a new year and years in review

happy 2010!  i had begun a new year’s eve post that just never quite got finished.  oh well.  hopefully everyone was too busy with family and friends to be bothered checking in here anyway.  ross and i spent family christmas #2 with his parents and sister/husband/little niece up in fincastle this past weekend.  always good to spend quality time with them; and with how absolutely frigid it was on saturday, it was the perfect time to stay in, sit by the fire, and chat and read.

there’s definitely an indescribable feeling at the beginning of a new year; kind of like the slate gets wiped clean.  we’ve got a lot of fun things we’d like to do here at the Wilsie Cottage and perhaps I’ll do a post on the “wish list/to-do list” soon – just to keep myself accountable.

before i jump headfirst into a new year though, i wanted to revisit christmases of years past.  probably would’ve been helpful to do this near christmas, but what can i say; i was busy having seconds of christmas ham. 

so without further ado, the wilsie family christmas cards:

2006:  Our First Christmas.  Fun pictures from a lot of our firsts together:  our first house, our honeymoon to Montana and California, and our first Christmas tree.   

2007:  First Christmas with Four-legged Child.  We decided to take a more playful approach and created a “Brady-Bunch-esque” card including Rosie Jane, the newest addition to the family. 

2008:  Artsy Fartsy.  For our third Christmas together we decided to take the artsy approach.  Ross whipped out his Photoshop skills and crafted a festive silhouette card with our monogram in the middle, a simple Merry Christmas greeting, and a verse at the bottom.

2009:  A Very Beachy Christmas.  Even though it seemed kind of “boring,” we really loved the simplicity of this year’s card.  Taken while on Thanksgiving vacation in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida we really loved this card because, 1)  Ross and I never have (good) pictures together since one of us is always behind the camera.  so we had to celebrate that somehow, 2)  since we don’t live anywhere near the beach, we thought the ocean in the background gave a little unexpected spice to the holiday, and 3) we had never done it before, so why not?

Thank you for your time.  We may now return to the present and all the rockin good times to be had in 2010.  Happy New Year!

the big snow

pictures here from the snowstorm over the weekend.  i think the official measurement was 19 inches!

baby it’s cold outside

a real fire in the fireplace!

on the brain

because it’s so far away…

and because it’s right around the corner…

wilsie cottage tour – christmas 2k9 edition

Time to decorate for Christmas!!

On decorating day, we woke up to several inches of snow, and it continued to snow all day, so it was the perfect atmosphere to turn up the Christmas tunes and really get excited about transforming the house. 

This is what my christmas decorating starts out like:  every Christmas-related decoration gets pulled out and spread around in utter chaos, so I can get an idea of exactly what I have.

Then I’ll sort things out by room.  Since I only have two rooms to really decorate (the dining room and the living room), this isn’t a very difficult task. 

Dining Room:

Last year I went with a super monochromatic look, so obviously this year, I wanted to bring in a lot more color.  I also wanted to keep it kind of rustic and unfussy.

a simple round glass vase, filled with silver christmas ornaments and a few sprigs of red berries that I’ve saved from past christmases.  barely seen behind that are two crystal candlesticks with two white taper candles…

I combined some bright orange tangerines (from our thanksgiving trip down to florida), faux apples used in our wedding decorations, and a few cinnamony scented pine cones in a wooden fruit dish that my great-grandfather made…

Another clear round vase with wooden cranberries as filler, topped with a simple white pillar candle.

By the window in our dining room I put out some red and green votives in the windowsill, brought down a skinny table from our guest bedroom and layered in some fun ornaments, textured balls, and a few bright, beaded cranberry napkin rings in a tall glass canister.

Some extra mini ornaments in hammered silver bowls on either side of the glass canister.

I leaned a matted print of the many names of Jesus in the other windowsill.  This was a gift from my mom last Christmas.

Since this green rocking chair, which usually lives next to our fireplace, got displaced because of the Christmas tree, I moved it into the dining room and jazzed it up with a painted metal star, a houseplant for some greenery, and a Christmasy wine bottle chiller turned pot.

