4 Christmas Trees, 3 French Hens, 2 Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

The first tree.

I decided I would make a post about the FOUR Christmas trees we have this year since three of them are vintage or sort of vintage. My husband likes to joke about our four Christmas trees though I think he is secretly kind of proud of them. We went from one Christmas tree last year to four this year. We started out with the Christmas tree I have had for seventeen years. I bought it the first year I lived on my own in Kansas while I was going to grad school. It was a little half size tree that sat on a table. It wasn't anything special. I was very poor and couldn't afford much. Considering the price I paid I thought it shaped up into a nice little tree. The little houses under the tree are vintage. They were once on a string of lights that didn't last long. My mom took them off and they ended up in a little box of Christmas decorations I was always given to decorate my room every Christmas. I loved the little houses and setting them up to make a Christmas village.

My parents 40 year old tree.

My parents have had the same Christmas tree for  over forty years. It came from a department store in Chicago.  I always loved that tree. It was really tall and packed with ornaments. I aways loved the way the angel was about a centimeter from touching the ceiling. My grandparents who lived in Chicago had the exact same tree. It was in their garage when it collapsed from an ice storm. The Christmas decorations did not get removed before they were destroyed from the weather. My mom always complained about her tree and talked about getting a new one. I would always harass her until she gave in and kept it.

She finally went and bought a tree without me knowing it. Now we have the old Christmas tree that is over forty years old. I still love it and think it looks as good as any tree you could go out and buy today. It might even look better! Our ceilings are so high the top isn't quite as close to the ceiling as it was at my parents house. I eventually need to get an angel for the top instead of a star. It is now in our living room and the little tabletop tree is in the "dressing room". The little table top tree is the only tree we have that is not vintage.

I made the joy pillows in 8th grade sewing class.

Grandpa's Tree

The next tree is another hand me down from my mom. Not that long ago when those skinny rustic Christmas trees became in vogue she bought this skinny, rustic tree to decorate in memory of my grandfather (her dad) who died of cancer when I was in the 7th grade. I was very close to my grandpa and spent a lot of time with him. The honorary ornament on this tree is a bird's nest he gave me over thirty years ago to take to school for show and tell. The tree also has a red bike on it because my grandpa would ride his red bike everywhere. He even road his bike about 25 minutes from his town to our town to come and visit. There is a wagon on the tree because he would pull me all over town in a red wagon. My mom always says I knew more people in the town she grew up in than her because of my grandpa taking me in the red wagon to visit people. There are also little animals and gardening tools on the tree. My grandpa loved animals and nature. He had a huge garden that was probably about three house lots big. He would give vegetables from the garden away to everyone he knew. This tree has the vintage bird's nest and lots of vintage memories. If you come stay in our guest room this is where you will find the grandpa tree.

The bird's nest for show and tell.

The last tree is truly vintage. My husband kept talking about aluminum Christmas trees. I was never really that excited about them and definitely wasn't impressed by the color wheels for them that seem so popular these days. We saw an aluminum tree not long ago at an antique shop. We talked about buying it but I felt it was a bit expensive and I still wasn't that excited about it. Our family room has tan walls with deep blue accents. I started thinking about how pretty an aluminum tree would look decorated in blue. Then every morning when I would leave for work I would look over at the empty corner of the room and imagine an aluminum Christmas tree decorated in blue sitting in that corner. I finally decided I had to have that aluminum tree. We went to get it and the shop was closed for vacation! My dad stopped in about a week later and was able to get the tree for $20 less than the price we had been quoted. It's ours. I think it is so pretty. If you decide to get your own aluminum Christmas tree please beware! That aluminum will give you cuts on your hands while you decorate.

I always think about the people who built this house. I think about their original intentions for the house, how they had it decorated etc. I start to think about Christmas and what the house looked like for them at Christmas tree. Then I remind myself they were Jewish and I assume there was no Christmas tree. Then I wonder even more how their house was decorated in December. What did it look like for Hannukah?

Where Do We Stand?

It has been a while since I have written a blog. I need to do a little update on where we stand right now. I haven't blogged because not a lot has happened since my last post. We have basically been trying to recover financially from the expense of all the work we did last winter. We also still have the financial obligations that come with still owning our old house. On top of those things I am feeling a bit poor due to the number of shoes I have purchased over the past year. For about a year now I have had very painful bursitis in both of my feet. (I think all of the cement floors in this house could be exacerbating the issue.) I have really struggled with finding comfortable shoes.  I would have much rather put the money I have spent on shoes into a new house project.

