Deck the Hutch

My house has a built-in hutch thingy in the dining room, and I've half neglected/half stuffed it with junk for the past few months/years. Really, the problem is that I'll have a project going on the dining room table, and when it's time to eat, I'll stick my supplies in the cabinet behind me to keep them out of Maggie's reach. So stuff like craft knives, paint, and (I'm serious) chunks of broken glass from old picture frames were stuck in there along with cook books and various dishes. Charming, huh? And, yeah, no knobs because I painted it white a million years ago and could never decide on knobs. But I do love the paper cut creations Emma made for Thanksgiving, especially the funny turkeys. She's so awesome.

Anyway, I knew this hutch was going to blow my Christmas ambience this year so I decided to completely excavate and redesign it. First, I realized that anything white wasn't going to show against the white background. Oops. So I taped up wrapping paper along the inside back wall. Not as hard as I feared it would be. And then I put stuff in there that was vaguely food/cooking related. Like a little tree with cookie cutters hanging on it, a cookie jar, cookie stand, Christmas candy, etc. So here's the final result:

That littlest candy jar ends up on the table from time to time. The rock candy is sooo pretty and sparkly. 

Emma and I made the popcorn garlands over the course of a couple of evenings. And there's a little vintage looking elf that creeps out the kids really bad. 

I wanted it all to look very warm, because look. Right outside it's completely winter now. We got our first layer of snow on December 1. So pretty!