New Chair (and a half)

When we bought our couches, we also got a big, comfy chair and a half. We originally had it in the bedroom, then pulled it out to the living room over Christmas.
We always intended to get another chair for the living room and put the leather one back in the bedroom. With Cason's arrival looming, we wanted to get that new chair sooner rather than later so we could have a chair for nursing, etc in the bedroom. We really became accustomed to the big chair in the living room so we went in search of basically the fabric version of the one we had. We found an almost identical chair with tons of fabric choices and after a few days of fabric-choice-decision-making (I am SOOO not good at this stuff) we ordered the chair with an April 30 delivery date. Little did we know how early Cason would arrive. :)
Here is the before with all the leather.
 
And the new chair that was delivered this week!


Ryan and Cason give it the seal of approval!!!

Family Room Changes

While we had both familes at the house for Christmas, we decided to move our big chair and ottoman from the bedroom to the family room so we'd have some extra seating. Plus, my mom was dying to make it her morning reading spot! We always planned to get a chair of some sort for the family room but wanted to do something upholstered in a fun print. Since Ryan's brother helped him move the chair to the family room and I couldn't help him move it back to the bedroom, we decided to play with the furniture arrangement to see if a chair this big would fit so we know what to look for.


Some pictures from before



And now...
All four pieces fit really well and I love having the chair in the family room. We still want to get a non-leather piece so we can move this one back to the bedroom and now we know what size to look for. I don't know WHEN we'll get the new chair since there are probably a few other things we need to be focused on first!

Christmas Tree Additions

The tree is up and pretty much decorated. I might add a few more filler ornaments but I'm in no rush. I was finally able to get some pictures last weekend. Of course it was during the day so it doesn't really sparkle like at night. Oh well.


In my Christmas post last year, I reflected on how I decorate the tree. Again this year, I had a pretty easy time with the lights and was excited to use all 4 sections, though I made the EXACT SAME mistake when putting it up! (I missed a section and had to take it apart and start over). I enjoyed hanging all the meaningful ornaments and the memories they hold. The boat ornaments made me sad but happy at the same time (we'll get another one one day!).

Here are the new ornaments from this year: New Home 2009 (from my parents)
Mom To Be (from my aunts)
Snowmen making Sugar Cookies -- I got this one last year since cookies are my favorite thing to bake!

Hot Wheels aka "As Close to Darda as I Could Find" that I got for Ryan, Kevin and Eric after Christmas last year.

Swing

I've always wanted a front porch with a swing, and now I have one! My parents bought us the swing as a housewarming gift and it was delivered Monday. Ryan managed to hang it all by himself and it looks fantastic!!!

Now all we need is some neighbors so I can be the nosey lady that sits on her front porch and spies on everyone!

First Christmas in Woodforest!

This year I've had a lot of trouble figuring out where all my Christmas decorations should go. And even after putting up the tree, decorating the mantle, draping garland on the stair handrails and putting Christmas colored place mats and napkins on the table, the house just doesn't feel as "Christmasy" as the old house did. I guess this is another one of the fun parts of having more space... gradually getting things to fill it all up.

We ran into the same problem outside. We have all these lights... icicles and nets... and no place to put them. Okay, we COULD line our whole house but just the peaks on our one story freaked us out in prior years. There is NO WAY either one of us are attempting the peaks on this house! None of our plants are big enough for net lights. But, we made it work and it turned out nice.

A few icicles on the porch and some lights up the columns (I've always wanted to do that). Frosty and the lighted trees are in the yard and this year they have snow around them (net lights!). The lights that normally string together the candy canes were on their last leg last year and we were too lazy and cheap to redo them this year so its just candy canes for now.

Another challenge was the front door. Our doors are tall and we have the wrought iron over the top glass panel. How do you hang a wreath without putting a nail in the door? I got creative and used some fishing wire to hang it from the wrought iron.

I opted for a more "natural" look to the wreath this year and left the bow off. I think I like it this way best.

I'm happy with the finished product of the outside decor. And to be honest... I think we have a great shot of winning "Best House" on our street! Ha! :)

A few additions

Yesterday was "Black Friday" and we contributed, but we did not really do real deal hunting. We didn't even leave the house until almost 12. Our main goal was looking for a swing for the front porch. We didn't realize how hard this would be. I guess the city is not the place for a country porch swing. We reverted to the Internet and got this swing which is being stained a dark walnut color.

