Bin me up, Scotty!

Ok, that was a supper cheesy Star Trek reference, but I couldn't help it. But at least I'm finally getting some freaking Christmas pictures up!

Side note: it has taken me two very depressing years to get my Christmas cheer back. I don't know why it went away, I don't know how or why it came back, but all I know is I am embracing it with open arms. So forgive me if I am spouting Christmas excitement and annoying projects like a fountain.

If you're like me, you drool every year over Pottery Barn's beautiful but expensive tree skirts. This one has always been my particular favorite since it matches our stockings. It just also happens to be $129 before monogramming, tax, and shipping. Ouch.

But the bottom of a faux tree is U-G-L-Y! I've tried covering it with multiple items over the years without much success. Everything just kind of looked cheap. So this year I opted for an old reliable fallback: galvanized tin. We grabbed a $20 bin from Home Depot (this guy was with the trash cans). Unfortunately the original base was too big for the tin, so we improvised. If you run into the same snag, we used an outdoor umbrella base to keep ours steady--heavy enough so the tree wont topple over, the tree fit inside perfectly, and the base fit into the tin with room to spare! 

Here it is in all its glory (I used this method for lighting our tree and it was much more simple than going round and round and round like we usually do). The glittery white star we got on clearance from Target a couple years ago. It had a "halo" of colorful balls around it that I snipped off using garden shears.

A few of our favorites on the tree: glass snowflake ornaments from Target (from our first Christmas together in 2005), these Big Lot ornaments that look way more expensive than their $4 price tag (and technically $4 got me a pack of 8, so really they were all of 50¢, and of course our Marine Corps cover (one of many patriotic ornaments we've collected over the years).

Oh and FYI I'm sorry for the fuzzy iPhone pictures, but these were shot before the Lumix was in the process of getting fixed, and the memory card getting corrupted. 

a.m. + p.b. = l{♥}ve

Ok, so my blog keeping skills totally suck, but give me a break. I still haven't managed to balance a full time job and projects. Usually they're all crammed together in one weekend and it takes me weeks to photograph and blog about anything. Plus, imagine my disappointment when after finally getting our Lumix fixed, the freaking memory card became corrupted and refuses to hold any photos. Cue the Queen saying, "We are not amused!"

Our house looks so ridiculously cute with all it's Christmas decor, and even if it takes braving the craziness of the stores this holiday season, I will get it photographed this weekend. #famouslastwords But anyhoo, I have to do a happy dance about the deal I just got on some pillows from the big PB. No, the other PB--Pottery Barn!

Thanks to getting our Christmas shopping done early this year, we snagged two thank you's from Pottery Barn in the form of $10 gift cards (I don't know if this is actually because we shopped during a specific time period  but I'm an early-Christmas-shopper nerd, so I will take this as positive reinforcement).

Today I was more than delighted to see that their pillows were all 30% off, plus they were offering free shipping. Thinking ahead to that awkward in between phase of Christmas and Valentine's Day (or whenever the decor starts changing in our house) I wanted some neutral "winter-ish" pillows. These are what I grabbed (virtually speaking that is).

I'm kind of a sucker for typographical fabric prints (like this rug that I've always loved from Ballard Designs) and the simple color of this pillow was right up my neutral winter-ish alley. Then I grabbed this one for our bedroom, because I'm obsessed with greens and browns together (plus once I finally hang our Braemore curtains the colors will jive together without being too matchy-matchy). Technically I think this is supposed to be a map of Paris, but... I just think it's pretty.

The best part? Both pillows were marked down to $13.99 from $34. With the free shipping offer and the gift cards, I paid a total of $8.60! Less than $10 for two Pottery Barn pillows--how can you not love that?