Christmas and Snow

Hello all! I hope this finds all of you enjoying your weekend!

We are! We woke up to more snow today and it was beautiful! My love plowed for 21 hours on Wednesday into Thursday but he didn't have to go back in today because the salt was doing the job! So that means that we got to go play in the snow this morning. We love getting out and driving on the snow covered roads. We try and beat the snow plows! We also took the four-wheelers out the other day playing in the snow which is soooo fun!

 

This is a look out the front door.

And this is a look out the back door.

 

While we were out and about this morning we drove past the covered bridge which is so pretty!

 

 

 

This is the river from either side of the bridge.

 

Beautiful!!

 

 

Here are some pictures from Christmas day! We are blessed to have all of our family close so we spent time with both sides.

 

There were a lot of legos this year!

 

 

 

One cowboy complete with boots and rope!

 

Three wanna-be Santa's,

 

and by the end of the day this is us...

...tired, busting at the seams full and loving Christmas!!!

 

I wish you a very happy New Year and hope you spend it with the ones you love!

Knitting

I recently learned how to knit and I am so excited about it!!

I have been knitting away! I made a few gifts and then of course one for myself!

 

Now, I only know how to do one kind of stitch but you have to start somewhere!

 

This is my infinity scarf. It's very warm!

Oh, by the way, this is in front of the newly remodeled fireplace!

 

Then last night the wind was howling like crazy and our electric went out! So I

was knitting by an oil lamp!

I was trying to finish up a Christmas gift.

 

Luckily the electric came back on in the middle of the night. The temperature had dropped and the wind was still blistering!

We woke up this morning, the first day of winter no less, to a pretty dusting of snow!

 

Knitting is such a cozy past time! I'm looking forward to it this winter!

A Little Look at Christmas

Here is a little look into our home at Christmas time!

This is such a fun time of year!

 

This is the mantel and fireplace surround complete and all ready for Christmas!

See my steps! They turned out

great.

I used a chicken feeder out of the barn and added lights and greenery! Did I mention that I have an outlet in the top of the mantel flush with the top so you can't see it! Love!

 

This is the cubby that we found when we tore off the paneling and plaster. My hubby built a new box to set inside the old one and trimmed it out. This is a fun space!

 

A few pieces of our vintage train set from the 1930's!

 

The depot didn't originally come with the train but was built for the boy that owned the train. It's just not the same scale. I still love it so much! The depot stays out all the time.

 

I just used bottle brush trees and fake snow to make it Christmasy!

I think this little depot clock is so cool.

 

Living room after the new paint!

 

This is hanging above the couch. I just tied some greenery from our tree with a piece of scrap fabric!

 

The fabric matches the pillow on the couch!

 

This is the 9 foot tree in the office. I wanted a big one this year!!

 

We found these soda boxes in the crawl space of my in-laws! It was such a sweet surprise!

 

Old ice skates and my husbands toy concrete truck make cute additions under the tree.

 

I used my old Christmas Cards to make my gift tags!

 

I love all things plaid! I have been collecting all things that I see plaid!

I made these little pine cone wreaths to hang in the office windows. They are a festive little touch to the room.

 

I know this was a lot of pictures! Thanks for stopping by!

Merry Christmas!



Mantel Remodel

Yesterday I shared with you all some of the before pictures of the mantel and fireplace.

I showed you some of the mess we got ourselves into.

 

So, here are some pictures of the next few steps.

I decided to go ahead and rip up the carpet on the steps. I figured we already had a mess and this has needed to be done for a long time! The entire living room had this carpet in it but we had ripped it up when we moved in.

 

This shows the bones of the mantel. My smarty pants husband and his dad took a picture and designed a mantel! Amazing!

 

I just got on Pinterest and started looking for mantels that caught my eye. I had a very short window of time to decide what I wanted.

 

It's starting to look like a fireplace surround.

 

This shows the knotty pine wall and the steps with the carpet removed. There were a ton of staples in those steps!!

 

The brick has not been scrubbed at this point! This was such a dusty job!

 

This is before the top of the mantel was put on.

 

This is with the top on and it all primed.

 

More after pictures tomorrow!

Have a great evening. I have been finishing some Christmas gifts and adding a few more Christmasy touches to the house! It's chilly out so stay warm and cozy!

Painting turned into Remodeling

How are all my friends today? I hope this finds you well, warm, and happy.
I wrote this post Thanksgiving weekend and have been trying to upload pictures since then. Blogger has been a HUGE pain!!

I finally saved my pictures to photobucket.com and then copy and pasted to the blog post..!!

Anyways, this is what we have been up to.
 

I knew we had a long weekend so I talked my wonderful, sweet husband into painting the living room. It hasn't been done since we moved in 8 years ago! It was way over due!

 

Now our house is about 150 years old and you never know what you will find. Keep that in mind....

 

The living room is covered in ugly 80's dark paneling that we painted white immediately after moving in. We had a pretty good inclination that there was cool, old, red brick above the fireplace behind the paneling. So since everything we do around here turns into this HUGE ordeal or actually a huge mess, we went from painting to tearing off the paneling above the fireplace.

 

Now when we (I use the term "we" very loosely) tore off the paneling we found plaster! Great, plaster!! Of course this will not be simple. So "we" chipped off the plaster. Cool brick!! Yeah!!

 
We found a little cubby behind there that they had covered up at some time.

Wait there's more.

 

Around the fireplace opening is the ugly yellow-orange 70's brick and a very narrow, concrete mantel that we both hate but I was just going to paint the brick! Oh no. That would not be sufficient. "We" are already this far we might as well tear it all off!!!

 

Yep. So "we" did! We found that when they had put in the stove insert they tore out the lentil and some of the brick so there was a gaping hole above the stove. It's a wonder that the brick hadn't fallen even worse.

 

Stay tuned.....tomoorow morw before and even some after pictures!!

Out of room....what??

Blogger has stopped letting me upload pictures! They say I have used my 1GB of storage but I don't think so! 

My SIL had the same thing happen but she signed out and back in and it let her upload pics without buying any more storage!

I don't know what to do!

Has anyone else had this problem??

Seriously, I love having a blog but I don't want to pay for more storage!

I have some pictures I want to share of our mini remodel in the living room but blogger won't let me!!

It's so frustrating.

So, if you can help please let me know. i don't have a clue!