The Christmas Wreath is decked out in bronze ribbon and pheasant feathers. The drapery rods were a splurge. The dark wood and bronze highlights are perfect for this masculine room. The drapery swag is created from a inexpensive brocade table cloth. Beads were added to the bottom of the swag to create that "Victorian" look. The chocolate brown maltalasse drapes are from IKEA. The wonderful thing about IKEA is their drapes are not hemmed, which is a huge plus for tall and very large windows. 
The inside wall of the Gentlemen's Parlor. This door enters the center hallway. There was three layers of wallpaper in this room with very little plaster damage. The walls are painted a medium golden tan. The stencils are created with bronze and champagne gold metalic paint. I designed the rope pattern stencil and placed it where the picture rail molding would normally hang. The framed artwork are color prints of horse and buggy racing. I hung them in the same style as Victorian homes but with a modern twist. I used ribbon and hung them from curtain tiebacks. 
I am pleased at how the pantry turned out. I still have a few things that I would like to fit in there, but don't have the room. Scary to think that a 5 foot x 7 foot room isn't big enough to hold all our stuff!
Don't you love the slate blue wainscoating and the harvest gold flooring. Quite the color combination. Just imagine adding a fruit wallpaper border ontop. Needless to say, that isn't my style! But more than style, we needed a functioning pantry! All my small appliances are easily displayed. I love my new pantry!
The first photo shows the only cupboard in the pantry. The plaster behind the cupboard was in very bad shape. I was happy to tear it out. The second photo is after I tore off the wainscoating. I covered the walls with some sheetrock and taped, mudded and painted. As you can see we got Chrome shelving and filled in nicely with my coupon loving wife. :D
Here is the before and after of the pantry floor. We used a self stick vinyl flooring to cover the 1970's Harvest Gold linoleum. This is only a temporary fix to the kitchen. We used this flooring before in our other house, and loved it so much we knew that it would work perfect for a temporary flooring until we could do a major remodel.
Here is the before and after of the pantry ceiling. I was surprised at the plastic and duck tape! Not very classy. And really an super easy fix.
This is the inside wall. The door opens to the center hall. You can see the mauve and tan wallpaper undereath the ivory damask wallpaper. There is only two layers on these walls with wonderfully smooth plaster underneath.
I decided to decorate upstairs with cedar and evergreens. This is the mantel to the guest bedroom. This kind of decorating was very typical for Christmas during the turn of the century.
Our dining room is pretty much the same as last year. I used all my red and gold decorations from the old house. I'm looking forward to renovating this room. I hope to get all downstairs rooms finished in 2011.
We used our flower planters to hold our little Christmas Trees. We had one loan Gerbera Daisy that had to stay for a while.
Here I am working on Christmas Decorations. I starting November 1st and worked on it until the first of December. I primed the whole front porch, and painted the floor before I did any decorating.
