my home for the holidays: part 1 (featuring DownEast Home)

Home.

Such a simple yet profound and important word. Its a place and a state of mind. Its bricks and mortar, wood and glass. Its also acceptance and warmth, memories and safety.

This holiday will be spent at “home” and all the trimmings are coming together. The tree is up, the stockings hung, the lights outside are on timer.

Its a bit of a construction zone outside as we’re still building walls and planting trees and dreaming of future additions (and hoping for a swimming pool before it gets to be 1000 degrees again…). But we’ve got plenty of time since we plan on dying in this house.

Inside (a.k.a. My Domain),  I’ve been having fun pulling out decorations I havent seen for two years since we spent the holidays in Northern California last year.

One of my favorite places to get my creative on is the island in my kitchen. Not to brag or nothin’ but its enormous and beautiful and I love it to pieces. Its one of the features of this house that I fell in love with the first time I saw it.

I love to change out the “centerpiece” with different seasonal items to accompany the resident fruit bowl.

I was thrilled to find this birdcage (as in a real bird cage with a hinged top and small door). I got it from DownEast Basics Home and just filled it with some pinecones and frosted decorative fruit I had. Did you know DownEast Basics have a whole home decor store in addition to they’re fabulous clothing line? I didn’t, until recently.

The details are lovely and for $16.99 it was a great value, as are most things I saw in the catalog. I also bought this fun pinecone and bead garland to go with it…

(I had the white one already and just twisted them together)

I also had my eye on these…

DownEast Basics Home is hosting a “Spruce Up Your Home for the Holidays” sweeps on their Facebook page between now and Dec 9 and givng away a $500 holiday home makeover to one lucky winner! I entered because I think I could enjoy spending $500 (on my bedroom, mainly) on decor. Yep, pretty sure I could do that.

You should enter too. Go now…its really easy. Just a 1 question survey.

Happy holiday decorating…I’ll be back in a few weeks with more photos (as a part of The Nester’s 2011 Christmas Tour of Homes!).