Christmas Home Tour 2016

Simply Seasonal Holiday Edition

I am so excited to be a part of the Simply Seasonal Holiday blog hosted by Organize Nashville. There are some amazing ladies participating in this hop so be sure to check our their links at the end of the post and visit their amazing Holiday homes. I don’t know about you but I am a sucker for home tours but even more so for Christmas Home Tours.  Everyone has worked so hard to bring you their homes for the holidays and I can’t wait to get started showing you mine.

Our house is a mini construction zone at the moment. We are working on several projects around the house, if you look really hard you will see a few of them. I can’t wait to have you join me on the Tour of my home. If you missed my Fall tour, you can check it out here, quite a few things have changed since then. You can also see the home tour of our last house from 2 years ago here.

If you are joining us from Country Design Style, or anything other blog in the Simply Seasonal Holiday blog hop, then welcome.

Welcome to our home. What I love most about the Holidays is the time I get to spend with friends and family. I am excited to get to spend a little bit of time with y’all now, so grab some hot cocoa or cider, turn on some Christmas music and join me on the Tour. Our house smells of Pine Trees and is full of holiday cheer just waiting to welcome you. I’ll also be sharing with you 5 tips to help make your holiday decorating easier. ENJOY!!!

The front entry is one of the work in progress places. I took everything down from the wall because I’m going to be installing board and batten soon. I’m so excited for that project. I got my Christmas tree farm sign this year and I was so excited to put it up. I can’t wait to collect more trees to fill the space for future Christmases. I always have to remind myself that I don’t have to have everything exactly the way I want it right away and that its fun to add new things each year.

Tip #1: My biggest tip when decorating for the holidays (or anything for that matter) is to not stress. Do what you love. Make it yours. Do what makes you happy and what you have time for. Also don’t go out and stress about spending money to make it look perfect, I wasted too much money over the years buying things I didn’t LOVE just so I could fill a space… no more!! I only buy what I LOVE and what I want in my house for years and years to come.

After you walk in the front door our Formal dining room is immediately to your left. I painted my hutch years ago ( you can see that post here). And I LOVE decorating it for all the holidays. If you look at the left cabinet door you can see my lack of perfection. 😉 That handle broke off in our move exactly a year ago and I have yet to put it back on. I never remember to do it until I don’t have time or when I take pictures.

We got a new light in this room and I had the holidays in mind when I bought it. I really wanted something that I could decorate. It’s the perfect farmhouse light and I LOVE it. It makes me so happy every time I walk into the room and see it.We are using the chairs from the table in the keeping room currently and hunting for some more chairs, we don’t use the table so I figured I would put my Christmas village on the table. When my Grandma died I got her village. All the tiny people and houses were hers and then my kids add pieces on for me every Christmas. That’s one of my favorite gifts to open. I love to see what they have picked out for me.
I have been wanting a flocked tree for years so when I saw this one at a MAJOR discount at Wal-Mart because it was the floor model and leaned a bit i just had scoop it up. They weren’t getting any more in so I asked them if they would sell it to me and I carried that huge thing out of the store and to my van, without a box. The looks I got in the parking lot were priceless. I also got the red beads (which I have been wanting for years) for FREE!!! I was buying something else and had a coupon for $30 off if I spent $40 and since I was planning on getting the other things I needed I just added these beads onto my order and didn’t pay a thing for them.

Tip #2: Don’t spend a fortune on the holidays. The holidays can be overwhelming and put people in a lot of debt, and it doesn’t have too. My Christmas decor wasn’t nearly what it is today when I got married, or even 3 or 4 years ago. I add a bit on each year. Shop the sales, go to the thrift stores, use coupons and wait until the after holiday sales. I can’t even begin to tell you how much money I have saved over the years just because I waited to get the item I wanted until it was on sale. I have missed out on the items some years but have always gotten them the next year.

The kids absolutely love the mistletoe hanging in the walkway from the entryway into the living room. They run up underneath it and say “Mom look”. So I of course have to run and give them big kisses.

I love that we have a semi open floor plan. You can see the kitchen and keeping room from the living room. It makes the rooms feel separate but still together. It’s exactly what I always wanted in a house.We have huge plans for this room, which include painting that chair and getting two larger couches. We will be moving the IKEA couch into the keeping room as soon as we purchase the two new couches. Since we are going to Disney World for Christmas and have 5 kids to shop for, we decided that couch buying would have to wait until January. I can’t wait to see what this room will look like with two big couches in it. The IKEA couch is dwarfed by the largeness of the room.I make my own pillow case covers for each holiday as a way to save some more money and get the colors I want.

Tip #3: If you can make it (and you like making things) then DO. I LOVE crafting for Christmas and make a lot of my own decorations. It’s so much fun to create something new each year for my space. There are so many amazing bloggers out there with super cute, fun and easy crafts for the holidays. A quick trip to pinterest and you will find lots of projects to decorate your home with.

The kids have their own big tree this year and I have mine. I LOVE it. They got to do their thing and I got to do mine. They have come and added their ornaments to my tree over the last few days. I keep finding ornaments in places I KNOW I didn’t put them and I just smile because I KNOW I will miss it when they are grown up.

