Christmas Tree Reveal #4 + Several Easy Christmas DIY Projects!

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!

 

 

Thanks for reading barbies! Check back in next Wednesday for several more Christmas tree reveals and have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving! xox!

Christmas Tree Reveal Wednesday #3!

Hello barbies and welcome to the third installment of the BDH Blog's Christmas Tree Reveal Mini Series! It's been a 12 hour work day plus lots of other craziness, so I'll be brief and let you enjoy some more of our Christmas trees. I'm happy to report that all of our trees are now standing and all but a couple are fully decorated - almost there!!

Here's our peacock themed Christmas tree, another one of my favorites (I say that too often!). It's all purple, emerald green and royal blue. I love the gem tones, although seldom decorate with them for some reason, which is why I was eager to start this tree. I have to say, I started this tree about 3 years ago - before the peacock craze - and am kinda erked that peacock ornaments can be found anywhere and everywhere these days. Whatevs.

This is another favorite, and probably my most intensely decorated tree, the Peppermint Tree! All of the ornaments are peppermint related and I even have peppermint scent to go with it! Fun fact on this one: my grandma loved it so much that about 4 years ago she asked me to completely replicate it for her, so now Mema has a twin tree in her house!

 

Last but not least, this is our 7 ft solid red tree with all lime green ornaments. It has a sub-theme of polka dots! It's a little crazy, but definitely fun, kinda like my Christmas tree obsession! Oh, and the fab little guy next to the tree is my old pal "Elfie." When I was starting to lose my marbles while studying 18 hours/day for the bar exam, I think I may have had a few intense conversations about the meaning of life with Elfie. Lucky for Elfie, I passed the bar exam on my first try and was able to then put extreme studying behind me.

 

xox barbies! Thanks for stopping by! Check back in next Wednesday for the 4th round of tree reveals - there's plenty more where these came from!

 

More Christmas Trees and 200,000 VIEWS!!

Hello dolls and welcome to the second installment of The BDH Blog's Christmas Tree Reveal Mini Series. Before we get into revealing more themed trees, I have to thank you all for helping the BDH Blog reach 200,000 page views as of last night! Wow! I'm so humbled that you all continue to care about our crazy little life in the BDH. Thank you all for continuing to stop by the site, sharing it with your friends and for leaving so many sweet comments! You guys are too good to be true!

Now, on to the fun part, Christmas tree reveals!

This is our dessert tree and is arguably my favorite tree. It's a 6.5ft flocked tree (the flocking makes the tree look like its covered in icing!) with white normal sized lights and rainbow oversized bulbs. The ornaments are candy related, cupcakes, donuts and tons of ice cream cones! It's just so much fun and always reminds me of my favorite part of the food pyramid!

 

This theme is new this year but the tree isn't. This 7 ft tall and very wide tree comes from my childhood home. My parents entrusted me with it about 3 years ago and it has been our main Christmas tree every year until this one. It usually has red and gold ornaments (those are our main Christmas colors) but this year those ornaments are going on the 11 ft tree below. This year we turned this tree into something I'd wanted to try for a long time: strictly gold and brown ornaments. It's so rich and one of my favorites (they're all my favorites really!) but we also threw in a little bit of gold and brown leopard print to give it some dimension. You'll also see something new to the Christensen house - mesh ribbon (a hybrid of mesh and ribbon) on this tree and as its topper.

 

Last but not least, this is our main tree! It's in our family room and is red and gold, our main Christmas colors. These ornaments are not new - they typically went on the 7 ft family heirloom tree above - but this year we put them on this new 11 ft tree since we have such high ceilings in our living room. We snagged this $350 tree at Garden Ridge after Christmas last year 90% off. We couldn't believe we were able to get such a nice, thick and obviously tall tree for $35!! We're very happy with it and happy to make it our main tree. The tree is all red and gold but for some reason looks copper in some of these pictures. I think it's the lighting but will try to do better with some additional photos. The ribbon, which is also very high end, was a gift from my mother in law's sweet best friend who didn't want it anymore. It definitely makes the tree extra special. Thank you Paula!!

 

 Looking up from the base

 

Ribbon close up:

 

 

As always, thanks for reading barbies and thanks for getting us to 200,000 views! Wow!

 

Check back in next Wednesday for the next installment of our Tree Reveal Mini Series! xox