Deck The Halls

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, James and I set out to get our first Christmas tree as a married couple.  As most first time newlywed experiences are, it was a fun time, and also a learning experience for both of us.  I learned about James' Christmas decorating traditions and James learned how OCD specific I am about making the tree look perfect.  Since childhood, James and his family would decorate the Christmas tree while eating cookie dough.  James' cookie of choice is his mom's oatmeal chocolate chip.  So we cranked up the Christmas carols, pulled out the mixer and got to work!

Mom O's Choc-Oat Chip Cookie Recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) margarine or butter softened

1 1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. milk

2 tsp. vanilla

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

2 1/2 cups Quick or Old Fashioned Oats, uncooked

1 (12 oz) pkg. semi- sweet chocolate morsels

1)  Heat oven to 375. 2)  In large bowl beat margarine and sugars until creamy. Add eggs, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Add flour and baking soda; mix well. Stir in oats, chocolate morsels; mix well. 3) Drop by rounded measuring tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.  4) Bake 9 to 10 minutes for a chewy cookie or 12 to 13 minutes for a crisp cookie.  5) Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove cookies to wire rack.  Cool completely.

The dough-- James' favorite part

Finished product

I've made this recipe 2 or 3 times and for some reason they never taste as good as they taste when James' mom makes them.  I guess she has the "mom's touch"--James insists they taste the same, but I think he is just being nice.  While baking we started working on the tree.  James and I are both firm believers in a real tree.  We just love that fresh evergreen smell and the whole act of picking out the perfect tree. 

It was love at first sight

I'm not sure how much fun James had decorating the tree, while I watched over him...moving the ornaments he had just placed.  I really need to loosen up before we have kids.  Here is the finished product, along with some of the other decorations around the house. Including an early Christmas gift from my parents-- a nativity set.

Prints

Those of you who know me (or have seen my Pinterest page) know that I love the look of a cluster of simple prints.  On Wednesday, I was out and about and decided to stop in at Home Goods to check out their Christmas decorations, when I saw three botanical prints for $30 each.  Although my husband didn't seem to think so, $90 for three pieces of art is a steal! Needless to say, they ended up in my cart and now they have found a home in our guest room.

I may, or may not be slightly obsessed with them...

Numbers

Before we re-painted, the hardware on our front door was brass.  We have replaced all of the brass hardware with stainless hardware.  The other night, we were trying to figure out the best way to get the numbers level when James had a brilliant idea-- keep the numbers in their individual packages and drill holes into the door where the screws need to go.  What can I say, he's good with numbers...We centered the numbers on the door and taped them up, then checked to make sure they were level.

Then James drilled holes where the screws needed to go

Next, we took the numbers out of their packages and screwed them into their pre-drilled holes

The finished product!

Painting Project

Ever since we bought our house, we have been wanting to update it with a fresh coat of paint.  After much deliberation, we settled on painting the exterior gray, with black shutters and a red door.  Specifically, the paint colors we selected were Winter Gates by Benjamin Moore for the house color, Front Door Red for the door and Black Tie for the shutters, both by Allen & Roth.  We were a little nervous about tackling this project on our own, but we knew that by DIYing the paint job, we would save hundreds.  Thanks to our sweet family members, we were able to get the majority of the painting done last weekend.  On Saturday, my parents and James' brother, Jon, and his wife Jenny came to help.  We were able to finish the entire gray exterior and got a few coats of paint on the door.  Sunday afternoon, James' parents came over for a few hours to help us work on trim.  Here are a few before and after pictures, we are thrilled with the way it turned out:

  Before-- kind of, we had already taken the shutters off and primed the door, which used to be black

Front- After

Front- After

Back- After, or.. during, if you look closely you can see James on the roof 

and my mom working on the siding

It's fun coming home to a "new" house every day.  It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do! We still have some touch-ups to do and we need to finish the trim on the back of the house.  We are also still debating on whether to paint the red exposed brick the same gray color as the rest of the house, or to leave it be.  At this point, we have left the brick exposed, since it is easier to paint it than un-paint it.  We figure we will live with it for a bit and see how we like it.  Here's a close up of the exposed brick area:

What do y'all think? Paint the red brick or leave it exposed?