We are in the process of changing out everyone’s stocking to make them all the same flannel/knit look as ours and Fynnocks. I love that the weather is finally cool enough that I can light a fire in the fireplace. It was so peaceful to walk around taking pictures and being warmed by the fire. I literally have dreamed of this day for the last nearly 12 years I have been married. Ive always wanted a fireplace at Christmas. It just tickles me to death that I have one now.
I got us all letters for our stockings a few years ago and they make me so happy. Now if only I could get the stocking to stay put and not twist on me. The kids are all getting stockings like Fynnocks on the far right. I am going to order them in the after holiday sales with some coupons. I got his for 50% off and didn’t realize how much bigger his was then the rest of the kids. I am obsessed with the size. I’m sure Santa always wishes he had more room in their stockings so hopefully he will be pleased that all the kids will be getting an upgrade. This room makes me so happy. I obviously LOVE red for Christmas. Red and white are definitely my favorite holiday colors. They just make me so happy. I swear there is something about the color red that just warms my heart. Our living room leads out to the sun room which leads to the keeping room. It really is such a peaceful place to be.
I painted our bookshelves a few months ago with BB Frosch and my Home Rights sprayer. They were black and I painted them white. I need to do a post all about that after the holidays.

Decorating bookshelves is my FAVORITE thing to do, especially for the holidays. I kept a lot of my existing decor and just added some Christmas into the mix.

Tip #4: Work with what you have. Incorporate pieces from your existing decor into your holiday decor. Use those cute white plates, bowls, pillows, vintage items to add to your Christmas decor. I saw someone once take all the books that had white, red and green spines and put them together on their shelves, It was so cute and cost them nothing.

We just ripped out a wall and will be adding in a stair rail and bannister. I am so excited. I hated how closed off the room felt with that wall there. I like it SOOO much better now, and its not even done.
Our sun room has to be one of my favorite places to hang out now. I love that we moved the chairs in here. It makes the space so much more cozy. This piece was also a BB Frosch rescue. It was a gross black with the paint pealing and chippy. It had layers of color on it, but I saw the potential and gave it some love. I was on the hunt for a Coca Cola crate just so I could decorate it for Christmas. I am in LOVE with it and can’t wait to decorate it for other holidays.

The kids tree is in the keeping room (where we will be moving the IKEA couch too). This tree was our first tree we got when we got married. Its patchy and the white lights went out years ago…. but I can’t bare to part with it. The kids have made it look beautiful again with their ornaments, candy canes and creations. Our advent Calendar is one of my most favorite things. I made them year ago and can’t wait to get it out every year. I need to find a better place for it, but for this year it works just fine right there above the computer.
We have a set of built-in bookshelves in the Keeping room. This space was one of the spaces that sold me on the house. I LOVED this room. The kids have their nativities, nutcrackers and other holiday crafts in here.

The couch will go on the other end of the table where the big cabinet is now. I can’t even tell you how happy it made me that we have a double sided fireplace.

Ya’ll only get a small sneak peek in the kitchen because this room is the biggest construction place. We will be ripping out the very gross, old dated, TILE (and green tile in some places) this coming spring. I love the size and layout but I HATE the counters and the hardware on the lower cabinets. Dont worry, I’ll show you the whole thing when we start working on it. (you can also see the before from when we first bought the house here).
*SIGH* I love our house. And I love all the things we have in the works for the house. I hope you enjoyed our home tour. One day I will have the kids rooms and our room all decked out for the holidays and I can show you that too… but for now I haven’t even started on those areas. Which brings us to our final holiday prep tip.

Tip #5: Relax!! (this goes hand in hand with tip #1) its okay to take baby steps with your holiday decor. And it’s more important to enjoy the season then to stress about your decor. It’s okay to not have it all now, or even do it all now. We are all at different “seasons” in our life and at difference places. Do what makes you happy, not what every one else is doing. Our family traditions mean more to me then any decor item so I try to focus more on that.

And remember to enjoy the real reason for the season. A sweet little baby boy born to a young mother and father all those years ago, who came to save us all. That’s the best part of this whole thing after all.

Be sure to hop on over to check out Caroline’s home at Organize Nashville to hear how she readies her home for the holidays. Caroline is the gracious host of the tour and set up all of this. Make sure to leave her some love while you are there.

I’ve added a link to everyone else participating {and the day they post} so you can be sure to check out all the amazing blogs in this series.

Monday, December 5

Organize Nashville

Creatively Homespun

At Home with Zan

Uncookie Cutter

Tuesday, December 6

Timeless Creations

Craftivity Designs

Green with Decor

My Life from Home

Two Purple Couches

Old House to New Home

Wednesday, December 7

Our Crafty Mom

A Purdy Little House

Roots North & South

Pender & Peony

Organize & Decorate Everything

Thursday, December 8

Flourish & Knot

Rocky Mountain Bliss

Pocketful of Posies

Recreated Designs

Knock it Off Kim

The Interior Maven

Little Bits of Home

Friday, December 9

Love My Simple Home

Brooklyn Berry Designs

Simple Nature Decor

2 Bees in a Pod

Country Design Style

Finding Your Joy in The Journey