Garland and Bows

Hoping everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving spent with their loved ones! This Thanksgiving was my favorite, by far. The dust has settled from the wedding and we were able to spend the majority of the day at my mom's house - rather than jump between our 4 families. And to top it off, our videographer went above and beyond by setting up a surprise with my sister (who coordinated with my cousin) to play our wedding video on Thanksgiving so we had the opportunity to watch it first with our family (I'll share the video on Monday).

I couldn't say nicer things about Christian with Villatoro Productions. And I couldn't recommend spending the money on a wedding video more, after seeing our preview. Check them out on Facebook or on their website!

Every year, the day after Christmas I break out the Christmas decorations. I refuse to listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but the day after - all bets are off and it's blasting in my car.

I mentioned we have been slowly updating the exterior of our house. We painted our front door and side window panel, replaced the front door hardware, spray painted our house numbers and this weekend we removed all of the shutters to paint them black.

I personally think it makes the house look younger - giving ourselves a pat on the back!

My mom and I went to 3 different stores yesterday looking at Christmas decorations since this is our first home and we needed to stock up. We found these bows on sale at Michaels for a dollar each! They made it through the winds last night, so I think they are here to stay!

After putting on the shutters yesterday, I cleaned our porch banisters with soap to freshen them up. They look so much brighter now, especially with the contrast of the shutters!

My mom helped me pick out berries at Michaels to add to the plain garland we found there. We also spotted some cute snowy pine cones. The garland was on sale for $1.99, the berries were a dollar (which we separated and twisted onto the garland and the pinecones were in bundles of 3 for 50 cents.

I love the way it turned out!

I couldn't help but pick up this living wreath at Home Depot. The juniper berries and pine cones were too cute! I do have plans of adding some extras to help jazz it up.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend so far and just for giggles, here is a before shot of our house.