Hi Guys! I hope you all had an amazing Christmas and New Year!! My family sure did. We had my parents join us for Christmas and we all made out like bandits.
Holiday Break
We tried something new this year and headed out the day after Christmas for a livestock show in Arizona. We spent five days there before heading through the Grand Canyon on our way to Las Vegas where we spent two nights, then on to Park City, Utah for a couple days of skiing and snowboarding. It was such a great trip, probably the best family time we have had in several years. The kids all got along famously, they were all extremely appreciative of the trip and work didn’t encroach on our family time like it usually does.
If you haven’t been to that part of the country – GO! The Grand Canyon was awe-inspiring. We only spent a couple of hours there because of the weather, but we will go back and do some hiking/rafting/camping. It was really incredible. The six hour drive from Las Vegas to Park City was also very impressive. The first half of the drive was red rock and a desert landscape which then morphed into the most picturesque mountains and valleys that were beautifully dusted with a light snow. I think I could make that drive every week and not get tired of it! I have to admit that I prefer the slopes in Colorado, but it was still a great time.
January Tablescape
Back to the point of this post! I have decided that I am going to start a new series here on the blog this year – a new tablescape for every month. Leanne Barlow of elleapparelblog did a monthly dress series last year that I had so much fun following. She is incredibly talented and created some amazing dresses (and had some amazing photo shoots for them). But the concept, I thought, is a fun one. I hope you will enjoy these monthly tablescapes this year and will come to look forward to seeing what is to come as the months progress!
January’s Theme
A lot of my Christmas decor has gone neutral – whites, creams, grays. With that a lot of the decor can easily stay out and be winter decor past the holiday. I used to remove all of my Christmas decorations shortly after the holiday and always felt that the house seemed colder and less inviting. I was really happy to get our tree taken down and the living room rearranged back to it’s ‘normal’ layout. Anything else that ‘said’ Christmas, like my Merry and Bright sign and my Eat, Drink and Be Merry sign also got retired for the season. But if it’s a wintery tree or a snowman or my favorite Nordic porcelain houses from Target, those are all hear to stay for a couple of months.
As I was taking the tree down I removed the extra greenery and floral picks used to fill it out. I decided to make a tablescape with these items for January. So my January theme is a bit of a continuation from my Christmas theme this year – neutrals with a black and white accent.
I left the gingham check runner that was out for the holiday, but covered it more with the centerpiece. You can’t hardly see it under the fullness of the centerpiece, but there is a pallet wood ‘tray’ under the greenery making removal a simple grab-and-go for one person. This is our only dining table, we don’t have a formal dining room. We eat at this table every morning and night. I try to keep my tablescapes condensed enough that they do not need to be moved to use the table. It is only during the holidays or a family game night that the centerpiece gets moved.
I love how the earthiness of the cotton plays against the whimsical snowy and glittered greenery. And these black and white striped poinsettia picks – aren’t they great?! They were in the tree and I appreciated them because I am the one that put them there, but I don’t know that anyone else appreciated them with all that was going on with the tree. Being able to use a couple of them here to be the statement piece of the tablescape makes me happy. It’s just amazing the things that you get excited about as you get older!
I hope you have enjoyed the first of the #monthlytablescapeseries! If you didn’t catch my holiday decor posts you can see my Holiday Home Tour, Part I HERE and my Holiday Home Tour, Part II HERE.
