the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016

via Fresh Farmhouse Tumblr

Happy New Year! Its hard to believe the holiday season is over and my two week vacation has ended. While I tend to experience a little bit of post holiday blues, this year I am actually looking forward to a calmer January and February. 

A quick recap of our holiday schedule - on the 23rd we left for Northern Michigan and made the 10+ hour drive north. It rained the whole drive..... We arrived to a very warm, no snow in sight Harbor Springs. The lack of snow required some re-adjusting from our usual course of activities and traditions but we managed to find new things to do and just enjoyed the time to relax and spend time together. On the 28th, we got a nice big snow storm just before Jeff had to drive back to Missouri to work for the week....I ended up staying north a few more days and finally returned to Saint Louis this past Friday to spend the New Years weekend with Jeff and Jeff's parents who were visiting from Chicago.

That brings us to today - the 4th of January 2016! Before launching into the New Year, I would like to use today's post to look back on some of the more notable events of 2015.

The biggest happening of 2015 at THE PLACE HOME was definitely the complete relaunch of the website in August. It took almost the whole summer to design, plan, organize, build and relaunch but it has totally been worth all the effort. The site now represents the business in its entirety as well as beautiful images of our home and I couldn't be happier with it.

Speaking of our home, this past year we tackled a pretty sizable list of projects that I shared about here on the blog. 

- Laid new flooring in the office and guest room (formerly known as the project room)
- Painted and had a custom cabinetry piece installed in set guest room
- Refinished our stairs and added a runner
- Installed new lighting in our upstairs and downstairs hallways (realizing just now that I never shared pictures of these two projects...ops)
- Had our basement flood several times resulting in the installation of a sump pump
- Purchased our dining room chairs with some help of my parents and friends who transported them from Michigan
- Flipped our living room with our dining room creating a much better layout for our first floor
- Scored amazing antique twin bed frames for our second guest room
- Had our jungle of our yard totally cleaned up - complete with new landscape beds and grass (a project that I keep meaning to post about here but have yet to do so)
- Purchased a new sofa for our living room
- Continued to plan and redesign our first floor renovation

Finally just before the years end, we purchased an amazing antique brass bed on Craigslist for our other guest room. Listing it all out makes it feel like we have done a lot but also that we have so many more projects to go. My mind is just running wild with what we can tackle in 2016.

Two other big highlights from the year are the TPH feature in Sauce Magazine and Ladue News. 

I want to conclude today's post with a big thank you to all the readers and clients who made 2015 such a great year for THE PLACE HOME. Here's to 2016!

appreciating the winter months

Ok let's try this again - happy 2015! Tuesday, January 6th will be my official start to the New Year as one - the New Year and its resolutions don't start until you are back home and two - yesterday was just one of those days which is no way to start off a new beginning. 

First a recap from the holidays - we spent a lovely Christmas at home with Jeff's parents and sister and enjoyed a quite Christmas Eve and Christmas watching movies, cooking, listening to holiday music and just relaxing. On the 26th, we headed up to Chicago to break up the drive to Northern Michigan and also picked up my sister and her fiance. We arrived to the Harbor Springs area on the evening of the 27th and celebrated my Dad's birthday as well as did Christmas part two. We enjoyed a week of skiing, sleeping in, eating WAY too much and reminiscing about how last winter we were in throws of wedding planning. The Harbor Springs/Petoskey area is truly one of my favorite places on earth and I just love being up there. Its so beautiful and relaxing which, of course, makes leaving rather difficult. We started our trek South this past Saturday and arrived home late Sunday afternoon. While it was definitely sad to leave Michigan and end vacation (not to mention come home to water in our basement) it is nice to be home and get back into the routine of things.

Now onto the start of the New Year. Yesterday, I read this post on House of Earnest and could totally relate. While the beginning of January is filled with a sense of newness, I am always sad that our time in Northern Michigan and the holidays are over. Last year, we had our wedding to look forward to in February and were crazy busy with planning and ops an unexpected appendectomy. This year, we have a few plans for the coming winter months but obviously nothing like our wedding. As such I want to try to maintain some of the specialness that is the holidays throughout the rest of the season. Its not anything major just small things that help to make winter feel cozy and warm rather than dark and depressing. I am not entirely sure what this means yet but I do know I want to do the following.

1. Keep the candles burning - I tend to only light candles around Christmas which is really a missed opportunity as a little candlelight can instantly brighten a space and my mood.
2. Keep the music playing - I am a holiday music junkie and with only four weeks of the year to listen to it - I listen to it a lot! However, much like the candle thing, music (not holiday themed) while spending time at home is quite enjoyable and I often forget this when its not the Bing Crosby time of year.
3. Enjoy being at home - This is a general one but in winter its easy to feel trapped inside but with a simple, change of mindset winter can be the season to APPRECIATE being home.
4. Make fires ALL THE TIME - We are really loving our wood burning stove and having it going really makes the house so much cozier. Not to mention it is becoming an invaluable heat source as, yesterday, I had to crank our thermostat to above 75 just to get the house to have an indoor temperature of 60!
5. Baking - While I am not a baker and definitely need to detox from vacation, I want to keep baking. And the winter, when you aren't sweating in the kitchen because its 100 degrees out and the oven is set to 400, seems like the perfect time to do it. I am especially interested in learning to make bread...
6. Flip the holiday decorations to winter seasonal decor - This was the tip I gained from House of Earnest and I love this idea. Up North our family house is sort of always in a winter seasonal mode and it makes it that much more enjoyable to be up there from December through March. This will be harder to accomplish here in St.Louis, seeing as we are not living in a vacation locale that receives a ton of snowfall, but I think I can make some small changes go a long way.

Below are a few winter themed rooms and vignettes that I have been looking at to gather some inspiration. 

from top left - spruce pot via Accessorize Your Home - wreath via BO BEDRE - Aspen home of Aerin Lauder via VOGUE - sheep skin sofa via veronica loves archie - house plant via The Unexpected Houseplant - interior via love maegan

let's start 2015 tomorrow

We are off to a rough start this morning - an unexpected trip to the vet, loads of laundry, late for work, back from vacation blues - you get the idea. So lets just say we will officially start the New Year with a fresh, more positive attitude tomorrow. Deal?

I hope everyone had a great holiday and happy New Year!