Our Christmas Home Tour – Part 1

Take our Christmas home tour, full of simple and beautiful decor ideas that you can incorporate into your own home!

The thing that surprised me most when I started blogging was how long it took to create each and every post. I mean, those bloggers on Pinterest made it look so easy. I just whip up a craft or decorate a room, snap a few quick pictures, and put it up on the internet, right?

But what they don’t tell you is that behind every pretty picture is usually a list of approximately 10,000 things that went wrong before everything went right enough to get that beauty shot. And that seems to be exactly what happens with my Christmas decor each and every year, including this one! 😉

C’mon in and take the tour, and I’ll tell you about it!

Our Christmas Home Tour

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

First, if you’re coming over from Sara’s gorgeous home at Sincerely, Sara D., welcome! I just love her style, don’t you?! Be sure to hang around at the end of the post to visit some other incredible bloggers who are sharing their holiday homes today too!

Now, everything started out pretty smoothly on the porch. I put up some garland around our door and stuck some (admittedly faux) trees in my planters. The pièce de résistance, of course, was the beautiful, fresh mixed holly wreath that my friends at Lynch Creek Farm were kind enough to send me. I break out into a big, cheesy grin every time I pull into our house and see it.

doormat | garland and mini trees- Pier 1, no longer sold

Things even went fairly well with the shelves in our living room. I had planned on doing a traditional color scheme in that space, but at the last minute I decided to slide in some of my favorite aqua decor pieces because, well, I just can’t seem to resist aqua.

But still, I’ve decorated those shelves enough times that they come together pretty quickly and easily, and the red and aqua made a happy little combo.

Next I got to the sunroom, and more specifically, to our Christmas tree… and that’s where things started to get a little dicey. See, I had planned on using the same red and aqua color scheme that I had used in the living room since the sunroom was right next door. So I put up the tree, added a little ribbon, put on some red and aqua bulbs…

And I hated it. Sigh.

How could a combination I loved so much just a few feet away look so not cute on my tree?! I didn’t understand it. But I also wasn’t going to sit there and look at a tree I didn’t love for a month. So I took everything off and started again.

So much for quick and easy, right? 

But the good news is that this story has a happy ending. After I decorated the tree for the second time, I LOVED it. I guess sometimes it just takes a little extra maneuvering to get it right!

sunroom furniture | rug | lamp

I ended up taking out the red altogether in this space, just leaving the gray, white, silver, and some little touches of aqua/Tiffany blue.

I have always done the “wrap the ribbon around the tree” strategy in previous years, but this year I decided to try the “billowy waterfall” ribbon technique, and though it took me a bit to get it right, I think it ended up looking kind of fancy!

(My talented friend Kelley Nan has a great tutorial that talks about how to do ribbon this way here, and if you’re more of a “wrap the ribbon around the tree” person, my other talented friend Michael from Inspired by Charm has an awesome tutorial for that here.)

Another issue that I had when I was decorating the tree is that no matter how hard I tried, none of the stars I attempted to use wanted to sit straight at the top of the tree. I swear they were conspiring against me. 😉 So I showed them who’s boss and ended up just using two silvery stems I picked up in the floral department at Michael’s and stuck them in at the top of the tree.

I have to be honest, I was kind of shocked when, in my frustration at the stubborn stars, I stuck the stems up there and they actually ended up working out!

I think the lesson I learned here was that sometimes it’s actually good when things don’t work out the way you plan because then you’re forced to get creative and try something new, and that can work out even better than you had ever imagined. (And this definitely happens with more than just Christmas trees! 😉 )

Whenever our tree goes up, this chair gets displaced back into the corner, but it kind of ends up making a perfect little reading nook, so I don’t mind!

(Don’t be fooled. That’s definitely hot chocolate in that mug! 🙂 )

Our stockings also take up a little corner in this room. We don’t have a mantel, so we had to get a little bit creative. We made this cute stocking post a few years ago, and it ended up being the perfect solution!

And finally, I couldn’t end this little tour without sharing a few night shots. I have found myself wandering down here to sit in this room just to enjoy the twinkly lights… they do kind of end up feeling a little bit magical!

You can also visit part 2 of this year’s Christmas home tour as well as our previous Christmas home tours in these posts:

2018 Christmas Home Tour- Part 2

2017 Christmas Home Tour

2017 Christmas Nights Tour

2016 Christmas Home Tour

2016 Christmas Nights Tour

2015 Christmas Home Tour (Townhouse)- Part 1

2015 Christmas Home Tour (Townhouse)- Part 2

2015 Christmas Nights Tour (Townhouse)

Before you run off, don’t forget to visit my amazingly talented friends who are also sharing their beautiful homes decked out for the holidays this week in the holiday home tour series hosted by Christy and Amy from 11 Magnolia Lane and Jenny from Evolution of Style!

Annie from Most Lovely Things is up next, and you can catch the rest of the tours via the links below!

Thanks for following along! Have a great week!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.