A Christmas House Tour (and a heavy pour)

Welcome to our Christmas house tour…

Friends, here’s the honest truth. I’m a HORRIBLE host. Really, the worst.

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So many of my amazing blogging friends make this whole Christmas house tour scene look straight up easy. Like they went to bed one night and then just rolled out of bed the next morning straight into a glorious winter wonderland.

Not this blogger, baby. These house tours give me some serious grays. But regardless…

Come on in out of the cold. And THANKS for coming by. Really, I am thrilled to have been again asked to be a part of this wonderful holiday homes tour sponsored by Lynch Creek Farms, and hosted by Jenny of Evolution of Style, and Christy and Amy of 11 Magnolia Lane. They are all extremely talented, and beautiful people, inside and out.

There are 12 whole days of home tours, and the full schedule is at the bottom of this post. Today the tours are coming to you from myself, Amy of 11 Magnolia Lane, and Sheila of Maison de Cinq.

See, I told you I was a bad host. I invite you into our home, and don’t even offer you a drink. Let’s fix that RIGHT NOW. Don’t be shy. I’m tipping something strong up for a heavy pour to accompany this little house tour.

Maybe if you drink enough, you’ll start seeing DOUBLE the holiday decorations. Which is good, because the truth is,

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I haven’t done too much. I showed a bit of our home in the first Christmas house tour we did a couple days back, including our dining room, seen above

and our family room. You can see that our real tree in the family room is naked save some lights.

We had a naked tree last year in here, and I’d love to tell you it was because I’m all artsy, and was having a creative moment.

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That would be a lie, though. Honestly, hauling out all those boxes of ornaments just seemed a bit daunting. So we didn’t.

And I’m thinking that this year, we’ll do the same and call it a tradition ?. But don’t worry. We have a couple other trees here that get the full Christmas tree treatment.

Like the one you saw at the beginning of the tour in the foyer. And we have another in the kids playroom around the train, as well. I just didn’t have my act together enough to decorate it in time for this tour.

Did you happen to see what we used for “garland” on our foyer tree this year? NECKTIES. And I’m loving it!! Last year, it was winter scarves. And that looked amazing, I thought.

Above and below you’ll see our guest bedroom, so if you’d like to stick around for a while (or if I was a wee bit too heavy on your pour at the bar), you can bunk here tonight with Bessie. She’s our cow portrait.

In keeping with our theme of “understated” holiday decor, I did a couple super simple, inexpensive things in here. Grabbed some clippings from one of our holly trees, and threw them in an old galvanized pail atop my $5 red thrift store chair.

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Then put some more pine clippings into some vintage tin cans that I’ve managed to acquire over the years. I have a bit of a love affair with vintage tins now. It started with some old coffee cans I snagged from my grandpa’s garage that we turned into a pretty hillbilly-chic outdoor chandelier…or “can”-delier as we now affectionately call it.

Below is our daughter’s room. It’s a really happy space all year, but I love it even more at Christmas.

Each of my kids has a little 2′ Christmas tree for their room. In this room, it’s a flocked/all-white tree. This year, we made a couple of Christmas trees to pair with it, including one adorned with crepe paper, another with ribbon, and a third with pom poms!

None of them were hard to do, and my daughter and I had a lot of fun doing these Christmas crafts together. There are tutorials for each of them, just follow those links above.

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Here’s my youngest’s room. We added some Christmas lights to his “fire” pit…

Makes his little camping area look especially sweet at night.

Those gifts above are wrapped with winter scarves in lieu of wrapping paper. I am totally in love with them. There’s a tutorial HERE. It is unbelievably easy to do, and it’s a super-green way to do some of your Christmas wrapping this year if you’re game to try something new!

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And our oldest son’s room below. Our resident train aficionado. I had to clean up enough train track from his floor so that we could get into his door. Usually, you’re playing hopscotch around his room trying to avoid stepping on one of the many train layouts he insists upon having in here.

But you’re only young once, right? I try to let him have his fun…

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Unless Mommy is in full-on psycho mode trying to prep for a Christmas house tour. THEN, those trains better be off the floor. I get a little crazed for these things, which is sad, but true.

I mean, who cares, right? Christmas isn’t about perfection. It’s supposed to be about the opposite of that. A baby born into an entirely imperfect situation, and the perfection that he was despite it. In my head, I know that I need to just RELAX. But it just feels so normal to get all amped up about nothing, you know?

And when I feel that “amped” OMG get-out-of-mommy’s-way-people feeling, this space is where I retreat to. To calm myself. To try and bring the real important things back into focus. Like family, and fun, and the reason for the season.

And cookies. Cookies always help.

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So here ends the tour, because as you can see…I have some cookies to eat. My apologies again for not being the best hostess. I am trying though. And the good news is, even if you didn’t get the best hostessing here, there are SO MANY MORE AMAZING home tours to see!!

But before you go, just so you get a glimpse of the MANIA that it prepping for one of these home tours here….this is a shot of what’s BEHIND the camera while I’m shooting…

That’s #reallife #nomakeup #unscripted pure house tour mess, folks. This is what my husband gets to come home to after I’ve been taking photographs. And just in case you need more proof, here’s a VIDEO TOUR I did of our home for Facebook Live on a typical day here around the holidays. If you need to feel better about the mess you’re living in, just watch this. It’s my Christmas present to you ❤️ –>>

See…not all bloggers have their acts together. It may look like that on Pinterest. But Pinterest lies. Pinky swear. And happy, happy holidays!

The 12 Days of Holiday Homes Tour: