Holiday Home 2017

It’s a little late to share a holiday home tour, I know, but better late than never right? My focus the past few Christmases has been on making our home cozy, inviting and festive to create lasting memories for my little ones. Which meant this year, I was going to take the pressure off getting the house camera ready for a holiday home tour post. I signed up for one, but ended up backing out when I knew it was just going to add stress.

So here we are…the first week of January and you get to see how I did up our home for the holidays! Haha. I can’t even say it will be worth the wait…since I kept it fairly simple and traditional. Nothing crazy or to die for here, but I do hope you enjoy it.

I sincerely would love to be a person who has all of their inspiration hit them in November and get every last detail put into place by December 1st, but that’s just not me. Perhaps the procrastinator in me, but I usually take my time and the real inspiration comes much closer to the actual holiday. I am still tweaking things on Christmas Eve!

If you are new here, let me preface this by saying we just moved into this home over the summer, and I am literally still emptying boxes every weekend, so our home is not all the way there yet. We have a ways to go to make it home (we haven’t even painted one room yet!), but here is how we made it work for Christmas.

Let’s start with the dining room, which is just off the entryway. It’s one of the first impressions visitors have when they come inside. I love that in this home I am able to keep the dining room fairly decluttered and clean unlike our last home where it was basically the drop off station for everything.

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When I finally found the boxes of Christmas decor, I was able to hang our faux greenery garland around the entry to the dining room. To make it not so fake, I took several real pine branches from a tree in the yard to fill it in.
My favorite part of our holiday home, was the Dept. 56 Christmas village that we set up on our vintage buffet. I shared the full “tour” and story of how I acquired it a couple of weeks back. Click here if you missed that! It’s down and packed away now, and I have to say I really miss it. I know it will be a tradition we will enjoy year after year.
I made sure we had some “mistletoe” hanging up this year, since the kids learned about it and thought it was the funniest thing. It was really just a faux greenery pick that I found at a thrift store, but it got the job done.
Why yes, that is carpet on the stairs and the original 1970’s stair railing. 
Both are staying for now. The carpet has been professionally cleaned and is great for little Violet who is just about to turn 14 months old. She can crawl up the stairs now and is on the verge of learning to walk. My main goal is just to keep the little ones safe, so the carpet stays for now.

Our vintage Santa mugs always reappear every holiday season and stay out all winter! We love having hot chocolate with whipped cream on top in them.

For my birthday, on December 15th, Josh gave me a set of galvanized metal and wood shelves from the Hearth and Hand line at Target by Magnolia. I really love them and know I will enjoy changing out the decor on them often. Here is how I set them up for now:

Our main living room is still a major work in progress as far as decorating goes. We haven’t changed anything in here and even have the old curtains from the previous owners hung up and the broken curtain rod hardware coming out of the wall. Changing that out is next on our list! I have the curtains and new hardware, we just need to take down the old stuff and patch the damage.

The rest of our Christmas village is on the cabinet as you enter the living room including Butter Tub Farm and Browning Cottage. Along with a maid-a-milking and the Thatchers.

I am still waiting to get the nerve to hang things on the wall in here, like the rattan mirror from Target. It’s just propped up for now in the background until I can pull the trigger and put a nail hole in the wall.
We had a new tree topper this year: a vintage mercury glass one (similar to this one) that I found at a thrift store for $3.50! The color was perfect and if I didn’t have kids who cared about decorating the tree so much, I was imagining how awesome it would look filled with wooden bead garlands (like this!) and loads of macrame ornaments (like these!). 
But, I have kids who definitely DO care about helping decorate the tree and have a lot of their own ideas and favorite ornaments, so we filled it up with those. As well as several that belonged to my grandparents and those that have special meaning for our family.

Everyone has Yoda on their tree right? And sock monkeys…can’t forget the sock monkeys.

This year, I made another advent calendar for Hazel and Owen to open every day through Christmas. It was a little more elaborate this year with 25 cardboard jewelry boxes that each had a small shadow box scene inside. I made them from old Christmas cards and small ornaments. Each day also had a small candy or gift inside for them, so it was very exciting to wake up every morning!

Sadly, I only got one grainy cellphone pic of it before the days were opened. The kids got stamps for one of the days and then decided to stamp several snowmen and “I ❤ Santa” on every remaining day…ugh.

All in all it was another memorable and fun holiday season, that we are all a bit sad to have to say goodbye to. 
I hope you enjoyed the tour even though I am sure most people are all Christmased out by now! Thanks for obliging me if you stuck around till the end 🙂 
Stay warm wherever you are! It’s a snow day for us here with the crazy low wind chills so we will be staying cozy indoors for quite awhile.
Till next time…
~Alice W.
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3 Comments

  • maypop

    I think your home looked lovely for the holidays. It was fun to see all the different ornaments on your tree. Most of the trees that were part of the holiday home tours I viewed online were beautifully decorated, but lacked personality and warmth. Your family's tree had both. Happy New Year to you and your family!

  • Little Farmstead

    Hi Alice! I enjoyed seeing more of your home and your Christmas decor! LOVED your advent so much. I'm sure your children will always remember it and the love they felt at home. Happy new year!