The Photo Shoot

Whew, sorry this has taken me so long.  I was off work for two weeks....two WHOLE weeks and it was glorious.  Such a great time with my hubby, the kids, and all of our family and friends.
I was supposed to go back to work on Monday but woke up with the stomach flu.  I've been in bed for the last three days and, quite frankly, I've slept more than I've been awake.  However about an hour ago I re-joined the land of the living.  My appetite is back, I want to go run on the treadmill, and I want to go re-decorate every room now that Christmas is over.  HOWEVER, I know better than to do that so I'm going to sit here on my fanny and update you on the photo shoot.

The local magazine that did the shoot was Monroe Magazine and we will be featured in their Christmas edition next year.  I was super excited but a little nervous at the same time.  In my usual fashion, I slid 'er in sideways being ready for Christmas and breathed a sigh of relief....even though I knew I had more work to do.  So, I enjoyed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and even took the day after Christmas off to relax.  Then the real work started.  I put up another tree in the dining room, went to Jo-Ann Fabric and bought every single mercury glass bulb they had on the 80% off rack, and got to decorating.  I didn't want to spend a ton of extra money on this tree so other than the mercury glass ornaments I used things I had around the house.  I don't know about all of you, but once Christmas is over I am DONE spending money for quite some time!!

Blah, blah, blah I could bore you with more babbling but here are two of the pictures that the photographer shared with me.  They aren't magazine ready but two he pulled together quickly for me.  Now that it is over I really wished I would have taken more pictures of the house myself but at the time I was really tapped out.  So here is what I've got thus far :-)

Here is the great room!

And the dining room!

See all those cute presents under both of the trees?  Yep, they are empty boxes.  I was up at 5 am the day of the shoot wrapping all the empty boxes I could get my hands on.
If you look at the tree in my dining room,  you'll see that I used tulle from the Dollar Tree as ribbon, also silver beads from around the house, Eiffel Tower ornaments from one of my BFF's, picture frames with pictures of the kids in their Halloween costumes and a swanky tree topper that I made out of the remaining tulle that I had.  I told you that I wasn't going to break the bank on this baby :-)
I loved all of my mercury glass trees on the buffet and my tablescape was festive but not over the top.  I think I may have gotten a few pictures of the table and I'll share then when I can dig them up.  So there you have it.  I can't wait to see the final pictures they use.