Dining room Christmas vignette

I�m late to the party! Ack! We�ve been busy with a choo choo tree, hubby�s birthday and my impromptu decision to finally paint the office. I am crayyyzay!

Anyway, I finished up our dining room vignette today, and I�m so excited to link up to Rhoda�s Holiday Home linky party!:

You may remember last summer when I removed the top of our dining room hutch:

It had bugged me for YEARS, and I was so excited to find a perfectly lovely buffet hiding underneath:

LOVE when that happens. :)

I was so giddy at the thought of having another space to decorate! That is what it�s all about folks.

I ran into Walmart the other night to get a bag of cat food, which was mistake number one � you never, ever, EVER �run into� Walmart for anything. Mistake number two was making a quick swing by the Christmas stuff. Have you seen their ornaments this year?:

Maybe I�m behind � I hear they had them last year? Oh my goodness, they are so pretty! There is an amazing selection! And they�re only a buck each!

It�s a dangerous, dangerous aisle. I�m warning you. When I saw these, I didn�t want to use them on the tree -- I had a different idea in mind. ;) I knew they�d be perfect for our dining room vignette.

I grabbed all of the glass pieces I could find from our basement and around the house � cloches, apothecary jars, whatever. I added some faux snow I�ve used for years, and nestled some of the ornaments in:

Those trees are one of my favorites!

The silver stars are large and intricate:

Love the little church too. I held back from buying one in every. single. color:

I couldn�t pass up the presents:

And the reindeer was a keeper for sure:

It was SO HARD to not spend $50 on $1 ornaments. Seriously � they are too cute!

I held it together, and then I saw these in the next aisle:

And I broke down again. They were a perfect combo of that chocolate brown and beautiful green! They were only $2 each, and I only grabbed a couple. I wanted to grab 45. Or so.

I use mostly red and gold to decorate for the holidays around our house, but I was so taken with that green color for our chocolate dining room! I saw some $2 beads at Target in the exact same color and added them to my Goodwill wine decanter:

Years ago I spray painted some simple twiggy cone trees from Hob Lob and I added a couple to the buffet for some height:

I grabbed a package of $5 green ornaments from Walmart and mixed them with some of the sparkly chocolate ones:

And I big fat LOVE how it turned out!:

Of course, I added some sprigs of greenery here and there, just to give it more fullness. I don�t think it�s physically possible for me to do anything Christmas decor-related without greenery. :)

It�s a combo of green, brown, silver and a little gold, and I LOVE IT:

I was going to just put everything out here and there, but the hives started, and my need for symmetry won out. :) I made it kind of even, but since everything�s not exactly the same, it�s not too matchy-matchy:

Ignore my after-8 p.m.-hair in the reflection. :)

I�ve been using the same spray painted pine cones and jingle bells in this space for six years, so I was so excited to do something a little different:

And all of the little stuff under the glass was well under $20. Not too shabby for a whole new look!

Don�t you just LOVE that green color with the chocolate? Walmart also has the ornaments in a beautiful blue color that would look fantastic with brown as well!

I am getting there with the Christmas decor�I have some fun plans with the Silhouette and I�ll show you that next week! :)

**Linking this to Julia�s holiday party!

Thank you to my sponsor!:

The dining room update

Heya peeps! I hope you had a great weekend! I finally finished up a project that was months in the making�really it was years. ;)

Before we built our house, we had been living in a two bedroom apartment for three years or so, and a small apartment translated to VERY little furniture in our new, large house. I lived with the bare dining room as long as I could after we moved in, and one day I told hubby I just couldn�t take it anymore � I was getting furniture!

Did I mention this was before we �met� Dave Ramsey? ;)

Before we even started shopping, I had what I wanted in my head � a long, lovely, dark table (which I got), and a long buffet. I did not want a hutch. But what did I get?

A hutch:

I remember standing in the showroom with the sales guy, asking if I could just buy the buffet piece on the bottom, not the hutch. He said nope, and said the hutch had to go on top.

FINE. I believed him. (Grumble.)

And since the day it was delivered, the hutch has been a thorn in my side. We�ve had it for five years, and I was never crazy about it. Last fall I did a little redo by covering the mirrors on the back:

But I was still dreamin� about that beautiful buffet. So one day I started thinking about it (you know that�s dangerous!!) and wondered if there was a beautiful buffet under that hutch.

I knew it was two separate pieces, but figured the bottom part was unfinished  � you know � all  pretty along the edges, but particle board or something craptastic on top, since it wasn�t seen?

Well, one day I did some batting of the eyelashes at the hubs, and he helped me push the monster away from the wall (did I mention it is INSANELY heavy?), and we pushed the hutch back a bit to see what was on top of the buffet piece:

Cue the birds and angels singing Squeezays!! It was a glorious day!

Then came the hard part. (Did I mention the hutch was CRAZY heavy? Crazy.) Getting that thing off the buffet was a chore. I ended up taking the mirrors out of the back of the hutch, along with the glass shelves, and then took the doors off. It worked! We could actually move it off.

Yeeehaw! :)

Then the accessorizing started. The FUN part!!

I found a large mirror at Goodwill for only $5.99. I loved that it was large (two by three feet), but the frame around it was wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. I knew I could chunk it up, so off to Home Depot I went.

