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!!!!