Nordic Farmhouse Red and White Theme Christmas

This year for my decor I decided to add in some red to brighten and give it a Nordic Farmhouse feel.

Every year I try to do a different decor theme with what I already have and just add some touches or change things up to get a new look from previous years. It keeps it fun and new for me each year.

Starting with my tree, I added the red to all my white and crystal ornaments with just tying off red and white checked fabric bows and adding red and white candy canes to them. The drapes I made out of summer tablecloths that I found on the clearance rack and just sewed a header to make them work for curtains.

I wanted to let the reds do the popping in the decor this year.

Here is a picture of the tree lit. It is so hard to get a great picture with all the lights I have on this tree.

My dining room is the main entertainment area we use during the holidays. This is the room we gather to eat, laugh, love and be all together.

I like natural and simple. Just adding a check ribbon to this flocked wreath gives a statement on the chippy wall door divider without over doing.

I like keeping my cherished pieces in place and just add things to bring in Christmas.  This way I do not have to put anything away and can just embellish what I have.

Keeping the chippy in the decor with my candle sticks. Adding some greens along with a simple white ribbon help to bring Christmas to my candle sticks.

Adding simple red Christmas plates bring in some pops of red.

For my mantel this year I used old frames I had from around the house and just added Greens and touches of the checked ribbon to bring in a winter garden feel. I then hung some red and white stockings and added the birch logs and greens to the chippy fire place log holder. The greens in the log holder have lights and give the soft glow at night like a real fire would give.

Added red and white fun finds to each stocking hung on the fireplace.

I love using my old frames to hang the greens on. Just gives some depth and character to the mantel.

Natural greens and ribbon make a statement hanging on the frame.

My most cherish pieces in my Christmas decor are my collection of angels. Angels give me the feeling of serenity and love so having them throughout my decor is important.

I like to keep my decor light hearted and simple. I entertain and love that we recently made this coffee and dessert bar in my dining room. It is a great area to have for my guests to relax and enjoy.

Coffee Bar

I have the tree up where this reading chair was so I moved the chair over to this corner of the room. I love to sit and read being surrounded by my Christmas decor. It is a bright warm spot to sit and relax.

Keeping my neutral palette and just adding simple touches of red gave me a sweet farmhouse look to my Christmas dining room.

Thank you for stopping by to see my Christmas Decor for 2014.
As we slide on into Santa's big Day hope you are all having fun getting your decor Jingle on! Enjoy the season.
Kris
:)

Sharing my decor at Jennifer Rizzo's Holiday House Walk Tour.

Also sharing with the Scoop

Sharing with WOW  us Wednesday

You're All Angels and Winners in my Book

I wanted to announce the winners of the Give Away I did about Random Acts of Kindness.

Every single story shared made my heart feel such joy.  There are such wonderful caring people in this world and I wish I could give something to each of you.  I had my hubby Terry pick the names out of a bowl.

Before I list the winners, please know all of you are angels and I loved that you shared your sweet stories of kindness.  In this world it is good to see small acts of kindness can make a big difference in both the giver and the receivers lives.  All of your stories were so touching thank you for sharing.

I want to first say that I donated a bag of coffee and cocoa's to the nursing home to honor the following names.

Lin A tiny Cottage in the Woods

Vera Row Homes and Cobblestones

Dore Burlap Luxe

Nana Diana

Bobbie Cottleston Pie

Rose Musings, meanderings and Merriment from Rose

Judy 20 North Ora

  They wished if they were picked to have their prize given to someone in need.  So I am taking over the coffee and cocoa's to the Alzheimers Unit Nursing Care near my home.  The director of this Care Center told me their minds are not sharp anymore but their taste buds still remember and they will enjoy the sweet cocoa's and coffee treats.  I am even going to send some home baked Christmas cookies with the coffee and cocoa's.

Girls the coffee, cocoa's and cookies are on their way to the Senior Care Center for Alzheimers Patients.  Thank you for wanting to share your winning with them.

Now if you name was picked it is listed below please email me your full name and address so I can get your winnings off to you.

