our dining room

Our house is finally just about put together. I wanted to share with you all the progress!

The dining room before:

We found a dining room table from Ikea. The dining room space is somewhat small but we like to entertain so we found a table that holds 6 people but can expand to hold 10. We went with the brown to make a cheap table look a little nicer. We also found the white chairs at Ikea and decided to go with them for a more modern look. The gray chairs we found at World Market to add the elegance back into the room. 

My moms friend got this mirror from Ballard Designs but it came broken so she sent for a new one and gave me the broken one. I just put the broken part at the bottom to hide it. I decorated it with my grandparent's crystal decanters.

We still need to find drapes for around the window and eventually change the chandelier but it works for now!

A little bit of my inspiration:

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holidays rule

Hope you all had a great holiday! Ours was very successful. Brian and I both took most of the day off of work Wednesday and had a fun tim getting the house clean and getting the last of our family room put together (he even vacuumed the whole house for me!! :) )

Having everyone bring a dish made it not too stressful for us. We did the turkey, which my parents taught us how to do- pretty easy actually. We had 20 people, multiple sides of the family which was good.

How was yours?!

 











my sister and our wonderful guys


My aunt, me, my cousin and my sister


All the women in my family- my mom and her 2 daughters and her sister and her 3 daughters and my cousin's 2 year old. We had lots of fun growing up together.

sitting at the adult table

Brian and I are hosting our first Thanksgiving this year now that we have a house big enough for everyone! Thank goodness for parents who help us out.  Brian and I are blessed that our families do Thanksgiving all together, including his sister's in-laws as well! My mom helped me organize all of the prep so we created a timeline:

3 weeks before// invite everyone and has them to RSVP
2.5 weeks before// gather RSVPs & inspiration
2 weeks before// create menu and share with everyone what they can bring
1.5 weeks before// grocery shop for what you can
1 weeks before// set table
week of// clean house & shop for & prepare everything else

Have you hosted Thanksgiving at your house yet? Any tips?

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NYC Day 3: Brooklyn

I'm pretty much obsessed with Brooklyn and wish it was in Portland so I could live there.