We were considering having the house painted this past summer. But, we did not get the roof damage I posted about here fixed until this past summer. We called in October of 2013 about getting the roof fixed and it took close to a year to finally get it repaired. The leak from the roof caused a lot of damage to the door frame of the storage shed in the carport. So, there was no point in painting until the roof was repaired. By the time the roof was fixed the weather wasn't very conducive to painting. The painting will most likely be next summer's project. We have no plans to make any drastic change to the color of the house. We just want to freshen it up.

We also have not had the yard and sidewalk repaired after putting in the new sewer line. We had to wait to let the ground settle. It has now settled and doesn't look quite as much like a giant mole went through our yard. Since the weather is cold this is most likely something that will be taken care of when the weather warms up. We would also like to eventually have some landscaping done to the yard. We are not planning to make any major changes but all of the bushes are very old (maybe even original). They have gotten very woody without having much green. We would like to freshen them up. There were also a few trees that were lost in the yard during large storms. There are some really key spots where trees are missing that we would like to have replaced. We also need to add some rock around the house to protect it from standing water.

Inside we still need to get a new dishwasher. Ours is really ugly and doesn't do the greatest job but it is limping along for now. Eventually we would like to get a stainless steel one to match the rest of the kitchen. We need to put new ceiling tiles in the family room (former dog kennel). The tiles that were there were sagging and didn't look very nice. Then when the toilet flooded last year some of the tiles got water damage. We also have yet to tackle the pink and blue bathroom. We finally have furniture in the guest bedroom. I will make a post about that later. Our family room is without a TV which is still at the other house. We need to eventually paint the laundry room. This isn't a pressing issue but when they stained the floor they got one large splash of stain on the laundry room wall which kind of annoys me. We also need to eventually get a new mailbox. Ours has an issue with collecting water. I will have to do a post about mailboxes at some point. I have found a cool one that I want.

As you can see there has not been a lot of action here so no new photos. Oh yes! I forgot to tell you that we got the door on the indoor kitchen grill repaired. It is now in great shape. Thank you to my wonderful cousin for taking care of that for us. I forgot to add the fireplace to our list of to dos. My husband would kill me if I forget to list it because I think it is at the top of his list! When we had the house inspected we were told they didn't think our fireplace was lined. Apparently not having a lined fireplace is extremely dangerous even though the fireplace has been used in the past. We need to have it inspected by an expert (along with the chimney to the kitchen grill) and then decide how we will proceed if it is not lined. There is a pretty good chance we will turn it into a gas fireplace.

Thirty Minutes Later

After making the last post I started thinking about those louver doors in the bathroom. I couldn't imagine them originally being wood because the trim is all painted. I couldn't imagine them being originally white because there was no other white in the bathroom. I am pretty sure the original trim was blue but I also couldn't imagine the door being blue. So I decided to get a flashlight and do some investigating. I am pretty certain the trim around the doors and the entire bathroom was blue to match the walls and tile. And.........drum roll..........I think the closet door was originally pink!!!!! I see a little bit of pink paint on the door hinges. I can totally picture it! I'm sure in 1960 it was the hippest bathroom in town. As much as I would like the house to be as original as possible I don't know if I can bring myself to paint the door pink with blue trim! Help!!!! What do I do???

Still Pink & Blue

I still haven't posted about all of the work that was done this winter. I decided tonight I need to post about the bathroom. As of now it is still pink and blue. The cabinets used to be a gross orange color. I think the lacquer had yellowed over time and made them look that way. Now they are a nice brown. We also had a new shower door put in. I love it! With a curtain we were always leaking water on the floor somehow. I am such a messy shower taker! We also had to have an extra long shower curtain because our rod was really high. It was too long and drug in the bottom of the bathtub and was always covered with nasty soap scum. This is so much neater and cleaner. We also got a new toilet in each bathroom. To flush our old toilets you had to spin the handle 360 degrees. I never had seen a toilet like this before. We were told they were the first low flow toilets and not designed very well. They were very dangerous. If they accidentally only went 180 instead of 360 (basically stopped while pointing up instead of down) they ran constantly. We ended up with a $99 water bill because of this once. More recently our bathroom got flooded because the toilet was stopped up without us knowing and the handle got left up. Bad combo! To avoid these two major problems again we got these awesome new toilets that can supposedly flush 16 golf balls at once! I haven't tried out this unique little feature. But, we have had no floods or $99 water bills since their installation. They do have the smallest toilet seats ever. I am hoping our old toilet seats will fit on the new toilets but we haven't gotten around to installing them yet.