The top of the buffet – some simple holiday festiveness and our nativity scene.  My mom started this collection for me when I was in high school.

So sweet, yet so unhelpful…

Living Room:

The finished living room complete with rearranged furniture to fit the tree in, decorated mantel, and other various christmasy touches.

This year’s tree is much wider than last year, which we didn’t realize until we were trying to cram it in.  But it fits.

I went with live greenery on the mantel this year – given to us FREE from clippings at the place we bought our Christmas tree.  I’ll definitely remember this next year.  Then we just decorated the already hung grapevine wreath with red christmas ball ornaments, cream porcelain ornaments, and a few glittery snowflakes.

My super cool yarnball wreath.  Because my mom is such a devoted Starbucks attendee, an employee gave her this wreath when they were taking down their Christmas decorations last year.

A few detail shots of the mantel decorations…

Ross’s grandfather used to be a glass blower, and these were some of his handmade glass ornaments.  These are super special to ross because his grandfather passed away over 15 years ago.  This was the first time we’ve used the ornaments on the tree and I was so nervous everytime one got put on – I would hate to break any.

that’s about it for the wilsie cottage christmas decorations tour – hope you enjoyed it – and merry christmas!

snow!

let the christmas festivities begin!

Ross and I bought our Christmas tree last night!   Which is a relief because I think it’s supposed to be 35 degrees and raining the rest of the week.  ouch.

So the tree is in its place, quietly slurping water from its little stand.  Wait – I think we filled the stand with water… uh oh – must verify that very soon.  Anyway, the tree is up, the decorations have been brought out and strewn about – all that’s left is making something great out of all the madness.  I hope to have a fun video of the decorating shenanigans, so we’ll see how that goes.

Merry Christmas!

fall cleanup

the day before ross and i left for florida, we set up shop and got a bunch of stuff done around the house.  with all the windshield breaking over with, we got down to the business of tree mulching, garlic planting, and leaf raking.

The garlic got in a month late, but still earlier than I planted it last year, so that’s a victory in my opinion.  I’m growing a Chesnok Red and an Ichelium Red garlic this year and I’m hoping to have enough for green garlic in the spring, mature garlic in the summer, and enough left over to store for the winter and plant again next fall.

Later that morning, J.L. came over to help.  While Ross got started on the leaves, he and I mulched our newly planted evergreens.

Finally, we joined forces on the leaves and it was mission accomplished.  half the leaves were raked onto a tarp and dumped on our front yard by the street for trash pickup (how suburbanly convenient?)

The rest ross mowed and bagged and we dumped them in with our compost.

The dogs were no help whatsoever.  But they looked adorable.

The final product.  before:and after:

and all in time for the virginia tech – nc state game that afternoon.  not too shabby.

it gets the job done

the extent of Fall on our front porch this year

the pros and cons of mowing your driveway

two weekends ago ross and i had a blissful day of getting stuff checked off our to-do list.

it was saturday.  it was sunny.  and we were motivated.

we divided up the yard like a custody hearing:  i would take the back yard and ross would take the front.  i tackled flower beds way past their prime, and ross was mowing the front yard.  of course i have no pictures to show for this, but it’s only because we were so hard at work.  until ross comes running up to me, looking slightly frantic.  “Come look.  It’s bad.”

“What?”

“Just come.”

I follow him around to the front yard and couldn’t tell at first what I was supposed to be looking for.  And then I see it.  A big, massive hole in the back windshield of his car.  And about a trillion spidery cracks everywhere else.

yikes.

“How on earth did you do that?!”

It turns out that instead of just mowing the yard, Ross had had the bright idea to also mow the driveway.  That way he could collect the chopped leaves in the mower bag and dump them into trash bags for easy cleanup.

he was almost done when a rock shot out the back of the mower, and well, instantly charged our credit cards $260.  ugh.

the moral of the story is, if you think about mowing your driveway, carefully weigh the pros and cons first.