I’m sharing a Holiday Home Tour and linking up with Victoria and Sarah as a part of their Christmas link party!
Admittedly, I haven’t shared much about our home in the last year. It’s not that I don’t love it or that it’s not beautiful, I just had this idea in my head that it had to be finished — or even started! — before it was ready for the internet. I’ve learned a lot in the last year, but the thing highest on my list is that I love my unfinished home and I want you to come over and enjoy a cup of coffee and sit in the floor (because we still lack furniture) and chat about all the things. But, for now, let me take you on a tour of the common spaces, all gussied up for the holidays!
I got a ridiculous number of questions and comments about this wreath, when I posted it on Instagram over the weekend. The ice skates were purchased by a friend (a gift for her daughter), but they were the wrong size and got passed along to us. Unfortunately, neither of my girls could wear them in the right season, so they were left untouched in our storage building. I found them when we moved last year and added them to my Christmas stash, knowing they would be perfect somewhere. I tied them to a faux wreath on our front door, using inexpensive striped ribbon, and I could not be happier! They don’t even move or bang around too much when we open the door. Speaking of the door, I have plans to paint it a deep green (almost black) very soon. Because green and brass are a match made in heaven, right?
I recently took the wooden window dividers out of our first floor windows so that I could wash them all. I couldn’t believe how much brighter and more open everything felt, so we’ve ditched them permanently. I hung more of the same faux wreaths on each of the four front windows and accented them with vintage gold bells.
Our first floor is pretty dark because of the logs and low ceiling, so I do everything I can to brighten it up. We have plans to paint the ceilings and trim white, after the first of the year, and to lighten the stain on the floors. Add in some fun upholstery and bright colored rugs and I think we’ll be in business! These photos probably seem a little strange because we don’t currently have living room furniture. We gave away our couch and chair before the move and my parents sold the furniture that was in this room soon after we moved in. We’re making do with a hodge podge of chairs until we buy permanent furniture, but we wanted to wait until after we started the renovation to make a decision. We’re still debating how to orient this room and that will greatly affect whether we get a sectional or a pair of sofas!
It’s a long story, but we ended up with two trees this year. Sophie had a meltdown about the real tree not being in the living room, so I borrowed a fake tree from my parents. I’m on the hunt for a flocked, pencil tree for this space, so I’m hoping it will look a little different next year. No, we don’t have stair railings and, yes, everyone asks about it. In thirty years, no one has ever taken a tumble and after a year of living here with the girls, we rarely even think about it. We are adding a railing upstairs, but I plan to leave this area open and add a cute little sitting area and gallery wall where the television is currently. Also? A striped stair runner because that oriental number has seen better days!
It’s kind of weird having so many tables in our main floor right now, but we used this one when we hosted Thanksgiving and I loved it so much that we kept it inside for the holidays. The kids can eat here or work on art projects and I’m currently trying to figure out how not to return it to my parents.
I grabbed this mint green basket out of the camper to corral all of our Christmas picture books and the sparkly cone trees are some of my favorite Christmas decorations.
That wooden arm chair is vintage — I bought it for a song at a garage sale a few summers ago and I’ve since seen them for ten times what I paid. I debate whether or not to reupholster to it, because I kind of dig the granny stripes. The needlepoint pillow is also vintage — my grandmother brought it to me on Thanksgiving and as kitschy as it, I love it.
I bought all of this cute, coordinating wrapping paper last year and swore I wouldn’t buy anything else this year. Whoops. I found the cute unicorn paper for Sophie a few days ago and now everyone’s gifts are wrapped in a different paper. I love how fun and colorful they all look under the tree — especially since I know what is inside them all!
The above view is looking into the living room from our hallway. We’ve had some great debate about the cast iron stove and it is still underway. For months before moving (and after moving, really), we swore we wanted a more modern fireplace with a concrete hearth and gas logs. Mostly, we want the TV to live on this side of the room and I want to operate the fireplace with a remote control. It turns out, the stove can be converted to gas, so we’re back to overthinking what we want for this wall. Living in the house for an entire year has certainly changed our perspectives a bit. I’m so glad we haven’t started the renovation before now, because so many of my opinions have changed after living here again.
