I’ll freely admit that I am obsessed with Amy Butler.  First, it started with a love of her beautiful fabrics, which I used to recover the cushions on our porch furniture:

Then I found out that Amy B started designing decor items, like rugs:

But now, my Amy Butler obsession can go even further – towels!

Besides being just absolutely beautiful, the towels are organic as well.  They’re easy to come by too – Bed Bath and Beyond carries them, and for a decent price too. I may need to stock up on a few pretty towels during my upcoming trip to Chicago

I’m not really big into holiday decorating for anything other than seasonal and Christmas.  I don’t do Halloween or Fourth of July, and I definitely don’t do Valentines Day.  Say what you want, but I just don’t like all the kitschy stuff related to those “holidays”.

But I did find a few cute ideas online this week, so I’m going to share them with you – most of these are quick and easy – and some are even tasty!  Enjoy!

From The Inspired Room

From Minnesota Mom

Homemade fudge packaged in cute boxes with DIY labels – from Censational Girl

Paper heart garland from How About Orange

We have a plate rail in our dining room.

A photo from our final walk through before purchasing our house.

I consistently struggle with what to do with the plate rail.  Should I put plates on it? Pictures? Nothing?  It goes around the entire room like a skinny stripe at eye level, and while it looks pretty, it makes decorating awkward.   Furniture needs to be just the right height, otherwise it looks incredibly misplaced.

Currently, I have a smattering of odds and ends on the plate rail: some tea cups and saucers around one side of the room, which is way more country than my typical style, and a little collection of photos and a pretty platter on the other side above the piano.

But when I saw this post over at Little Green Notebook, I wondered if it might offer some inspiration:

Picture rails are hung a bit higher (usually near the top of the wall) than plate rails, and then the pictures are hung from the rail.  The picture above shows a slightly lower picture rail, almost the same height as my plate rail!  As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself, “Finally! something that is similar!”

I’m not sure if I would actually hang pictures from our plate rail, but I like the idea of a collection of frames at different heights.

Or, I could hang photos just above the plate rail, like in this photo.  I like how this is very clean and simple, not cluttered or fussy.

Or a more punchy dining room with a similar idea.

I think all of these options are much more interesting than the typical row of plates I’ve seen in plate rail photos online.

To me, these always look like a parade of plates or accessories.  It starts to look tacky and cluttered.

Now that I have a few more ideas and I look back at our dining room, I’m reminded (yet again!) of how much I want to paint that room!  The forrest green makes the room feel like a cave at night, and while the golden yellow is nice and cozy, we have that color in abundance elsewhere in the house.  I think it will end up being something a bit lighter – either an ivory, or a pale gray green/blue.

Question for the crowd: Do you have an architectural features in your home that have stumped you?  The plate rail has always been difficult for me, what about you?

I finished decorating our dining room this weekend.  I only have 5 days left to enjoy it, but it will likely stay up until well past the New Year.  And I’m perfectly fine with that!

Here’s what it used to look like:

Perfectly wonderful and festive, but I wanted a little more.  So, I rummaged through a box of framed pictures that have been waiting to be hung since June *ahem* and wrapped a few in pretty paper, hung a few ornaments, and displayed them all with everything that was already there.

Cute, yes?  I especially love that we have wedding pictures of me and DH, but also from DHs parents wedding, way back in the 70s.  Now I just need a copy of my parents wedding picture, and we’d be all set.

I also printed and framed a little home-made DIY “artwork” – it says, “Jesus is the gift”.  DH and I both are Christian an believe that Christmas is truly about celebrating the birth of Jesus, the greatest gift that God ever gave.  It’s so easy to forget what Christmas is about and think it’s just about presents, or food, or family, or decorating or whatever else.  And sure, each of those things are important and wonderful things to focus on or celebrate.

But the first “Christmas” was simple and poor – a young woman and her husband traveling home with no place to stay, no decorations, no family, just faith that God would provide and be faithful to them.  And God was just that – he provided us (and them) with the gift of Jesus, and there was much rejoicing in heaven over him!