The guest bathroom before and after. These cabinets turned out nicer than the master bathroom.

These are the master bathroom cabinets before and after. The colors don't show well in these photos. Very strange light on this day.

The shower before and after. You can see a glimpse of the shower curtain in the before photo. It really didn't even match very well.








We still have the weird metallic wallpaper in the master bathroom. As strange as it is I have come to appreciate the work someone put in to somehow matching the pink and blue together. It isn't in the best shape and will need to eventually be pulled down and painted. I am still not sure on what color to go with. I kind of like the idea of white. It seems like a nice neutral way to tone down the pink and blue. But, I also worry about the idea of adding a third color to the bathroom even though the toilets are white. Maybe it would look a bit sleeker if I stuck to one of the colors that is already in there. I will not have more pink in that bathroom but I thought about a blue that is the exact same shade as the tile. I believe that is the original color of the bathroom. I think originally the trim was even blue. I think all of the trim in the house was the same color as the paint. I wasn't sure how I would like that and have had a hard time imagining it. I have previously posted about painting the bedroom trim white. In the kitchen we painted the trim around the windows the same color as the walls because all of the other trim on that floor is wood so I was afraid the white might stand out. It turns out that I really like the colored trim!! It looks very sleek! I would like to try it in the bathroom. My only concern is that there is a white louver closet door in each bathroom. I'm not sure what to do with those. I can't imagine trying to paint them. And, I don't know if I can imagine them being blue! So, I'm still open to bathroom suggestions! You can see my other bathroom posts here and posts about bathroom colors here and here as well as a post about the bathroom wall hangings here.

Bathroom Closet Door

It Arrived!!!

We can finally live in our living room again!! All of the walls have been stripped and stained. We put a very thin molding around the ceiling. You can't even really see it. It just makes it look finished and the edges look sharper. We had new vertical blinds put up last Friday. Our awesome guy who did the walls came back and put them up for free so we wouldn't mess up his work by accidentally drilling holes in the wrong spot. Now our walls will be protected from more sun damage. The kitties can also stick their heads through and look out whenever they want. I have decided there is a lot of green in the room. I love green but we need something else. I think I will eventually make some pillows that are a different color. Maybe I will blog about pillow ideas next. I still need to do a blog on the bathroom.

Today my piano came!!!! I have been so anxious to get it here and see how it looks in the room. But, we decided to hold off until the walls were done and new blinds were up as long as our old house hadn't sold. The mess from the construction would have been very bad for the piano. We have a few little things we would still like to do in this room but there is no rush. We will most likely eventually take the ceiling fan down. We think it detracts from the fire place. We will live through all of the seasons and see for sure if we can do without it. We are under the impression the fireplace is not lined. At some point we need to have a chimney sweep look at it. If it is not lined we will look into our options. We may possibly put in a gas fireplace. I read about unlined fireplaces. It sounds like they are a very bad thing. We have a pretty low open shelf that we are going to put against the window in the open space in front of the piano. We also have four more chairs for the table. We are waiting to move them back into the room because we still have some spots where stripper got on the floor that need to be scrubbed. If we are lucky we may even get our intercom system working again!!

Before

After

Our New Little Guy

Our spring break wasn't super exciting. We spent a lot of time dealing with house stuff and some work issues. We did have one fun day where we went to a local estate sale and got quite an exciting find for $8. I have posted before about our plan to collect Blenko and Viking glass to put on some of the tall shelves in the house. On the shelf between the kitchen and living room we have green, amber, blue and yellow glass. We decided to get some bigger pieces for some of the tall built in shelves upstairs. My husband has been reading a lot about the glass and other mid-century furniture online. He is getting quite good at spotting things at sales and in shops. A lot of the glass is very similar and hard to identify. We are just starting to learn. At the estate sale he eyed the cutest little blue glass bottle with a topper that has a face on it and the bottle has arms. This bottle is the cutest looking little guy. He had seen it online and recognized it. He took a photo of it last night with two great big glass pieces. The tall skinny one with the yellow stripe (the Mommy) was a gift to my husband from my parents for Christmas. The big fat bottle (the Daddy) has a broken topper but we got it for $1 at an antique shop. It will be very hard for us to find a bottle that size for a reasonable price. It is so high up you can't tell the stopper is broken. I decided for $1 I can live with it until something more exciting comes along. The new cute guy looks like their baby!!

