Christmas Decor Home Tour 2018

Welcome to our annual Christmas Decor Home Tour…

I feel like there is no possible way that Christmas is here again. I mean, really.

When I took out the Christmas decorations this year, there were still boxes sitting outside the attic from LAST year that didn’t get put away yet. This is madness guys. Life is happening at warp speed.

A big THANK YOU to the wonderful family who owns and operated Lynch Creek Farm in Washington State. They host this annual home tour, along with the talented women (Christy and Amy) at 11 Magnolia Lane and Jenny of Evolution of Style.

Each year, they put together an amazing group of homes for you to tour, plus mine 😳.

If you’ve never been here before, or are coming in from Sheila’s home at Maison de Cinq, welcome!

I’m Heather. My husband Dave and I are thrilled to have you here for our holiday home tour. If you want to know more about us and see embarrassing photos of us in middle school, you can see all the sordid details of our story here.

As you make your way through the insane number of photos in this post, keep in mind that if you don’t like what you see, that’s A-OK, just high-tail it to the bottom.

That’s where you’ll find the list of all the other gorgeous home tours. I know you’ll be amazed at the Christmas decorating skills in this group!

So let’s do this thing, what d’ya say? And I’ll tell you, I posted a tour of our kiddos’ rooms with their halls decked for the holidays already as part of the Kids Christmas Tour.

So check out those rooms if you’d like. Plus, 11 amazing kids space experts are sharing their kiddos’ spaces at Christmas time, too!

Here we are! Home sweet home.

Covered with a pretty blanket of snow.

Oh, those guys? They’re the welcoming committee. These snowy wonderland pics are actually from a couple years back.

But we did have snow already this season, which isn’t super common here in the Washington D.C. area before at least mid-December.

Come on in through the front door. It will be fun. I never get to open that door. Usually, people come running into this house through the back door.

And most of the time, they’re throwing shoes and 8000 other personal belongings all over the floor in a breadcrumb type Hansel & Gretel path as they make their way to the refrigerator.

Since you’re in my house now, I consider you a friend. And as such, I shall now proceed to fill you in on family secrets.

Ready for secret #1? See that tree in our foyer? Couple things about that sucker that I kind of love:

1. That tree is one of the most inexpensive artificial trees that we could have bought. So…it’s NOT very attractive out of the box. Don’t believe me? Check out these pics.

2. That garland? In the first picture, we used winter scarves! And in the second picture, which was last Christmas, we used neckties!

3. Know how I get that sucker looking it’s best? It’s my patent-not-really-pending “branch augmentation procedure“. You can read alllll about it by clicking that link.

Let’s head into the kids’ playroom. That’s where we set up our Christmas train and village each year. This year, I tried a rainbow tree in the center of the train layout.

Do you like it? I bought a bunch of grosgrain ribbon and cut small sections in order to make the rainbow-y garland effect. And that soft, snowy look that you can see if you look closely. That’s ANOTHER super stealth DIY that I use for our fake trees. All you need is one key item…from the Dollar Tree.

You can learn all about how we give our trees a snowy look here.

Above is a shot of the tree before I put the ornaments on. You can see a bit more of that snowy effect there. And a peek at the fireplace stuffed with books.

Don’t worry bibliophiles. No books were harmed in the completion of that DIY project. I’m a book lover, too.

Our Christmas village is one of my most prized possessions. It’s not fancy or expensive. I love it because each piece was hand painted by either my mom, myself, or my kids.

It’s a collection that started decades ago, and still grows each year as we add more painted ceramic houses and people to the mix.

I wrote about our Christmas village in this post. If you’re interested in starting one of your own, check that one out.

And there’s a “village update” we shared the following Christmas about all the happenings in our little sleepy train town.

Now we’ll venture on out of the playroom and into the family room.

My “Christmas concept” this year was a 1980’s preppy lodge look. I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But I wanted it to feel like it was over the top (like the 80’s were) with a traditional Christmas palette of red and green, and a WHOLE LOT of patterns mixed in.

The garland on the mantle is the 18′ “mixed garland” from Lynch Creek Farm. Isn’t it gorgeous?

I’ll be giving one away to one of you guys onInstagram soon, so stay tuned for that!

Just like the rest of the room, the mantle decor this year is kind of maximalist, too.

I threw everything I could think of up on that mantle. Is it too busy? Probably. But I kinda love it.

Couple more spots to show you. Most of the bedrooms are part of the kids’ room Christmas tour, but I did a tiny little bit of decorating in the kids’ bathroom, too.

A couple sprigs of pine in a vintage can, and a little tabletop tree with a strand of colorful Dollar Tree lights.

It doesn’t take much to make it feel like Christmas in a small space.

Last stop today is our bedroom suite.

Our sitting room got a new $35 flocked tree that I decorated with a bunch of the homemade ornaments that have come home with the kids from school over the years.

In our dressing room…

My shoe and accessory niche got outfitted with a new shibori ottoman, a bowlful of colorful ornaments and a tabletop tree with more of those fancy Dollar Tree lights!

Last but not least, I gave our new bathroom a little touch of Christmas, too.

I figured it deserved a little frosting after all the work that went into getting this space finished this year!

And with that, I take my leave and will send you on your merry way to the next stop on the holiday homes tour. That’s at Home By Heidi! Meanwhile, I have some wrapping and napping to do. Probably not in that order. Merry Christmas!