Our Christmas Home Tour | Diy Decor Ideas

Today's the day! I'm so excited to welcome you all into my home as part of the 12 Days of Christmas Tour of Homes. Since moving into our house six months ago, it's been a mess of boxes, paint cans, and stripped wallpaper so I completely skipped all seasonal and holiday decorating until now. It's made decorating for Christmas all the more special - our house is finally starting to feel like home!

So come on over - I hope you wore your snow boots!

I kept the Christmas decorations pretty simple this year - our front door is decorated with a set of bells ordered off of Amazon and some greenery and berry branches from our front yard (more about our door dec {here}):

Take off your coat, grab a cocktail, and let's sit down for some dinner (it's ok that we ordered in, right?):

The star anise wreaths on the back of the chairs were a DIY project last year (see that post {here}). I just changed them up with some new ribbon:

I also recycled last year's holiday napkin rings, but added a sprig of greenery:

One of the projects I'm most excited about for 2014 is a new look for our built-in china cabinet. For Christmas, it's sporting a driftwood wreath that I found at TJ Maxx. Some lady tried to take me down over it but she didn't know who she was dealing with. Don't get between me and my accessories...

You'll see that the kids have taken over the area underneath the Christmas tree, so the few presents that I've bought (I'm waaay behind in my shopping) are hanging out in the dining room for now:

Ready for some dessert? Let's bring our plates over to the family room and sit by the fire. Umm, except there is no fire because my husband is paranoid that the mantel greenery will go up in flames...

You won't be cold because once you sit down, someone furry is going to come over and snuggle in next to you. She'll probably request a belly rub. Hope you don't mind...

Our mantel is decorated almost entirely with greenery that was clipped from our yard:

For stockings, I added a few embellishments to simple burlap ones to tie in the blue of our fireplace tile (more about the burlap stockings {here}):

I stole the vintage olive bucket from our guest room so we had something to store a bit of firewood in this winter:

I hope you weren't expecting to see a dazzling Christmas tree because ours has no theme or coordinating colors. But it is filled with meaningful decorations that we've collected since I was very little. You may notice that it's kind of bottom heavy with ornaments - that's because it was decorated by our girls:

Underneath the tree is Christmas-town where they've built a pretty elaborate village:

We also have a small tabletop tree that's a bit more ~~tastefully~~ simply done - we turned it into an advent calendar by hanging mini galvanized buckets labeled with numbers 1-25 and filled with little treats (more on our advent tree {here}:

Before you go, be sure to grab a cup of hot cocoa from the hot chocolate bar we set up in the kitchen:

I think that the homemade marshmallows and hot chocolate (recipes {here}) are my girls' favorite thing about this time of year!

Thanks so much for stopping by! You're probably ready to leave snowy Connecticut and be somewhere warmer after your visit so if you haven't already seen Kristin's house in sunny California, be sure to check it out {here}. She has decorated every (yes, every!) room of her house and it's beautiful!

And then on Monday, head over to Simple Details {here} to check out Pam's home. I just discovered her blog a few months ago and I'm totally 100% hooked! She has an amazing sense of style and I can't wait to see how she's decorated her house for the holidays!

To see the full schedule of the houses that we've already toured and the ones coming up, you can go {here}. Merry, merry!

Update: Check out my Christmas Home Tour follow-up post {here} with sources and answers to questions many of you had about the chalkboard signs and other Christmas decorations.