Completed Kitchen

I think I will make a post about one room at a time. I will start with the kitchen. It is almost completely done. The only thing that is left to deal with is our hideous white dishwasher. It is the only appliance in our kitchen that isn't stainless steel. We will hopefully be replacing it in the near future. It is probably from the early 80's and not very energy efficient along with being very ugly. This past month we had the water line added to the new fridge we bought in the fall. We had all of the white paint on the kitchen cabinets stripped and stained them back to natural wood. We took down all of the white painted molding around the doors and grill. We replaced it with natural wood molding. We had the hinge on the grill door fixed so it doesn't have to be held up by a string. We then painted the ceiling and walls.

When we thought we were all done with the kitchen my husband was putting everything back in its place when the hood over the stove came crashing down. He was calling me to help him hold it back up. I had been asleep and didn't have my glasses on. Despite the fact I am very blind without my glasses I could see sparks and a little flame behind the hood. I wondered how many sparks and flames I couldn't see! At that moment it started feeling like our house was going to be a never ending project. But, my wonderful cousin was able to fix the hood for us. It turns out the screw holes were stripped and when it fell it pulled some wires and made them arc. So, that has now been repaired also.

I guess before I go I should talk about the kitchen paint color a bit. It is called Spartan Stone by Behr. It is identical to the historical paint color Serene Scholar by California Paints. I got the Behr paint because it was more inexpensive and Behr paint has done well for me in the past. I actually had this color in the living room in our old house. And, I think I had this color in my living room in Saint Louis. If it wasn't the exact same color it was very similar. As I have talked about in the past I was looking for historically accurate paint colors. I was thrilled to find out this pale olive green color that I love so much would work for the time period of our house.

Before- You can see our ugly dishwasher in this picture.

After

After- Ugly trash cans

Before

Before- Check out the red string on the door

After

A Mess Until March

Wow! Things have been a mess! On January 22, the work finally began on our house. We had 3 workers here every day until February 25. A whole month!! Our house was a DISASTER the whole time they were here. All of our furniture was piled into every room they weren't working in except our bedroom. There was dust everywhere. There was paper covering much of the floor. That paper was coated in stripper or stain. It was a yucky, yucky mess. We were unable to use our kitchen or sit in our living room for a month.

Our living room a couple of weeks ago

We actually ended up spending a lot of time at home with the workers. I have completely lost count of how many snow days we have had this winter. There were many days we did not have work and stayed home. My husband stayed home with them for a week after suffering through the beginning of anaphylaxis. If you don't know what that is, it basically means you quit breathing due to an allergic reaction. He didn't quit breathing but he was headed in that direction.

Thankfully we loved our workers. They did an awesome job on our house and they were fun to talk to. We don't have one single complaint. It was kind of sad when they left. It was depressing on the last day when they walked out with their radio. I knew they would not be coming back! They were also quite handy to have around. They helped us figure out that we had a basement full of water due to our sewer backing up.

A week later they saved us from having a completely flooded house. The toilet backed up after I left for work. Water went in the bathroom, bedroom, down the hall and through the ceiling into the basement. Luckily, one of them was in the basement and saw the water pouring through the ceiling. They had a shop vac and they were able to clean it up quickly and call me at work to come home and deal with it. So, on top of everything else that was done we now also have a new sewer line. So, not only was the inside of the house a mess but the outside too!

The giant mole hill in our front yard after getting a new sewer line.

 Finally,  everything is done except the two new toilets we will be getting Sunday because of their contribution to our sewer problems and the new roof on the carport which we can't get until the weather warms up. Believe it or not we are forecast to have MORE snow Sunday night. Today we got new vertical blinds in the living room to prevent having so much sun damage again. We also had the walls refinished in the living room and guest room, new very thin molding added around the ceiling in the family room and guest bedroom, new floor molding added in the family room and downstairs hallway, refinished stairs, kitchen cabinets and molding refinished, painted the kitchen, built in grill repaired, stove hood repaired, basement door repaired, new thresholds leading into all bathrooms, bathroom cabinets refinished, all inside doors to closets, bedroom etc. refinished, and new shower door. My next post well be lots of photos of all the new work that was done.

Would You Like An Update On Our Wood?