Julie Corbisiero Coffee and Book

Julie Marie Coffee and Book

Teresa's daughter Kim Fur coat tote and cocoa

Cindy Consider it All Joy Fur coat tote bag and cocoa

Sherry Thrift My House  Fur coat tote bag and cocoa

Anita Castles Crowns & Cottages

Fur coat tote and cocoa

Steve Cook Art and Sand  Coffee and cocoa

Nancy Joyful Cottage  Fur coat tote and cocoa

Cathy

Susie She Junks Fur coat tote and coffee

Enjoy your treats and thank you for sharing your beautiful stories of caring and kindness.

Enjoy as we roll on into Santa's Big Day.

Kris

:)

Christmas Edition: How I Found My Style Sunday

Happy Sunday Everyone.  I am honored to be featured over at Pamela's From My Front Porch To Yours blog today.  She is doing a Christmas Edition of How I found my style Sundays during the holidays.

I was featured last year in her regular season of How I found My Style Sunday and it was super fun to do so when Pamela asked if I would like to be part of her Christmas Edition I of course said Yes!

Please hop over to Pamela's lovely blog and see some of my Christmas Decor.

As we move on into the fast pace of the holidays please take time to really enjoy the meaning of the season and loved ones.  We all get caught up in the hussle and bussle of the holidays but it is nice to stop and take in the true meaning of the season.

Have a great week ahead.  Have fun checking out my Christmas Decor over at Pamela's.  Please come back and let me know what you think.

Kris

:)

Girlfriend Party

Some of you asked if I would share some pictures from my girlfriend get together last night.  It was a fun evening. Lot's of food, drink and sharing of our wonderful friendships.  I did not get a whole lot of pictures.  I get so busy with being the hostess I forget to take pictures.

Getting some of the yummy appetizers out.

Holy Crap Cupcakes!!!!

The greatest BFF's Ever!

Sara my daughters friend from college figured out how the do the timer on my camera so I could hop into the picture.  All of us girls together.  We wear jammies to this party to be comfy for the night.

My older daughter Jen in the middle with her two besties.  They all wore the same pj's from Target that said "These are my Party PJ's".  Loved how cute the three of them looked.

Not a whole lot of pictures but we all had a great evening together.
I look forward to this celebration of our love and friendships with each other.
We play lots of fun games, eat to much and have yummy drinks and the Holy Crap Cupcakes lol!
The gift exchange was fabulous.  The gifts all the girls come up with to exchange that benefit charities are so fabulous.  Sorry I did not get a picture of that.  There were gorgeous gifts that were exchanged.

Hope your week end is going great.
Come back tomorrow I have a Home Tour for Christmas I am participating in.  You can see some of my Christmas decor for this year.

Have a great week end.
Kris

Random Act of Kindness And A Merry Give Away

Random Act of Kindness

My favorite thing to do this time of year well actually all year long but especially this time of year. 

Just a random act of kindness doing something small or big to help someone else out in need.

Terry and I were out to dinner the other night and a young couple with 4 little ones was going over their Christmas list and talking about which up coming pay check they will use to buy gifts for the kids for Christmas.  They wanted to stick to a budget and not charge anything. The hubby was saying his next check will have his overtime on it and that is where they could find the extra money for the kids gifts this year.   I thought that was so sweet how they were figuring out where the extra cash for Christmas will come from to buy the kids something for Christmas. 

 So Terry and I paid  their dinner check.  Going out with 4 kids for dinner is not cheap and we thought to ourselves been there done that so lets help them out and pick up their dinner check as a random act of kindness.  This way they would have a little extra cash towards the kids gift buying. 

 They had the same waitress so we just had her give their check to us and we paid theirs and ours and left before they could know who paid their bill.  Just a nice random act of kindness.

So today I am going to do a little post on random acts of kindness.

You are all angels to me to come  read my blog posts and leave your sweet messages.  So I want to share some kindness with all of you.  So below you will see the little treasures I found to do a give away here today.

All you have to do is leave me a comment sharing with all of us an act of kindness you did for someone.  It is always heart warming to read the wonderful acts of kindness that we do for each other.

In the spirit of your act of kindness I will put your name into a hat and pull out the names.

