2019 Christmas House Tour

Season’s Greetings! 

It’s that time of year when the world falls in love. Every song you hear seems to say Merry Christmas, may your New Year dreams come true… 

* Sing Along *

Are you feeling the magical Spirit of Christmas?

We sure are around these parts. There is just something so special about a home that’s all dressed up for the holidays, isn’t there? 

We’ve had a lot of fun decorating our home this year, as we do every year.  

Our Christmas decorating looks different every year, which I think is fun. I know that some of you like to keep everything the same every year and I think that that’s great. Traditions are wonderful. 

But for me, I like Christmas to have a different look every year so I place my tree in different spots and I mix up what ornaments, decorations, and color schemes I use.

Here in our Entryway I hung up a large picture of a snowy tree.  I took this picture one winter and then had Costco print it out for me.  

And then in our living room  I stuck to that cozy-snowy-winter vibe.

Do you give your decorating themes? or names? I know that my mother-in-law always does and I think it’s fun.

Something really fun about this year is that we got a new Christmas Tree!

We had the same tree for years and it was really starting to show. It had so many layers of broken, half lit strands of lights on it and the branches were shedding their needles all over the place. And so I ordered us this new beautiful flocked Christmas tree from [HERE] and we absolutely love it! 

I’ve always wanted a flocked tree and this one is perfect!

I used a sleeping bag as a tree skirt and actually just blogged 8 reasons why I think sleeping bags make great Christmas tree skirts. See that post[HERE]

Now when I go about decorating our home for the holidays each year, I usually have a small idea of what direction I want to go in, and because we had just gotten back from a trip to the Oregon Coast I was dreaming up a Coastal-Christmas vibe.

But then Facebook pulled up this memory of mine from about 8 years ago and that changed everything. Ha!

This picture of my boys building a snowman when they were little just melts my heart.

So I immediately printed this picture out and framed it and pretty much decorated the rest of our home around it.

Something that I like to do is use fabric as a picture mat. So I went to my fabric scraps and found this red plaid that I thought would be perfect for Christmas. This fabric was actually from an old shirt of my husbands. I once even sewed a pillow out of it, but sadly, I lost that pillow when our Great Dane was just a puppy and going through her “pillow eating stage”. I lost a lot of good pillows back then, but luckily she grew out of that horrible stage.

lol.

Anyway, I still had some more scraps left over from that shirt and was able to use it for my picture mat.

I then cut off the cuffs from the sleeve of the shirt and they fit Perfectly around some candles on our mantel. 

I actually couldn’t believe how perfect the cuffs wrapped around the candles. So this is a really easy and quick craft if you want to make some too. Just cut off the cuffs from an XL dress shirt, wrap it around a candle and button it up.

I also made those sweater candles you see above a while ago. For those I just cut the sleeves off of an old sweater, but they did required a little bit of sewing to get them to fit over the glass candles that I used. 

I kept my mantel pretty simple. Pretty much everything is the same as I had it before although I did mix in some Christmas picks into my rattan mirror. I did this last year too and think that it’s an easy way to add a festive touch to a mirror.

And then with the remainder of the fabric scraps from my husband’s old shirt, I cut them into strips and tucked them into our Christmas tree like ribbon. So ya, the red plaid theme of my decorating all came about because I wanted to print and frame a Facebook Memory 🙂

Even though I lost the matching plaid shirt pillow from back in those puppy days, I still had a couple of other red plaid pillows that still go great in the room. Also, just want to let you know that if you search “Pillows” here on the blog, you can learn how I sew pillows from a men’s shirt and also my go-to easy pocket pillow tutorials.

Next to our couch I placed some  Christmas sheet music on an antique music stand and brought in my boy’s guitar in hopes that they will pick it up and play me a song. They are both great little guitar players, but I literally have to beg them to play.

The shelf above the couch is pretty new, I made it and blogged about it [HERE] As soon as I hung the shelf above our couch I started thinking about how I might want to decorate it for Christmas.

I could already picture having lots of little bottle-brush-like trees lined up on it.

I bought the little trees from the dollar tree one year and they have made it into my Christmas decorating every since. They always create a cute little display.

On the coffee table I added some cute little log deer candle holders that I picked up at a yard sale over the summer.  I thought they were super adorable and I love that they are handmade and made from nature.

And here is one last look at the full living room before we move on.

Next up is the dining room.

I continued the red plaid theme in our dining room by throwing a light blanket over one of the chairs.  I like adding extra pillows and blankets to the dining room because it adds a cozy touch but also sometimes you just want to snuggle up as you sip on coffee or eat your bowl of oatmeal or what not. Plus this light blanket can double as a tablecloth if I want to dress the table up a bit more.

I also added a few other pops of red around the room and continued with my Cozy-Snowy-Winter vibe by hanging snowflakes from the chandelier.

This wall here kinda separates the living from 

the dining room and I always like to play around with decor on these shelves….. However this year, I let the boys decorate it.  Their favorite part about Christmas decorating is getting out the Nutcrackers!  We have quite the collection of nutcrackers, don’t you think?

My husband collected the nutcrackers with his mom every year at Christmas and so this is half of their collection, she has the second half. Plus we have continued with the tradition and so our collection keeps growing every year. 

In our dining room we have two corner hutches that are also super fun for me to play around in. I displayed my little village houses in one of the hutches.

While I displayed a collection of  wooden moose in the other corner hutch. 

Because these displays are behind glass you don’t notice them right away, but it’s still fun to decorate them.

This little frosted tree that I found at a yard sale one year has become a favorite thing of mine. I plopped it into a straw bag, added some pompom ornaments to it and I think that it looks great.

On the mirror I have a Christmas tree garland that I picked up at Target a few years ago and then a simple strand of red pompom trim that adds just the right amount of red to the space.

Again, this is another easy way to dress up a mirror for the holidays.

Now onto the kitchen!

I never really do much Christmas decorating in our kitchen. But a few months ago I did add a strand of Emerson string bulb lights to around the window just for added lighting. So now the lights look like Christmas lights. But I love these lights so much and how they add such a beautiful glow to our kitchen that I don’t ever plan on taking them down.

And I added a little Christmas greenery and a fun holiday dish towel to the area around our stove and so it does feel a bit festive in here 🙂

And Lastly, I thought I’d share our bedroom. It’s a little hard to see in my pictures but I have a garland with lights behind the bed. I just love what a garland with lights can add to a  space.

Christmas lights in a bedroom are always magical. I also love to add even more layers of coziness to our bed during the winter months. 

So there you have it! This is what our home looks like for Christmas this year. Now we are all ready to cozy on in while we wait for the big day to arrive.

**I’m also dreaming of some snow**

Nothing beats a White Christmas!

So what do you think?

Do you have any Questions, Suggestions, and or Comments?

Leave them below or come chat with me on Facebook, Instagram andPinterest.

Happy Holidays,

     Emily

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