The very first time I looked at our house I walked in the living room and thought wow this is awesome! Too bad this wood is so pale and ugly. The living rooms walls are redwood paneled along with the stairwells, ceiling beams in the living room and kitchen and walls in the basement room that was once a den and will now be our guest bedroom. I don't know anything about wood but we have been told our walls are heart of redwood which is very, very expensive and we would probably never be able to afford them today. Unfortunately, they were a very pale blonde color. They were covered in some kind of blonde wash that we don't think is original to the house. Then the blonde has faded even more due to years and years of sun damage from a complete wall of windows. The stairwells, which really catch your eye because they are right next to the beautiful fireplace, were extremely worn from years and years of people running their hands and who knows what else (feet, dogs, kids, toys, suitcases etc.) up and down them. Some of the living room beams were almost white from the sun. You could point out every spot on the wall where a photo had been hanging due to the sun damage.

So, we decided we would have the walls refinished, re-stained etc. as soon as we could afford it and find someone to do it. We had a very difficult time finding someone and everyone we spoke with had a different idea about the best way to complete the job. Some people thought the walls should be sanded. Other people thought the walls should be stripped. And, of course, the most common solution was that we should just make it easier on ourselves and paint the walls. We were both so opposed to the idea of paint. Why in the world would you want to paint when you could have natural wood that would require virtually no upkeep. I'm finally just recovering from all the painting I did this summer. I don't want to paint more!!! When we were looking at houses I almost got to a point where I quit looking at the photos if I didn't see any wood paneling in the photos. I KNOW I am probably the only person in the world that feels this way. But, I just love the look of the natural wood. I finally got so frustrated I called a guy from my mom's home town who builds homes. He comes HIGHLY recommended. He is in high demand and known for his very reasonable prices.

I called him in hopes of getting a reference for someone who could refinish our wood. I never thought he would be interested in doing such a little job. I just hoped he wouldn't completely blow me off. He came and looked at our house in September and seemed to really like it. He told us he would the job himself (and several other smaller things we needed done) if we could wait until January when the weather was colder and he would need inside work. We agreed to happily wait. After the fiasco with our floors we were absolutely thrilled to find someone of such high quality to do the job. He stopped by last week and tested out several strippers on the wall in hopes of finding one that was not as toxic and would work well since it is the middle of winter (4 degrees this morning to be exact!) and opening a lot of windows is not practical. He then tested out some stain. In the photo below you can see the original wall color. It actually is more pale than in the photo. You can also see three strips where he tested stripper and stain. To the right is the stain color that we decided upon. You can see the drastic difference in the wall and the stain. Also at the right above the stain you can sort of see a faded square in the wood. It looks like there may have been a file cabinet or similar sized item there for a long time. There are spots like this all over the wood.

Test strips

 As January grew closer I was starting to second guess my thoughts on having the walls refinished. I was starting to get used to the blonde. I worried that maybe I was ruining the original style of the house that we were working so hard to maintain. I thought maybe we were going to waste our money. I was really to a point where I thought maybe I would be just fine with the wood if it didn't have so much sun damage and wear. He finally started the job on Wednesday and the downstairs bedroom (formally den) is basically done except trim and detail work. It looks AMAZING! The walls are finally a beautiful brown color. They have done such a professional job. We haven't had one complaint yet! This has been such a change after the floor people this summer. After the first day of work on the job it looked great but I still wondered if we were going to all this work for a change that wouldn't be that great. I asked the workers what they thought. They said all that mattered was what I thought because I had to live with it. I told them I knew that but they looked at so many houses that they know what looks good. Then they let it fly! They said it was a huge improvement. They said you couldn't even compare the before and after. Then they said it looked like someone had smeared mustard on the walls previously! After seeing the completed room today I think we are very happy with the results.

This is a completed wall in the guest bedroom. You can't completely see how it looks because there is nothing else in the room to compare it to in the way of color except the vent and the outlet. But, hopefully you can see that it looks much better!

The people doing the work are so good at what they do we feel like we need to get as much work out of them as we can afford because we will probably never have an opportunity like this again. They are going to put new stair treads on our steps that are finished to match the walls better. The work the people did on the stairs this summer was awful. They look orange now! As I said above, the stairs really catch your eye because they are next to the fireplace. We are looking forward to having stairs that actually look good! If we can afford it we also plan on having them do a few more things. Our kitchen cabinets are white. They will refinish those back to wood. They will refinish our bathroom cabinets that look orange because the varnish has yellowed over time. We will have transition strips added as you go into all of the bathrooms since the flooring people did not finish that this summer. Our basement door is having some major issues so that will be rectified. And, we are looking forward to putting a shower door in so that we no longer get water on our shower floor. I have always preferred shower doors over curtains and was very excited to find out the bathroom originally had one but it was removed. Before I knew that I felt like I was "ruining" the original bathroom if I added a door. I will try to post more updates as the work progresses.