Let’s celebrate Jesus this Christmas, the greatest gift I ever received.

First, I apologize for the lack of posting in November.  There really wasn’t much going on that was worth posting.  We spent virtually every weekend either raking the gazillion leaves in our yard, or inside fixing something in our house.  Things accomplished:

1. We brought 3 or 4 truckloads of bagged leaves to the city compost.  (Note to self – next year, start our own compost, because they charge you!)
2. Took out the window AC unit in our bedroom after one especially cold night.
3. Installed the ceiling fan in our office (picture forthcoming – I really like it!)
4. Installed a fun little under-the-counter storage thing-y in our sink.  I’m kind of an organization and de-clutter freak.  My messy kitchen is driving me nuts after being gone for 4 days and forgetting it was there…
5. Killed my thyme and oregano plant  Sadness.

And now that Thanksgiving has passed and all of the gaudy fake leaves can go back into storage and the weird scarecrow in our neighbors yard is gone, it’s time for Christmas!  I love Christmas time and Advent.  I love thinking about the birth of Jesus, the greatest gift of all.  My faith is refreshed every year during this season – I love it!

I also love all of the joy, celebration, giving, time with family, snow, twinkle lights and holiday wreaths, trees, and decorations.  It’s my favorite time of year.  :-)

Unfortunately, I’m going to be away for most of it this year.  In fact, I’ll be away for more than half of December due to work, a wedding, spending time with family, and more work.  But I think I’m still going to decorate a little.  Because who can deny that they don’t like a little bit of Christmas cheer?

Because I won’t be around much, and we’re not actually celebrating Christmas here this year, I don’t think we’re going to have a tree.  :-(  Sadness.  But it’s okay, because we will have cute little Christmas houses, a wreath, some twinkle lights, and I think I’m going to try some decorating ideas I found on a “friends” blog:

I love the dangling ornaments from the pictures, and the wrapped pictures that look like presents – it looks super easy and something I could reuse from year to year.  Unfortunately, we don’t have shelves quite like that in our house.  But we do have our piano, a plate rail and a few book shelves that could work.  I just need to go out and finally print some pictures that I’ve been planning to for a while!

This table idea is cute and simple – she just used a floor length mirror and plopped some candles on there with the glass containers holding the extra ornaments.  I have a few similar glass containers and I’m pretty sure we have an extra mirror lying around somewhere…maybe I’ll just do the candles and ornaments without the mirror.  I envision lots of food smudges on it in the future!

I’ll post some pictures when I get around to it, and eventually I’ll post a picture of what I did for the month of November to decorate around the house.

Feast your eyes on these beauties:

And this…

This one too…

And this one…maybe for our porch?

To go with these that I made…

If you didn’t already figure it out, Amy Butler now designs rugs!  I’m an Amy Butler addict.  It’s ridiculous – my house would be one big massive floral seventies mess of Amy Butler if I knew it wouldn’t make my husband sick to his stomach.

It would be wonderful to get one of these, but they are EXPENSIVE like whoa.  I can dream though.  And hope that someone creates a cheap knock off.

Lately I’ve been scowering (how the heck do you spell that word?) websites and blogs for inspirational decorating pictures. We’ve lived in a rental home for almost a year. Off-white walls, original white metal cabinets, old carpet from 1968, it’s lovely I tell you.

Here’s a pic of a beautiful kitchen that I just looooove.

Love the simple white cabinets, the glass front cabinets, and of course that beautiful turquoise tile.  Not sure if the counter is soapstone or granite, but it’s delightful.    I found it on House of Turqouise and it’s designed by Frank Roop, originally posted on House Beautiful, one of my favorite places to stalk for home inspiration.  I doubt I’ll every live in a home with this stunning of a kitchen (unless I visit my mom, who has a gourmet kitchen to-die-for), but I can dream, right?
There’s a big announcement coming later that will clue you in as to why I’m looking at all of this stuff to begin with, though I’m sure it won’t be hard to guess.   But guess anyways!