Life in the Barbie Dream House

Hello barbies and welcome to the 5th and final installment of the BDH's Christmas Tree Reveal Mini Series! All of the currently unrevealed trees from our house are below, except for one (the pink shoe tree) which I still haven't put up. Check back in the next week for the official BDH Christmas Home Tour!

These three 6 ft trees are completely identical and are all gold reindeer themed. I also have some gold reindeer figurines at the base of each, but still need to find 3 matching gold tree skirts.

This crazy and colorful tree is nutcracker themed. I wish I had taken some close ups, but it's covered in colorful mini nutcrackers. The tree's colors are pink, lime green, aqua and purple and I used a lot of picks on this one to keep it crazy. It's placed on our Juliet balcony in our turret and is visible from outside!

These two 6 ft trees are in our library, and although their themes don't match, the trees are identical. The one on the left is a tribute to our three dogs and our dog Britney who passed last year. The tree on the right has a very special role - it holds all of our sentimental and keepsake ornaments, from childhood, marriage, travel, etc.

Sentimental tree close up (check out the new hula dancer from our Hawaii trip in the center!):

Dog tree close up:

Here are four other trees that I don't think have been revealed. Clockwise from left: Snowman tree (needs some work still), Ross's mini Longhorn Christmas tree for his favorite team - the University of Texas (kept in his garage), our 5 ft tall Cardinal tree which is a tribute to my late Grandfather who loved cardinals and our 7 ft "ice tree" which is a white tree with all silver and light blue glittery ornaments.

Here's the ice tree after it joined the pink tree and fairy tree in the turret of the formal living room.

Last but not least, the grand finale, here is our 14 ft tall solid red ornament tree in our foyer! This tree is very special because it's the tree from my childhood home (which also had very high ceilings). My parents now let us have it for our foyer and I've bought lots of large, solid red ornaments for it and covered it in red mesh.

Here's a Ross and Whitney Christmas card photo outtake with my parents!

I can't forget to mention that we had a lovely Thanksgiving. We went to my aunt and uncle's house in Efland, NC and enjoyed some lovely family time with the BEST southern cooked food you could ever dream up. My uncle grows his own veggies and sure knows how to prepare them - yum! This vegetarian was in heaven.

I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to this photo below - hubby had brought me the Black Friday ads (y'all know I LIVE for Black Friday) and donuts! Isn't he the sweetest? I've also included some photos from the Black Friday madness. It's always entertaining!

Thanks for reading barbies! Check back in the next week for the official BDH Christmas Home Tour! xox!

Hello Barbies and welcome to the 4th installment of the BDH Blog's Christmas tree reveal mini series! Can you believe we've been doing this for a month of Wednesdays now?! So far we've revealed 11 of the BDH's 26 Christmas trees and today we turn our focus to the dining room, home to two large trees and one small tree. I also have some fun pics from our amazing Hawaii trip last week and a couple super simple DIY projects!

For the dining room, to go with our rustic table that hubby built (which has been receiving a lot of acclaim lately in the blogosphere) and our cream linen chairs, I wanted the room to look a little rustic but also snow covered. I started with a gorgeous 11 ft table runner that a thoughtful friend sewed from scratch for us as a housewarming gift. It's lime and teal on one side - perfect for summer - and solid burlap on the other. Using the burlap side I placed a smaller white shimmery runner on top. I decorated the table with pewter, mercury glass and silver and white glittery accents. Oh, and LOTS of glittery white pine cones. I also incorporated several reindeer to keep with the snowy forest theme.

This is one of my favorite holiday décor tricks: I just grab a pretty bowl and fill it with coordinating ornaments and/or pine cones. I probably do this too much, in fact I know I do, but oh well. Here I used a pewter footed bowl from my serveware collection, white glittery ornaments, pewter glittery ornaments and pewter glossy ornaments with white spray painted pine cones. Tip: vary the size of ornaments you use to add dimension.

I also tied these snowy pine cone picks to the backs of each chair using white and silver damask ribbon.

Part of my tablescape, this is just a glittery feather ornament in a footed glass serving dish I had on hand.

I got these vintage, glittery pewter reindeer at Michael's on sale.

And of course I had to put pearls in the chandelier to go with the theme (but this took forever because the chandelier was so hard to reach from the chair I was standing on).

Long before we built the BDH, I had this tree, which I've always referred to as the Snow Tree. It's a 7ft white tree with white lights, glittery white deco mesh, white and silver damask ribbon, pearl pick branches, and all white ornaments (some with silver touches). I also have small crystal ornaments scattered throughout that were a gift from my fellow Christmas loving godmother.

I bought this 6 or 7ft (unsure) silver skinny tree from Hobby Lobby after Christmas at 66% off a few years ago (after drooling over Hobby Lobby's pricey but beautiful skinny tree line for months). Through the move and the construction, it never made it up though, so this is it's inaugural Christmas. I decided to keep it in line with the snowy forest theme, covering it with white glittery snowflakes, snow flowers and snowy looking birds. I also wrapped it with a pearl garland that my sweet mama brought back from Australia for me last year. As a lifetime lover of pearls, I'm a huge fan of this fancy and foreign pearl garland. Come to think of it, two of my snowy birds were also gifts from mom from her trip to Australia, making the tree extra special because it has things from mom that come from the country where my sister lives. Very neat.

Lastly, I have this mini tree, which I call the Spode Tree, in a Spode planter in the dining room. During the rest of the year, the dining room theme is this blue and white toile pattern called Spode. Our china is Spode Blue Italian and I have lots of collectible and not-so-collectible blue and white serving pieces on display in the dining room in my Grandma Delta's old china cabinet (the only piece of furniture my parents kept from her estate, which makes it incredibly special). This tree has mostly blue mini ornaments but also 3 Spode ornaments (which I only have a few of because they're so hard to track down).

I also have my little blue and white snowman collection on my Grandma's china cabinet.

The room is rounded out with these last two DIY'd items: a burlap basket that my mom spotted/I bought at Michael's for $2, which of course I quickly filled with ornaments and pine cones ( I have issues), and an illuminated gift block, which is just a $4 glass block from Home Depot that hubby drilled a hole into, I stuffed with lights and tied a pretty silver bow around. We have probably 20 of these in our house, usually to match various trees.

I also DIY'd these grapevine and burlap wreaths to go over our three mirrors, a vision I'd had for months. I bought three grapevine wreaths, lightly spray painted theme white to give them the snowed on look I was going for, threw on some silver glitter, painted the 3 letters J, O and Y I bought at Michaels, put glitter on them too, hot glued them to the wreaths to spell Joy, then tied on burlap bows using wide wired burlap ribbon. After I had the burlap bows in place I thought it was a little too rustic, so I added the same white and silver damask ribbon that I had been using throughout the room, which was just enough pizazz to make me feel better.

Last but not least, here are some photos from our amazing trip to Hawaii last week with hubby's family. We had a wonderful time - Hawaii is such a beautiful place with a really unique culture. We stayed at the Hyatt on the West side of Maui, which was amazing. We went whale watching and snorkeling on the Trilogy - which I can't recommend highly enough, if you're ever on Maui you have to go on one of their tours - and also went to an authentic Hawaiian Luau feast. Thank you to Ross's mom and step-dad for an absolutely wonderful experience!