I love how cozy the fireplace wall looks, so it comes down to being able to hide television components and making it look less like two huge, black boxes on the wall, if the television gets relocated here. Can we talk about that gorgeous recliner for a minute? It was my dad’s and is still here because it’s been here for over thirty years. I hate the way it looks, but it is legitimately the most comfortable chair of all times. I’m not making any promises about whether it stays or goes, but it’s not getting the boot yet.
Because I know you’ll ask, the largest wooden star was a Christmas gift from my dad a few years ago. The yellow star is meant to have round lights screwed into those holes. It is vintage and was found in the attic of our neighbor at the Rock House. We could probably have it rewired and make it operable, but I love it just the way it is.
The painting was done by my great aunt, who was an artist living and working in The French Quarter for most of my life. It’s of a sweet friend she met at church and is one of my most prized possessions. Almost all of the paintings she left behind were landscapes or New Orleans street scenes, but this was always my favorite and nobody fought me for it!
The stockings were from Gap, after Christmas several years ago, and we added the white one for Scoop this year (another Sophie meltdown). I added lights, leftover Christmas greenery and plenty of Eucalyptus from Trader Joe’s to make a fresh garland on the mantel. I love adding real greenery to as many spots as possible.
I love our vintage school house map — we grabbed it from the girls’ elementary school trash pile several years ago. It has four different maps, but this one is my favorite. We just added some garland and lights to the top and I might hang Christmas cards here, if we ever get any in the mail! The framed pastel drawing in the photo below is another piece of my Aunt Margaret’s — this one a more typical New Orleans scene.
I used the rest of my cone trees, brass candlesticks, and plenty of greenery for my dining room table. This room will eventually be an extension of our living room, but we do enjoy eating dinner here with my parents, several nights a week!
This room looks into the sunroom — my favorite room in the house — which we plan to make the dining room. We’re removing both the chandelier and the ceiling fan and replacing them with flush mounted fixtures, so that I can rearrange the rooms to my heart’s content!
Our elf brought Christmas pajamas the day I took these photos and was sitting above the gifts, in our dining room light!
In the sunroom, I have two wingback chairs that I plan to slip cover in black and white buffalo check. For now, they are kept company by our tartan plaid ottoman and a beautiful Christmas tree! We never have them trim limbs from the bottom of our tree, because I like for it to be as big as possible. Instead, we put the gifts under a second tree or pile them up somewhere else until Christmas morning.
At the back of the house is my other favorite room, my kitchen. The kitchen in the Rock House was tiny and only boasted four cabinets. We are so spoiled with storage here and even after we update the space, we’ll have many more cabinets that we need to store our dishes!
I love this built in hutch area, but she won’t be there for long. We’re going to replace them with open shelves so that we can see the log walls behind them. We will end up with a similar about of shelf space here, which is a good thing since I’m a dish hoarder! Most of the white and green dishes are things that we use every day, but the vintage Christmas Tree dishes are another family heirloom that I treasure.
The light up Santa was an after-Christmas find last year and he is so cute in the kitchen at night. Sophie is super worried about the naughty list, so it’s probably time for a quote change on our letterboard. The mini cup rack is my mom’s, but I’m going to have to buy one for myself, because it’s perfect here!
Both my mom and my grandmother had these vintage Santa mugs when were little, so I was thrilled when my mom gifted me this pitcher and a few cups of my own. They aren’t big enough for coffee, but they make the perfect hot cocoa mug.
Our kitchen is pretty large and perfect for cooking big meals and hosting evening dance parties. We’re replacing the floors and counters with concrete and hoping to find a giant farmhouse table instead of the island. We’ve found a way to repurpose it in another room and I would love to show off more of the floor that we’re planning to install.
The Christmas Cactus above is so close to blooming, but I hope it will hold off until closer to the holiday! The top of the fridge is filled with leftover cone trees and all of our oil lamps, because we lost power during the snow last week and thought we would need them to read by after dark.
The corkboard in our laundry room is the perfect place to hang Christmas cards and letters from Santa (it’s a pass through area, right off of the kitchen, so these are tucked out of the way, but still easy to enjoy). So perfect, in fact, that these are all cards from last Christmas, that never made their way into a box after the holidays. I’m planning to replace them with cards from this year, but so far, we’ve only received two?!
I hope you enjoyed this little tour around our main floor! We’ll save the bedrooms and bathrooms for another day, especially since the Christmas cheer doesn’t extend to most of those spaces. What is your favorite room to decorate for the holidays? Do you put holiday décor in every room or are you a less is more kind of decorator?