Thanks Mom and Dad!!!! Hopefully its here by Christmas and you can see it!

While we were out looking, we made a couple of stops to look for side tables and other things we might need. We went to Old Town Spring (to check the Amish furniture store for a swing) and then went into a few of the antique shops looking for tables.

There is a great home decor place, Metals, Petals and More that I've heard about but never been to. It's not a bargain place but its not over the top expensive either. I was really looking for more florals/greenery for my kitchen cabinets but after getting a good deal at the Holiday Market I'm being cheap! But we did find these awesome planters for our entertainment center (and one was priced wrong so we saved $20... ha).

We previously bought something else that we only sort of liked so those are going back to the store today. We are VERY happy with these planters as they add a little color and totally fill the space.





Then, we hit up Pier One to look at some things I'd seen in their Black Friday ad and to look for little side tables. We found this cute little side table with two basket drawers. We didn't know if the drawers would actually be able to function but Ryan said "If they do, it be great to put toys and things in." Definitely not a conversation we'd have had 16 weeks ago unless it was about doggie toys! Luckily there is plenty of room for the drawers to open so it looks like we have some toy storage for the family room! :) And of course, a place for the lamp and nice place for someone to rest their glass.



The biggest thing we are lacking in the Family Room is a rug. We've started that search and have finally seemed to come to a good meeting point on style. I'm more modern and he's more traditional but we seem to be agreeing on several "transitional" style rugs. I guess they are named appropriately. I'm about to head out and try to see if I can see a couple we've found online in person... and to meet Suz, Luke and Hudson for lunch while Brandon and Ryan play golf.

Starting to feel like "Home"

In the last 5+ years, I've lived in a lot of places. 3 apartments in College Station during graduate school; an apartment in Houston; Ryan's house in The Woodlands. None of these places were "Home". And now, I'm finally in OUR first house together. Yes, you could consider the house we lived in for our first 3 years married as "our first house" but it was always "Ryan's house" to me. He bought it. It was his bachelor pad complete with dart board, foosball table and roommates. Even though I slowly made it feel like home, and it was OUR HOME, it was always "Ryan's House".

When we first moved in the new house... OUR HOUSE... it was so empty feeling that it didn't feel like "home". We are still working on filling it up (in more ways than one) but it's finally started to feel like more than "our house"... it's HOME. I even stored our home phone number in my cell as "Home" and changed my parents number to "Mom and Dad". For some reason, this was a big step for me. I will always feel like "going home" when I go to my parents house in Jackson but our new house together is my new home. This is where I'll start my family... where the good times and bad times will happen... where the rest of our lives begins.

So, it's feeling homier (is that a word? spell check didn't catch it...). We got the couches and the kitchen table.

Now, we've added a new coffee table and end table. They have iron bases and beautiful copper tops.






And we've started to add the little finishing touches. I got these florals and accessories at the Junior League Holiday Market. They help to soften up the kitchen. I still have more to do on the bigger wall of cabinets.



I love this teapot... I couldn't decide on buying it but they put it on sale the last day of the market. So, what did I do... I bought two of them. Ha! I'll find a spot for the other one!





And, we even got a new bedding set for the Guest Bedroom. Mom and Dad, I hope you like it. I've still got to get the square pillows for the solid brown shams that came with the set, and a curtain rod to hang the valance. But, we think its very pretty and much more grown up looking than my old apartment bedding.





We've also added finishing touches in the powder room, but I forgot to take pictures of that... later! Next on the list is drapes in the Master Bedroom and a rug and throw pillows in the family room. I've called an expert to help with these activities so we'll see how that goes.

Slightly Festive

Though we didn't do full Halloween decorations this year, I did pull out the general "Fall" decor. At the old house, I'd do the mantle and the dining room table and it really made the house feel festive. We don't have a dining room table and we didn't really have enough "stuff" to cover then new, huge kitchen table. So, I put it all on the mantle.


