A quick holiday home tour and Christmas decorating philosophy

A quick holiday home tour and Christmas decorating philosophy

• 12.22.2021

It is a magical and stressful time of year! I really enjoy having our home decked out for the holidays, but I've learned in recent years that it takes a LOT of time and I've put too much pressure on myself in the past. Today I'm sharing our little holiday home tour, and how I'm staying sane while creating all this holiday magic. :P

Holiday home tour

I focused on our living room this year. In the past (see other years here) I've done the dining room, kitchen, and downstairs bathroom too! And the arched openings between the living room and dining room and entry. Cedar garland looks great on those, but you have to soak it first, treat it with the wilt proof spray, etc... I thought about buying some this year but gave myself a pass. (Some other year when I don't have two very tiny children to watch by myself all the time.)

I focused on the essentials: 

1. Christmas tree (this is a live Noble fir) with LOTS of lights, colorful mixed with gold ornaments, ribbon, and garland for a variety of textures.
2. Mantel: this year I just used a lot of faux garland with a strand of lights mixed in, some bows, our stockings, and a nutcracker.

I also always love to bring out that plaid throw, and honestly those green velvet pillows don't really go but they feel special. This chair creates a really cozy, special Christmas-ey moment right now!

Then after starting our decor, I recovered the lampshades on our sconces. (Here's what I did and here's a closer look at the trickier parts.) The red and white fabric isn't Christmas exactly, but it sure works with all the red and white.

I added some extra faux garland to the mantel before taking these, too.

The red floral couch is sure enjoying the Christmas decor, too!

This year I also added just a little decor to our office. The fireplace wall is my video meeting background and I wanted to make it a little fun and festive. I hung this wreath from a hook on the picture rail using some ribbon. I should have used a brighter/lighter ribbon and maybe added some more color to the wreath, since it kind of gets lost in the shadows, but I enjoy it adding to that simple gallery wall.

I had boxes of garland and ribbon sitting around in the dining room for days, hoping to get to them and add more... it just made me feel anxious. In the end I added a couple more bows and put the rest back in the basement.

Would it be fun to have multiple trees, garland over every doorway, wreaths in every window... yes! But there are boxes and Otto's coloring stuff and un-dealt with mail in the dining room, random clutter on the kitchen counters, 1,000 other things I'd like to do with my spare time, and two small children who are moths to the flame of anything new we bring into the house. Purchasing, organizing/storing, and installing loads of beautiful holiday decor throughout the house would be really, really difficult right now. Yes, magical--Otto LOVES Christmas and this is such a fun time to celebrate with them--but it's already pretty exciting with the tree, Santa hats, occasional holiday treats, Christmas lights we drove by the other night... we don't need bunches of greenery and bows in every room to feel festive. 

Now, as I write this I did stay up too late finally stuffing our holiday cards and writing this post... but for the most part this Christmas season, I'm trying to choose the low-stress option and remember it will all be wonderful and special even if we don't go all out with the extras.