red Room, and roughed it up a bit.  The lettering, again, is vinyl.  I fill it with different things and move it around the house....it looks great as a centerpiece or on my kitchen island.  

Gee, I think I need to make some more boxes!

Here are some close ups of what I use for winter decorating in my box.

Most of these items were things I found around the house.  Except the pine cones.  You can't find pinecones like these in my neighborhood, so I splurged for a bag of cinnamon scented ones.   

This is the shelf to the left of the mantle.

Here, I incorporated the woodland theme from the joy box on the mantle, as well as some of the textures.  I also threw in some Valentine touches, like the rose petals on the snow.  The "cloche" you see is actually a cheese plate I found at my Goodwill.  

This is the shelf to the right of the mantle.

I devoted this shelf to Valentine's day, but added a touch of the woodland theme with a tiny red cardinal.

I love my apothecary jars!  I bragged/blogged about how I got my entire collection for less than $20 here, and provided a tutorial so you can do the same thing!

Well, it's time to go get my kindergartener.  Thanks again for stopping by!

I've linked this post to The Mantle Party at The Stories of A to Z and VOTW at Design-a-holic .