Hand Made Presents Part Two

So I wanted to share with you the other hand made presents that I received for Christmas this year.

One of them being the wooden caddy/tote that Neal made me seen on the kitchen table. He always does such a great job of paying attention to what I have been favoriting on Etsy and pinning on Pinterest.  This year he saw that I had favorited some tool carrier type totes and decided he would just make me one instead of buying it.

I have a couple store bought carriers like this but nothing beats hand made right? I just love it and the fact that Neal payed attention to what I was looking for. I beat it up with a hammer and then I stained it Dark Walnut.  For now I have pine boughs in it but I probably will keep the kitchen table essentials in it like napkins and salt and pepper and such.

And as you peek into the family room you can see the other hand made present that I received....

a "One Horse Sleigh" sign from my sister. In case you are wondering, yes she is going to make some for the shop! Every time she makes me something I say "oh you have to make these for the shop!". 

I absolutely love it. She is actually working on a really big sign that will go all the way across the space above the windows...I can't wait! 

Some other new additions to the family room are the grain sack looking pillow and a new lamp. I had a bunch of LLBean coupons that were going to expire and I was so excited to see that they had these pillows  on clearance. It is very well made and actually has the feel of  an authentic grain sack. 

I found the lamp at Home Goods, I have been on the search for some industrial style lamps for some time now. They are usually either way too much money or they have some detail that I don't like. I loved this one the moment I saw it with its old fashioned looking shade. 

Another new thing in this room is the little space heater in the fireplace. Our furnace on the kitchen side of the house died and we can't get a new one just yet so we moved the little space heater from the living room into here. We have two furnaces (my long time followers know that our farmhouse was turned into a duplex at one point and we turned it back into one dwelling) so our bedrooms still have heat but the kitchen and family room are on the chilly side to say the least. We bought a ceramic radiator style electric heater and it really does help though.  Leave it to us to have our furnace break on the couple coldest weeks of the year, the high has been 10 degrees the past two weeks. 

 Also, you may have noticed that I put wood going horizontally in the fireplace. I didn't like the way the beadboard looked and it will be some time till we can afford to have a real chimney installed. I saw in Terry John Woods book that he had wood boards in his fireplace and I thought "that's what I will do!".

We will be taking our Christmas tree down this weekend. I took the ornaments off of it but I wanted to have a week where I could enjoy just the tree with the white lights, to me there is nothing prettier. This past summer I finally found a galvanized bucket at the flea market big enough to hold our tree stand. It was $10, my sister was just joking me the other day about how everything I find is either $2 or $10, guess she was right:)