I found underlayment in a four by four sheet for only $6, and had it cut to size:

 

I took the mirror out of it�s old frame and used Liquid Nails for mirrors to glue it on the board:

Because I didn�t want the underlayment stuff to be seen from the sides of the mirror, I had it cut just shorter than the width of the molding I was going to install around it:

Then I cut my molding and used glue and my nail gun to secure it around the mirror. This is how it looks from the back:

My long ago dream of how the buffet would look included two fab lamps at each end, so I stalked HomeGoods for a couple weeks before I finally found lamps that made my heart go pitter pat:

These were a SPLURGE. Fifty bucks each baby. Ouch. It hurt just a little when I checked out. But when I got home with them and placed them in their spots, I knew it was totally worth it. They were loverly.

I wanted something substantial sitting in the middle of the buffet � and I REALLY wanted a bouquet of beautiful, fat hydrangea blooms. But my bushes aren�t cooperating this week, so I went with plan B. I got this humongous faux greenery from Hobby Lobby for $15 on sale:

And took the beautiful Pottery Barn footed bowl I got with my Amex points (whoo!):

And just started cutting and sticking the pieces all over in the foam till I was happy with the �poof� factor:

I loved how it was turning out, but I knew the buffet needed one thing a dining room isn�t complete without � candlelight. ;)

I skipped to the local Dollar Tree the weekend I highlighted Emily and her fab candleholders. Each one is only $2 � one taper holder for the base and a large glass piece for the top:

RUN, don�t walk to the Dollar Tree, cause right now they have candle holders that flare out at the top, and it looks SO much like the William�s Sonoma version!:

I still haven�t glued the base on, so they are a little precarious at the moment. ;) For now, I don�t breathe on them. 

But I love them so very much!!:

I big. fat. puffy heart. the whole darn thing!:

I LOVE how the beautiful curves of the buffet can really be appreciated now. No ginormous hutch bringing it down.

The mirror is now a chunkilicous 31 by 43 inches. Cause you know I like �em big. And chunkaaaaay (Moto Moto!):

The gorgeous crystal lamps play off of the crystals in the knock off Pottery Barn light:

It�s just what I wanted � simple and understated, but dramatic at the same time. And it makes the room feel SO much more spacious without that hutch on top!

Of course, I love it best at night, with the centerpiece all lit up!:

(To see how I made the centerpiece, go here.) Lurve:

I am GIDDY thinking of ways to decorate the buffet for the holidays! Yay!!

It only took me five years, but I got my dream of a buffet in the dining room. :)

The before:

And finally, the after I wanted from the start!:

Now I just have to decide if I�ll hang anything inside the boxes on the walls. Right now I�m think no � but I�m going to live with it for awhile and then decide. You never know what my mind will come up with. ;)

A dining room reveal!

Well, its not completely done, but I thought I would stop the torture and just show you already!! :)


I have long said there are three rooms I think you can do totally dramatic and fun. Your laundry room, powder room and your dining room. The first two because they are usually small and can take pretty much whatever color you want. The last, because I think dining rooms should have a little bling and drama, just because they can.


Drama it is:
The bench I will show you more of soon. It's drivin' me batty! Argh!! It's going to be gorgeous when I get it just right. (Dad is to the rescue this week -- I'll explain more later.)
The hutch redo I showed you here, and now I love that I can see what's inside:
The window redo I showed you here. I added molding, bamboo roman shades and made my new drapes:

Joann Etc. is STILL out of my trim to finish off the two head chairs. (Pout.) I was thisclose to driving 45 minutes today to get it from another store, but I held back. Have I mentioned I'm insanely impatient?

BUT I did have a couple lumbar pillows made for them, and those make me feel soooo much better about the unfinished chairs:

Aren't they adorable?!

I used scrap fabrics from the chairs and I adore them.

The table setting I showed here. I pieced together dishes from HomeGoods, Target and Pier 1:

The centerpiece is one of my favorite parts of the room, and it all started with a $4 mirror. You can see the how-to here.

Everything works so great with my cedar chest I redid months ago:

I showed you how incredibly annoying easy it was to reupholster dining chairs here. I used a brown faux silk on the backs, a creamy linen on the seats, and a pattern with all of the colors on the fronts:

Reason #7,839 I love my husband -- when I put the fabric on the chairs to show him what it would look like, I asked, do you think it's too much? His response -- "Maybe for some people, but not for us." LURVE that man.

I love to paint our ceilings, and I showed you how I did this one here.

It makes the molding POP!
The light. THE LIGHT I LOVE!! It was a knock of a Pottery Barn light I showed you here.
My version is from Home Depot and cost about $100 less (plus free shipping!).

I need to lower it just a couple inches, but for now, it's just fine. :)

My favorite time to enjoy this room is at night:

I'm not lyin' when I tell you I've had the chandy turned on every. single. evening, whether or not we're downstairs. I don't turn it off till we go to bed. It's so lovely to look at when we come down the stairs throughout the evening:

And because I'm a sucker for a good before and after, here's how the room looked years ago:

Then, a couple years later:

And last year...

Now:

Last year:

Today:

DRAMA!! I love it!! It is a dining room after all...so it's allowed. ;)

The winner of the ABCD Images giveaway is Erin @ Thimble Ambitions! Congrats Erin, email me and I'll get you in touch with Angie!