7QT: Painting the Fireplace, Crafting a Wreath, and Candles in the Windows

Happy Friday folks!  Linking up with Kelly and off we goooooo....

1)

We always decorate for Christmas on Black Friday and even though I kept seeing other families post photos with their beautiful trees and other Christmas decor up, I restrained the urge to decorate before Thanksgiving.  I totally understand why people want to make their homes pretty and bright a little earlier in this 2020 Year Never To Be Spoken Of Again.  I really do.  I just have this thing about celebrating holidays in order that outweighed that.  So for now, we are just *prepping* the house for Christmas decorating.  And also eating lots of these crazy good cookies from Aldi's:

2)

Guys, I actually crafted!  I went to Hobby Lobby and got a grapevine wreath and some florals and cut off the branches and shoved them into the wreath.  That's it!  No glue or anything else needed.  It was such a good craft for dummies Colleen.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

HUNG:

I just tied a ribbon around it and hung it in between our dining room windows.

I was very pleased with how it came out and my kids were equally shocked that their mom can now apparently make stuff.

3)

When we moved into our home 16 years ago, we put candles in the windows and then realized that we always had babies and toddlers who loved to pull them down and break them, so we nixed that idea for a good decade but we are out of that stage now and the candles are back!  They are sensor lights that plugin, so I don't need to worry about batteries or turning them off or on.    Here they are shining last night and posing with my bestie, the wreath:

I found these awesome suction cups that hold the candles to the window:

4)

For Thanksgiving this year, since we are just staying home by ourselves, and the typical Thanksgiving meal is one of my least favorite meals ever - blech turkey blech heavy sides blech pies - we are going to have a fun meal instead.  I asked everyone what their favorite Thanksgiving food is and we are having a winner dinner with a smorgasbord of different apps and entrees and sides and desserts that everybody loves.  I'm actually excited about Thanksgiving again!

 

5)

We updated our fireplace!  The brass surround was never my style, but I kinda thought we just had to live with it until I realized we could paint it (told you I'm not of the craftiest mindset).  I researched how to spray paint the surround indoors, and told Phil how to do it, but he's more clever than I and decided to just remove the whole thing and spray paint it outside.  I didn't know it could be removed!

Before (from a Christmas past):

During:

After:

6)

But then once the surround was painted black, the brick hearth looked bad.  This is why projects always take forever!  So he painted that black as well.

Before:

After:

Then I bought a hearth rug and covered it up anyway.  Ha!

7)

I found this sign at Hobby Lobby and felt seen:

 

And that my friends is a wrap!  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving food prepping, house cleaning, leaf raking kind of weekend!