Birthday Weekend

Do ya'll do this... Have a decorating frenzy in your home when you know company's coming? This is what I did on my birthday last Friday after I got home from the doctor's office. A bunch of last minute arranging and trying to make things look pretty. A challenge for me! Of all the rooms in my home, my dining room takes my money and attention. I just love it. So it's probably never going to be officially finished as I'm constantly changing things around. Here's my dining table, see my black wicker plate chargers? Actually those are paper plate holders from Garden Clearance at Hobby Lobby. As well as that pointy thing in the middle. See my birds? Dollar Tree spray painted white... Don't you just love the ideas you get out here in blogland? I know I do!

Brace yourself, another challenge area for me is my mantel. I don't have a fireplace but I do have a collection of mantels. Sometime I'll show you the antique one in my Master. This one a friend gave me for helping them move, it weighs a ton! Some day when the house is paid off I want to have the chimney restored and a firebox put in. But for now I use black fabric.

Almost everything in the picture is from Hobby Lobby! On the left side I have two more floor standing wrought iron candle holders. Forgive my satellite clock I use it when I'm on the treadmill that you just see the edge of in the bottom right corner. The greenery basket has some twigs added to it by me and the black candle holders were from Walmart holiday clearance years ago. I found out I'm supposed to use the same sized candles on them, oops! I didn't know so I'll eventually get around to buying new ones. Would you believe I paid less than $9 for that black mantel clock? Hate me!

Here's a closer picture of my dear OLD friend and me, I'm on the left. We're both wearing some aprons I made since our guys were grilling, makes sense for us to wear them huh?

And we were doing the goofy thing of taking pictures of each other at the same time. You can see a little more of my dining room here. She's tied the apron on and promptly said she that's what she wanted for Christmas from me ~ an apron!

Next time I'll show ya'll pictures of the vintage loot I scored for my birthday, we went shopping earlier that day and I got to pick out some great to me treasures.