winter days and a new year

After the holidays it always seems a bit difficult to get back to "normal"... For some reason this year seemed to take longer to get Christmas put away and back to day to day living.  I've been busy at work and with holiday events there has been little down time of late, perhaps that's why.

Like many of you, with the new year underway I wanted to make a conscious effort to be better organized.  I know this ultimately translates to more time to spent doing the things I enjoy.

With this in mind, over the New Year weekend I spent my time packing up Christmas but also trying to organize it a bit better.  Over the last few years things have gotten packed back into bins in the quickest fashion creating a bit of hodge podge.  Now at least I know that next year when I take out my bins to decorate it will be much easier to find what I'm looking for and I can spend more time being creative!

Once I had cleared the decks and put all those bins away,  I brought out things that reminded me of winter, snow, cold outside/warm inside and of course, a bit of rustic.  In my tradition of decorating "the gate", I hung my Anthropologie inspired pom pom wreath on my gate again this year and added "2016" in galvanized numbers below.

And one of my favorite new items this year (I used it for Christmas too) is this cute galvanized windmill.  I also added a couple of galvanized houses that were actually ornaments as well as three little white trees nestled into my wooden socket (?) holder.  Very farm-y, right?

It doesn't turn or function in any way...

But I'm still smitten.

As you can see, I actually have two galvanized windmills!   The windmills were actually a new purchase in November from Terrain.  If you haven't taken a peck at Terrain you really must... think Anthropologie but for home and garden only!  In fact Terrain is somehow affiliated with Anthropologie and you can find a link to Terrain on Anthro's website.  But back to business... bits of aqua, more galvanized, my vintage globes and "snow" rounded out this corner... most of this stays the same year round but I do like to change out the smaller items seasonally or for a holiday.

The dining room wasn't ignored either.  Some of this little vignette on the buffet is a hold over from the holidays.  I kind of liked that the little glittered putz style houses played off the little snow village scene in the picture frame (actually a card from Rifle Paper Co.).  The touches of silver and gold carry out the New Year's theme too.

And finally, finally the dining room table is getting back to being just a table and not a storage or junk pile!  I added more galvanized and aqua to the center of the table... not sure why galvanized says winter to me but it does!

My mason jar snow globes, some silver trees and an orchid to fill up my Pottery Barn tray.

Of course I couldn't put all my shiny brites away yet either.  I actually use these silver and aqua "clusters" year round in different ways.

And perhaps you noticed a little change in my built in?

Before...

And after...

Do you notice?  Not just the paper cone wreaths removed...

But a big change up too!  When I was reorganized the toys in the front porch I decided to pull a bunch of stuff out of a cabinet there and was wondering where to put it... and well you know how one thing leads to another?  Well I'd been wanting to do something different with my milk glass collection for a while and decided now was the time.  I pulled out all of my china from the center "display" section and moved milk glass to that section of the cabinet.  It's hard to see but the vintage silver is now on the upper or top shelf on the left and right.  The lower left shelf is all of my green depression glass and the lower right shelf is all my pink depression glass... I really should get a better picture of the left and right sides...

A closer look at the center before...

And after... I still have some milk glass from around the house to add.  Surprisingly this switch actually made for more space in the storage parts of this cabinet, as the china is now all stacked instead of spread out over three shelves.  And another bonus is I have space now to add to my milk glass collection as well as my green and pink depression glass collection! Yay!!

So 13 days into the new year of 2016 and I have accomplished a few things off my list...

Cleaning up, de-cluttering and even trying to get back to a regular blogging schedule.  Not too bad for just 13 days.  How about you?  Goals?  Changes?

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Elizabeth & Co

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