Coffee Table...

Bassett coffee table

for the new coffee table books! Before our end table came we saw this coffee table we liked at an antique shop for a cheap price. We decided after our end table came in we would go back and look at it to see if it would match the end table. Yesterday we went back and checked it out. We decided it would match. It JUST fit in our car perfectly. If it would have been an inch bigger in any direction we would have been in trouble. After getting it home I decided it was a bit darker than our end table. It also doesn't have as beautiful of a grain as the end table. The coffee table is a more solid color and the end table is much more variegated and pretty. The coffee table is wood veneer (I think that is what you would call it.) instead of solid wood. I was a bit unhappy that the wood doesn't match everything perfectly and the style of the legs aren't the same as our other furniture. But, I have been informed that if everything matches it will look like we bought a furniture set at Sears! I really do like the style of the table! We will probably eventually get a different coffee table that is solid wood. For now, I have another place to put all of my new coffee table books.

Bassett coffee table

Happy Holidays!!!

I have promised some people photos of the house decorated for Christmas. So, here I am. The Christmas mess is finally picked up so I thought I better strike while the iron is hot. We still have a wimpy little tree from when I lived in an apartment 15 years ago. Maybe next year we will have big one! I have lots of great aunts, grandmas and students who have supplied me with decorations over the years. At first my husband thought maybe we had too many. But, now he seems to be enjoying them. For several years my aunt gave me Christmas Village houses that light up for Christmas.  We have a perfect place for them now on the fireplace hearth. We have enjoyed sitting in the living room at night watching the lights reflect off of the shiny new floors! I have also enjoyed finding things to decorate the openings next to the fireplace. Right now we are unable to use the fireplace because it does not have a liner. We hope to eventually get that taken care of.

This year I got some exciting new Mid-Century themed books from my husband for Christmas. The first gift I got was actually a very high end Mid-Century magazine that looks like a book. I think it will be coming quarterly. I got another book about Charles Eames. We would like to eventually get a white Eames fiberglass chair in our "office". He also gave me a book about Danish Modern furniture and a book by Atomic Ranch magazine. I really like the Atomic Ranch book because it has a lot of houses that are similar in style to ours.

New books I received as Christmas presents

If you look carefully you will notice that the new books are sitting on our new end table! It arrived a couple of days ago by Greyhound shipping. I had no idea Greyhound has a shipping service until I found this table. When we bought our living room furniture there was a very low end table between the two couches that made them look like they were connected together and one piece of furniture. We really liked the way it looked but the table had a black laminate top. We really wanted a wooden table. So we have been looking ever since for table to fit in that spot. But, it had to be the EXACT size in order to fit! Finding a table that is exactly 30 inches square and 15 inches high turned out to be a challenge. There aren't many 15 inch high tables out there. When we finally found one on Ebay that seemed reasonably priced we had to jump. It turned out to be exactly what we wanted but it has a bit of a wobble and more wear than we expected. We should be able to fix the wobble and the wear is not particularly noticeable. I do feel that for the value of the table we paid too high of a price and the seller was misleading about the condition. But, we are otherwise happy with it.

Our new end table.

We also added a new lamp to the room just this evening. It is actually new from our attic!!! This lamp originally was given to me by my great aunt who died about 6 years ago. The lamp is probably at least 50 years old I would think. When I was given the lamp I didn't like the original shade so I got a more modern one and added some nice olive beads on a ribbon that hung around the bottom of edge of the lamp. When my husband moved in he HATED the lamp. So, the lamp ended up in the attic. It turns out he actually just hated the beads! I told him tonight I loved those beads. I was just going for a different look back then! So, tonight we went out and got a new lamp shade that was a bit more subdued. We are both pretty happy with the way the lamp looks now.

I told my husband that my Aunt Emma would be proud!

Right now the chair pictured below is the favorite place for the cats! They LOVE these snowman and are always trying to cuddle up to them. Right now we have to flip the furniture cushions up if we are not in the room so they don't think they can sit wherever they want. We really would prefer that our living room furniture does not become their favorite place to sit. So, if you come over to our house for an unexpected visit and our cushions are all flipped up, please don't think we are crazy!! And, if you decide to sit by the snowmen you will have a cat sitting with you also.

Happy New Year!!!!