 This is open to the United States only.  I wish I could open it up to all of you sweet bloggers from other countries but the shipping is cost prohibitive.  Hope you understand but I invite you to share your act or acts of kindness with all of us.  It just does my heart good to read all the generous and loving things that we do for each other.

Hope as you get your Jingle on with decorating, shopping, wrapping, baking you will take time to do some random acts of kindness. 

Here are the treasures I have found to have in the give away. 

I found this Christmas Morning Coffee last year to give each of my neighbors with some home baked Christmas Cookies.  They all told me it was the best coffee ever.

 So this year I found it again and want to share this wonderful coffee as a giveaway.  Below the coffee is a sweet book I found.  It is full of gardening ideas for example putting coffee grounds into certain garden plants help them thrive.  Very interesting read for the gardner's out there.  I found two of these for the give away.

This is seriously one of the best hot chocolate mixes I have ever had.  The salted caramel is so yummy.

This little cutie is a fur coat that you can throw in your purse or attach to your purse or key ring etc.  Inside is a cute little reusable shopping tote.  These are just too darn cute.

I have a few of these in different patterns as you can see in the first picture of the prizes.
So please leave me a comment and share your random act of kindness you have done and I will enter you into the give away.
I will divide all these treasures up to let more of you have a chance to win.  

Speaking of angels and kindness I wanted to leave all of you with the beautiful singing of O Holy Night by the Celtic Women.  Please take a few minutes to listen to this beautiful song.

Thank you sweet angels in blog land.  Enjoy.

Kris

Happy Sunday Decor Happy

Hope your holiday weekend was great.  It was all about friends and family gathering to share lots of good food and be thankful for each other and the love we share.

We had our Thanksgiving on Friday instead of Thursday.  With having a firefighter son in law and a daughter that is a nurse it is hard sometimes to get our schedules all the same.  They both worked the holiday so we did our Thanksgiving on Friday all together.  It was fun and yummy.

I wanted to share with you a few more things I made up for the girlfriend charity party I am hosting this Friday Night.

All dollar finds to make up this little favor.  The white Christmas nail polish I found at the dollar store.  So pretty.  Clear nail polish with sparkles.  The emery boards I got from the dollar bin at Michaels.  Two in a package with Christmas designs.  The little paper bag gift card holder I got at a market show I just went too.  I added the ribbon and striped cupcake liners.

Found these cute chalk board tags at Michaels.  They came 12 in a package for $1.99 with 40% off.  Great deal.  Used a white paint marker to write "For Your Mistletoes" on the tags.

Got boxes of Brach's candy canes from Walmart.  98 cents a box.

Tied everything off in little clear gift bags.

So each girl will get a "For your Mistletoes" favor at the party.  Cute favor for less than $5 dollars to make.  Here is the post on the cute gift bags I made for the party if you missed this post.

Have you ever played the "Purse" game.  It is a fun party game.  You have everyone grab their purse and we sit all together with our purses and then I pick out of a bowl items that can be found in your purse.  For example a tube of lipstick, a costco membership card,  gum, mints, grocery reciept, toothbrush etc.  If they have this they get a piece of candy or a point.  Then the one with the most points or pieces of candy at the end of the game wins a prize.  I try to come up with hard things to find in your purse to make it a little more challenging along with the usual stuff.

It is fun to see what peeps find in their own purse.  My daughter won last year because she had a sock in her purse!!!!  Yep don't ask me why but she had a sock in her purse.  Anyway it is a fun game.  At the end of the game I give each player a little prize for playing.  

This is what I did for everyone that plays the purse game.

Found these sassy little purses at the dollar store.  I think they are actually cute gift card holders.  Anyway they were cute and fun for the girls and I nabbed them for a dollar.

I then got $1 scratch offs to put in the little purses along with a lucky penny.  Every girl needs a little holiday cash right?!  Hope someone wins big when they scratch off their prize ticket.

Happy Decorating if you are starting your decor happy.

So there you have it.  A couple more little things I have done up for my girlfriend party for this Friday night.  I will show you some of the prizes in the next post.

Have a great day.

Kris