Happy holidays!  We hope that you’ve all been having a wonderful holiday season and are gearing up for an amazing 2015.  We feel especially blessed this year, being able to spend it in our new home and make the first of many holiday memories in this crazy place.  We’re at the point in cleaning and fixing where we finally felt OK having family over to celebrate the holidays here, so we were thrilled to get the chance to use all of our old original appliances for what they were really meant to do — entertain!  (Yes, I just realized we owe y’all a kitchen post.  Next on our to-do list!)

We were especially thankful that Santa came early this year, in the form of a Craigslist post for dining room furniture!  We really thought our dining room was going to stay empty for a long time, because we were holding out for MCM furniture but didn’t have much of a budget for it.  Then I was poking around Craigslist last weekend, and found a set of chairs that made my heart stop.  They were super funky, unlike anything I’d seen before, in amazing shape, and were in our budget!  AND, not only were the chairs gorgeous, but there was a coordinating table available too!  We road-tripped out towards Lancaster the next day to check them out at Blockhead Furnishings, and had an absolute blast…  seriously, that place is a wonderland of MCM furniture.  Two floors packed to the gills with beautifully restored and so-good-it-doesn’t-need-restoring stuff…  we wanted to just move in!  Not only did they give us a great deal since we were getting multiple pieces, they rushed to deliver them the next afternoon so we’d be able to use our dining room for our Christmas celebration with family.  Yay!  (Thanks Scott and your team!)

The saucy chairs with caned backs:

The coordinating table:

Yay to having a usable dining room!  (And Skunk likes it too!)

As we decorated the house for the holidays, we also found a pleasant surprise in the attic: the previous owners had left us their Christmas tree!  We’re not sure how old it is, but it’s old enough that the design is something we haven’t seen before — all of the branches hang down in long strands from the top, instead of sticking out like spokes of a wheel.

It was in pretty good shape — we spent several hours picking old tinsel strands out of the branches (a big no-no since we have cats), other than that it was good to go.  So glad we had something else from the house that we were able to use!

From us at Biohazard Manor to all of you, may you enjoy the rest of your holidays and have an amazing New Year.  We’ve been having so much fun sharing our craziness with you as we go, and we can’t wait to have you along on the journey as we keep going!