Christmas: Less is More Decor For This Girl

 

Merry Christmas!!!

Only one day!  I can't believe how this month has flown by, but I vowed last year, that this year, I was going to cut back on my decorating to focus on what's most important this time of year. I want my children to have memories of celebrating Christmas, because it is Christ's Birthday.  I don't want their memories to be of mom decorating three 9-foot, fake trees, trillions of lights and garlands, stressing over entertaining, and grumbling.  
I want them to realize that Christ was born on Christmas.  That's it. Plain and simple.  (I'd also like to throw in a dash of "actually enjoying time together" too!)

We have been busy having fun! Last weekend was cookie-baking-day at my sister's.  (Actually, all of our boys and my little lady were there too!) Here's my three favorite girls : My mom, sister, and daughter.

We got our first real tree in 8 years, because I insisted.

As far as my decorating this year, I've scaled way, way back.  I pulled out all the bins and categorized by color.

Gold-ish for the living room 

Red and Silver in the Dining Room

A Country Kitchen

...and a fun Family Room

 

 

 

 

...but my favorite decorations are the ones with made by favorite DIY-ers!

Have a Wonderful Christmas!

How to: Faux Paneled Hall





Before and After 

Sorry for the delay on this, but life is crazy right now!  Between work, kids, and trying to get this place decorated for Christmas, I've been too busy!  Anyway, here it is, my version of a "paneled" hallway.  Again, I am not a pro, I'm just teaching myself how to do this stuff. 

Do what you want, but this is what worked for me: 

I used 3.5" X 1" MDF boards for the "panels" and 1" cove molding to fake the routed edges.  I added a base cap to the top to simulate a chair rail. 

My first step was to measure out my walls, and decide how large or small you want the "panels."  I didn't want anything too overwhelming, this is a narrow area.  (I have three separate walls in this hallway.) I then decided how high I wanted to have my chair rail, (I used the dining chair as a guide, so that when if I put up a chair rail in my living room and dining room, it will match up. 

 I divided each wall evenly to create the large "paneled" areas.  One wall ended up with three "panels," another has two, and the last has just one. They're not exactly the same sizes, because the walls are all different lengths with doorways breaking them up. 


 

This is all I use, I standard miter box and saw out in the garage!

 
I attached the  MDF 1 X 3.5 boards horizontally along the existing baseboard with liquid nails and then nailed it into place.  I'm a lover of MDF because it cuts like butter, compared to pine, with my little miter box and saw :)

  I did the same along the sides and top, then added the cove molding to the MDF, using liquid nails.   

I filled all of the scuffs and scrapes on the wall with lightweight spackle, and sanded the walls down with medium grit sanders.

The cove molding was added to the boxes with LN's, you can see the trim on the left side, none on the right in this pic.

Cove molding close up

Then I glued the base cap across the top piece, for a finishing touch. 

Tons of caulk and sanding, then two coats of high gloss white paint...I had some help. 

Here's the finished, well almost, product. I still have to address the doorway and paint the baseboards, and excuse my nighttime pics, I work on off hours ;)

 



In it for the Long Hall, ideas...

(Yes, for your' information, I am going to blog about it!!)

Did you ever sit back one day and really look at something in your house (a wall , floor, carpet, etc.) and think, "How long has that looked this  bad!"  I know you have, because I've been having those moments a lot this year.  Blame the dog?  I might, but we have been busy living here and with that comes some damage!  Just cosmetics, but none the less, stuff needs repair/replacing. 

Enter the hallway.  (Literally).  It's a long hall, on the lower level with traffic, tons  of traffic all day.  Now I could've just painted it again, but my experience with trying to clean satin and flat painted surfaces hasn't been successful. I think it streaks, shows where you wiped, and it's even worse to touch up.   Solution:  glossy paint: it wipes clean and is easy to touchup. So I needed moulding or molding (depends on where you live I guess) to be able to paint it with "shigh-nay" white paint. 

I searched around for some ideas and liked a few, loved others, but decided to find something I could reproduce (myself) and not have it look too DIY. 

Here's the results of my Pinterest search:

 First, board and batten is nice to look at and easy enough to assemble, but doesn't fit our home's character.  I need more cow bell :)

 

Board and Batten Source

Anther option, I loved and almost went with, but my hallway is narrow and long.  I didn't want it to be too  busy...so pretty though.

 hallway source

  

I settled on an in-between.  I knew I wanted it to look attractive enough, but not be the main focus of the hallway.

Ahhh, just right Goldilocks.  It looks clean.

source

Like all good projects I attempt complete, this one was modified a bit to fit my skills, budget, and patience.  I'll share the finished and how I did it later, but I'm in between coats of paint, maybe tomorrow.  I  used a few different materials to fake simulate routed edges, I'll share that too.  Here's a sneak  peak at the difference.

See the finished hallway here.

Campaign Frames and Gold Accents

 

 

I've been busy de-cluttering around here and vowed to not start any projects until I finished cleaning out all the unnecessary stuff.  I did get a lot done, but there's always more left to do... 

I did find a some time to add some gold touches to my living room with my "campaign frames" inspired by campaign furniture.
I used L brackets from the hardware store and secured them to the corners. 

 

 

 

Here you can see the difference.

 

   

 I sprayed the floor lamp with gold paint, here it is bronzy before...

after :)

and I finally put a pic in this clearance frame I picked up a while back.

The little hints of gold here and there help to tie in the brass pulls from Blue Lovely! 



 

Thanks for looking!