I’ve mentioned before that I love changing out decorations for holidays.  Well when we moved into the house a year ago (can’t believe it has been a year) I was thinking about what to do on the mantle for January and decided that I wanted to have something different for each month of the year.  I didn’t get a very good start and didn’t really get anything specific up for January or February (I was still trying to get everything unpacked and organized), but I started in March.  I had some things for the month’s with the bigger holidays, but not much for every other month.  I ended up getting 7 out of 12 (but let’s be honest March was not up to standard…I also don’t love the current set up for November) and many of my completed 53 projects in 2014 were Holiday and home décor.

So this year I really wanted to get every month. I already have a pretty good start, so hopefully it will be manageable.  I noticed last year that what I did have before for our apartment didn’t go far in the new house, which is partially why I only got 7.  I found that I have this problem.  I see something in the store and like it except for maybe it isn’t the color I want, or it’s a good idea but cheap materials, or I want it a little bit bigger, or smaller, or I wish it didn’t have that one thing on it, or…  So I think, “I can make that” and then it will be exactly how I want it.  Which I usually can do.  But that takes time.  And let’s not even get into all of the good ideas found on Pinterest.  And for some reason Vu thinks that he likes it when I make dinner, clean the house and do laundry.  And here we are at 7 for 12.  On to 2015.  The main goal is the mantle and something on the dining room table, with anything extra I can get around to on the coffee and end tables, cabinets on either side of the mantle and the piano. We will see how it goes.  I have many plans in place.  (But not for June.  I am currently stumped for June…the only thoughts I have so far are green and yellow…we shall see.)

So after the busy-ness of Christmas died down (and I got my energy back after having the flu/pneumonia, which I didn’t give to any of our house guests we had the whole time I was sick thank you very much), I started to think about January.  I was discussing it with my sister Rachel, and decided I wanted to do a Winter theme.  I already had some items from a blue and silver mantle I made a few years ago, and I think blue and silver are nice winter colors so I decided to start with that and then just add in some snowflakes to make it more “winter”.

I had some pine cones I didn’t end up using for Christmas, so I spray painted them mostly white.  I took a walk along the path through the greenbelt down the street from our house and picked up some branches off of the ground and also spray painted them white.  They even had some cute tiny pine cones hanging off their branches.  Then I made some beaded snowflake ornaments (thanks Pinterest) to hang from the branches.

For the Christmas decorations I made a bunch of paper snowflakes that I hung along the wall above the windows, so I just left those up.  I found a couple of cute wooden box like snowflakes at Michael’s for 80% off after Christmas, but they were brown and black and didn’t match my colors.  I figured for $3 I could try and paint them.  I did a thin white wash over the whole thing first, to get a frosted look. Because it was a thin coat I could still see the pretty snowflake design through it, so I just painted over it with white paint.

I love how they turned out.  And it was really easy.

I had a couple of other projects in mind that I wanted to do, but February is fast approaching and I figured out last year that the key to success is to get the things I need to do done the month before, so those will be saved for next year.