A festive kitchen table

Again, I�m not quite sure what to say or how to tell you how much I appreciate your wonderful comments and emails. I wish I knew how to say thank you in a way that expresses it, other than just saying THANK YOU.

Right now, the Bub is sleeping, my father-in-law is asleep on the sofa, and my hubby and his sis are both on their laptops, so I thought I would join the party. ;) Today is the first day Hubs has been home much, after dealing with all of the arrangements. It�s been so nice, I must say. I even got him to help me work on the master closet � he finally went through his meeellions of t-shirts and we got rid of 60. That is 6-0 people. Wow.

I had pictures from our kitchen table loaded into Live Writer from last week, so I wanted to go ahead and show you part of our red and white Christmas kitchen.

I made these ornaments last year � I just filled them with curled up sparkly ribbon, faux snow and added some snowflake stickers:

The greenery I just stuff around the light fixture (which was a $30 find at Lowe�s � I have to mention this every. single. time. I show you this light). Then to add some red I just threw in some berries that were on a gift last year. Oh yeah, free!:

The ornaments are really adorable close up:

The centerpiece is fairly simple and has lots of white and red. I just filled the cloche with red ornaments, then placed it on the plate (Pier 1), and surrounded it with berry pics (clearance from Michael�s last year):

  

Everyone always asks how I do this � I turn the cloche over, fill it, then put the plate on and turn it all over. It�s one of those DUH things � you stare at it and try to figure it out. :)

The placemats were Dollar Store finds, but after taking pictures, I found them a bit busy. Do you ever do that? I do that all the time � taking a picture allows you to look at your decor in a different way.

I had a ton of ribbon from clearance sales last year, so I thought up a fun way to use it. I took foam circles from the Dollar Store:

Then just wrapped like mad and hung them with the coordinating ribbon:

Be careful to make the overlaps a bit bigger, like the striped one on the left, otherwise you�ll use an insane amount of ribbon. Really. Ask me.

I think it�s better without the placemats, you?:

  

I mean, it�s not like there�s nothing else going on in the room. ;) I find taking away does more than adding:

For another adorable chair decor idea, check out Lindsay�s itty bitty monograms.

Can you believe Christmas is NEXT WEEK?? I�m not even close to being done shopping. The Christmas cards haven�t been written out. But the house is pretty and glowing and right now that is very, very good.  :)