I Have a Confession: I've Been Thinking About Christmas Since August...

From Anthropologie (I love their ornaments each year):

 From Pottery Barn:

I love looking through catalogs and getting ideas for what to make myself for this year's holiday season. So many things could easily be made yourself with just a little "empty" time. I'm the first to admit that I also love purchasing a few (I'll most likely grab those stocking holders). Despite myself, sometimes buying things really does make me feel a bit better, or perhaps just a bit easier. It helps me to feel like I'm not constantly thinking about money, about scrimping and saving.

Plus, I absolutely LOVE decorating for the holidays. I'm actually somewhat ashamed at myself for completely letting Halloween go by unnoticed in our home. I'm not really into the spooky decor you see in the shops, though, so I'll have to think of something fitting for next year. Perhaps just a plethora of black cat cut-outs doing different things among a bunch of jack-o-lanterns? We'll see. Here's to planning (most decidedly another favorite thing)!

So, for the next two months, I know what I'll be doing! Searching, planning, and crafting my way to the holidays. If I spot anything super sweet, I'll let you know. Maybe I'll even get in a tutorial or something fancy like that. I'll ask now.. any favorite shops, recipes, activities you especially love during the holidays? Let me know!

p.s. - Believe me, I'm all over Etsy on this one, but didn't have time to pick my favorites for this blog. Plus, Etsy totally deserves its own blog, for sure. :)

The Great Switcheroo

I've done something horrible to myself. I've decided to switch our bedroom with Keats' nursery. Unfortunately, we already painted both rooms when we first moved in over a year ago so we'll need to repaint, but that doesn't even seem like the hardest part. Disassembling the furniture to fit through the doors is going to be the most annoying part, I think.

BUT it will all be so worth it. While looking through my sisters' pictures of her little girls' nursery, I realized that Keats' room is really dark and always needs an artificial light on. This began to bother me and I came to the decision that I would much rather buy curtains to block out natural light during naps than never have natural light at all. Plus, our bedroom is the bigger room and all we need is a bed, so now our bedroom will merely have a bed in it and Keats' nursery will have lots of space for whatever we want in there. OH! And my project area will be in the nursery closet. It's going to be sweet.

So... garage sale, major reorganization, possibly painting, and several decorations later, Birch and I will be done switching rooms. Poor Birch. However, he was excited when we went to the De Young and decided to take a cue from a really cool mural by Miguel Covarrubias and put up different animals and plants all over Keats' walls, along with numbers and letters. It's going to be oh-so-educational and fun!

I'm also a bit stoked for our bedroom to be a sleeping only kind of place instead of the general hangout area that it is currently. Here's to sleeping in beds, reading in chairs, and working on computers at desks! Cheers to the end of our all-purpose bed!