Perceptions and Decorations

I've always been quite entertained by the little glimpses life gives me of how I am perceived by others.  Some are funny; others are quite puzzling.  I feel like a scatter-brained mess most of the time and live in a constant state of inner disarray.  I CANNOT BELIEVE how many times people have told me things like, "Wow!  You are so organized!" and "You always seem to have everything all together."  I didn't even get Christmas cards out this year, so I intended to send New Year's cards instead, but I missed that too.  I have a stack of Christmas gifts, some from PAST YEARS that probably will not be mailed any time soon.  I mailed my sister-in-law's birthday gift from September in her Christmas package at the beginning of December.  I just found last year's Father's Day card for my dad while cleaning out the drawer the other day.  My craft room is FULL of unfinished projects...fabrics full of pins, scrapbook pages waiting for pictures, half painted canvases, to name a few.  "Organized" and "together" are NOT words I would ever in a million years use to describe myself.  This is just one of many examples of how others perceive me dose not match my own reality.

Apparently, to some--and I can't explain why--I seem like the kind of person who would have a beautifully decorated home for Christmas.  We just moved into our new house in the middle of August, and we literally had only a matter of hours to empty the moving trucks before they had to be returned.  My house is not put together much at all...I still need some key pieces of furniture like a coffee table, for example, and there are still LOTS of projects in the making (hopefully ones that will actually come to fruition).  That being said, for some reason, I've had several requests from friends for pictures of my house with the Christmas decorations up, and since we've all pretty much cleared our heads of the ghosts Christmas past, I thought I'd better go ahead and do that!  Soooo...here it is!  Come on in, prop your feet up, have some coffee, and take a peek around!

 Dining room centerpiece...No, I didn't burn the candles like that on purpose.  I can only suppose there was some kind of draft that created this inadvertent Cingular ad.

 My living room with "my" tree.  The candles are way too small for those candle holders, I know.  The fabric in the chair on the left will someday be the new seat covers for two more of those cane back chairs.  I still need to fix the medallion that fell out of the credenza door.

 I "made" these curtains out of tablecloths.  I say "made" with quotation marks because really all I had to do was decide how high I wanted to hang them, make a fold, sew the fold in place, and hang from clips.  I probably could have even skipped the sewing part, and just clipped them up there!

 On the left is a chess table.  There are four "flaps" that flip down and expose the chess board, and the drawer holds the pieces.  Through that walk way is the kitchen on the left, the breakfast nook and the play room in the back.

Our card display on the bar.  I have lots of pine cones gathered from walks with the kids and trips to the park.  The munchkins get so excited about finding them, so I try to find places for them throughout our home.  We often stuff them with tissue papers that coordinate with the seasonal colors and fill baskets with them or just set them around here and there.

 Looking into the play room from the living room.

 Breakfast nook.

 Back of the play room complete with kids playing! 

 Looking towards the front of the play room.

 Entry way.  I can't seem to keep this area clear of things that collect under that bench!

 From the entry way looking into the dining room.

 Top of my china cabinet.

 Some of my precious things.

 Oops, these got out of order!  

Anyway, this is the top of one of the windows in the play room.  I change out the scenes each season and try to keep it sort of whimsical and child like without being tacky.

 Top of the other window in the play room and the kids' and hubby's tree.

This is the "classroom closet".  All of our school supplies and educational toys/games/activities are stored inside.  I use books to change out the scene on the top with the seasons and holidays and to coordinate with our lessons.