Holiday Home Tour 2015

Christmas week is here! This holiday season has been interesting for our family – mixed with feelings of nostalgia and missing our old home while also loving new festivities and traditions in our new community. We strung Christmas lights on the house for the first time in ten years and I am enjoying finding new places for all of the Christmas decorations that I’ve made and collected over the years. I still have a lengthy list of to-dos, most of which I know I won’t get to, but today I’m taking a minute to share some holiday home tour photos with you before the holiday has passed! I don’t think I’ve shared any house progress pictures with you since my home introduction post (aka – the before pictures) a while back, so you’ll get a sneak peak at a few of the projects that we’ve tackled.

We have two separate entertainment/gathering areas in this home and so I decided to decorate the areas differently, according to style/color scheme. In our family room/kitchen, we have a festive and casual red and green theme going on. The kitchen table holds a cute little gathering of tiny presents, a cake stand with a crafty house, and bowls of red pinecones and ornaments. I filled my little secretary desk with all of my wrapping supplies and added a wire basket to hold the rolls of wrapping paper. I love wrapping supplies so much; it makes me happy to have a nice little collection on display.

I sewed together a couplet pairs of buffalo check napkins for quick couch throw pillows and we’ve been enjoying the coziness from the plaid flannel fringe blankets that I sewed in the Fall. For quick decorating, I simply fill glass bowls and hurricanes with ornaments. They catch a lot of light and add sparkle and color to the rooms.

We did pick out a nice, pretty Noble Fir tree for this room since we spend so much time in here. Unfortunately, it was completely crisp and turning brown two weeks into the season, so I had to transfer the ornaments over to the little artificial tree that we keep in our room for glow. It suits the space fine and gives me a nice spot to put all the presents wrapped in buffalo check plaid! 😉 I typically have just one tree and I fill it with a big conglomeration of ornaments from mine and my husband’s childhood and all through our married lives. There are ornaments the kids made and those from places where we’ve traveled. Decorating the tree is one of our favorite family traditions as we tell stories about where various ornaments came from. Also, I hung our rustic pinecone wreath over the fireplace – still waiting for nails in the brick to hang stockings. I definitely miss our old fireplace – which was a wood stove disguised as a fireplace – and mantle that my husband built. We’ll get there eventually.

I am still completely smitten with the fur and flannel stockings that I made last year. DO get the tutorial and make a few for yourself if you haven’t already. They’re perfect for hanging on a console table or other piece of furniture, if not on the mantle. I stuff the stockings with some sparkly fluff and they look so cozy! This is our other main living space – it’s the formal living room and dining room.

This room is coming along. It does currently have a pretty large pile of wood flooring sitting in the middle of it, but I kindly photographed around that because…underneath the pile of wood is….WOOD FLOORS and a room that is feeling more like home! We’ve installed the floors in this whole room, so that’s a big accomplishment. We still have the kitchen, family room, and entryway to do. The console table in here is a nice place to arrange seasonal decor and I set up some sparkly lights and a Christmas village. There’s plenty of room for the village to grow. I started with the Winter Village I crafted last year and added a few finished pieces I found at Jo-Ann this year.

Opposite the little seating area in the living room, we purchased an artificial tree to fill a front window. When one goes from living in the country for ten years to living in a neighborhood full of Christmas displays, they get super excited to put a tree in the front window!! We decided on a flocked tree and it sets the stage for a white and metallic theme in this whole room. You can also catch a glimpse of the piano my husband got for me for my birthday this year. I have a few more paper and wax village items on the top of the piano and some gorgeous gold lanterns nearby (Jo-Ann).

I have a pretty healthy supply of ornaments, but not nearly enough to cover two trees. I was able to decorate this tree with just a few carefully placed ornaments. I placed some inexpensive silver, gold, and champagne bulbs around the tree and added a few metallic colored or clear glass ornaments from my regular collection. Then I picked up just a few clusters of pinecones, birds, and shimmery florals from the floral department at the craft store. These all come on little sticks and they slide into the tree branches just perfectly. It adds some color and visual interest to the tree without a lot of expense.

Coming over to the dining room, we have my favorite space in the house right now. With the help of my cousin, we installed wallpaper on the accent wall across from the entry. It’s a quirky circus animal-like pattern in black and white and I am in love with it!! It’s the perfect backdrop for my mirrored buffet and all the formal sparkle in this room. I’m still figuring out a dining room table, but we have a makeshift little dining setup for now and it’s working out great! I kept some of my Thanksgiving decor on the table and added silver balls and “fairy lights” to this apothecary jar for a centerpiece – I really loved the mason jar luminaries from Thanksgiving and wanted to extend their use through the Christmas season.

Well, that’s it for the holiday home tour this year! I’m looking forward to seeing how the spaces transform over the years and the decorating along with them!