I think it looks really good, but I'll definitely be hitting up some sales to try to stock up on more things for next year. I'm starting to get worried about my Christmas decor and if I have enough. I'm pretty sure I DON'T.

Kitchen Table!

Today we went out in search of some tables. We need to get either a Kitchen table or coffee table so we'd have someplace to eat. We previously looked at kitchen tables when shopping for our couches but never found anything we liked. So many tables we saw were counter height tables and that just wasn't what we wanted.

We found a table on Pottery Barn's website that we really liked but we didn't like the price. We decided we'd spend today table shopping and go to Houston if we had to. We were planning for a LONG day of shopping.

We hit a couple of places in the Woodlands and ran by Pottery Barn to check out the table in person. We still loved it but the price was just... well... obnoxious. The salesperson at Pottery Barn told us they were having some great specials so we looked around at other tables. They helped us find one that was very similar to the one we came in for, but for much less $$. And, she snuck us a 20% off coupon so we could get the whole set for 20% off and they had EVERYTHING IN STOCK.

We did lots of inspection and were just really happy with the table and the chairs, so we bought it. It was just what we wanted, a 60" square with 2 leaves to extend it to 76" or 92". I know, sounds huge but its perfect in our breakfast room with one leaf. By 1:30pm we were headed home with our new table and 8 chairs! YIPPEE!!!

All the pieces were well packaged and all we had to put together was screwing the table legs on. Its very sturdy and very heavy! We love it!

The next mission is still coffee table/end tables for the family room but at least now we can eat sitting down!

It's Christmas Time in The Woodlands!

The house is finally all decorated for Christmas... inside and out. This will likely be our last Christmas at this house so we made sure to go all out!

Ryan bought our house before we were married but we both really wanted to put up lights outside. We didn't want to spend the money to buy it all at once, so each year we add a little more. The first year was just lights in a few bushes, then the snowman, then the icicles, then the candy canes, etc. This year we have the most lights we have ever put up. It looks pretty good if I say so myself. We think we deserve the award for our neighborhoods Best House but I think we are too classic to win that's what I tell myself because, obvioulsy, our house is the best!!! :)

Last year we bought a BIG artificial tree. My number 1 advice for buying artificial trees is to MEASURE. The reason is that, when buying a tree from a big store like Walmart or Garden Ridge, even the biggest trees look small. My number 2 advice is don't believe your husband when he says your ceilings are 10 feet tall... they are not, they are only 9. So, as you can guess, our tree is big. It is 9ft tall, so it touches the ceiling. It is so large that it won't fit anywhere in our house, other than the breakfast room. So, to the garage goes the table and chairs and into the breakfast room goes the tree.

Our tree already had some white lights on it but it was just not enough for my taste. I like colored lights too so I added several strands. I took care to string the tree in sections so that it could be taken apart with the lights on. This worked well as this year, I only had one small section at the top to string the lights on. By accident, I left the second from bottom layer out of the tree. When it was time to put the third section on, I realized that it just wasn't quite right. But, after inspecting the situation, I decided that I liked it better with just three sections and now it did not touch the ceiling. I probalby should have used sections B, C and D instead of A, C and D but by the time it was all said and done, I did not want to start over.

I got the tree fully decorated today with a new star and all. My tree doesn't have a theme. Almost all of the ornaments come from a trip we took or have some meaning. Like the airstream trailer that looks just like Pop and Grammy's. Or the baking lady or the cute little boat. This is how our tree's were growing up and I like it. Mom would take us to Hallmark and each year we would pick an ornament for the family (or 2) and James and I would pick one for ourselves. We have several Snoopy and Lego ornaments for James and at least one Cheerleader for me. My favorite family ornament is the Water Skiing Santa because this just sums the Davis family up. As we decorated the tree each year, we had wonderful memories of the events that related to the various ornaments.

And this is exactly what happened this year. I thought of our wedding and first Chrismas, the day we brought Admiral home, our first (and not our last) boat, my hours in the kitchen baking away, our love of Texas (yes, it's getting in my blood), our trip to NYC and the one to Philly, the countless hours we spent at the SAE and Chi O houses at Millsaps. For many years to come, we will look back on these ornaments and remember our early years together. And I hope to continue the ornament tradition with my children.

Happy Holidays!