It took me a few weeks longer than I wanted, but I did it! I decorated our home for Christmas. Errr… make that, I decorated our living room and parts of our kitchen for Christmas. I’m excited to share the before/after of our living room with you, but consider this a very generous, festive look at the “after” before my detailed post goes live in a week or two!

I had hoped to have most of our first floor renovations complete before the holidays, because decorating for Christmas is one of my greatest joys. But we were able to finish up the living room this December and at least make one room merry and bright! I’m very much looking forward to when our entryway will be completed next Christmas. Draping garland on a stairway railing has been a lifelong dream of mine that I’ll finally be able to accomplish! We didn’t have stairs at our last house, or a mantle, so I sort of felt jipped every Christmas. Funny enough, though I designed this fireplace in our new home, I opted against using a mantle. But! At least I have stair railings.

When I shared our Christmas tree on Instagram stories in November, I received a bunch of messages asking where we got it. This is actually the large version of the small trees we had on our dining room cabinet last year. (Check out last year’s decor here.) It’s 9′ tall, though the bottom is pretty far off the ground, so it doesn’t feel super large. I found this silver feather tree on Wayfair, and there are multiple sizes available. (We have three different sizes because I love it that much!) It’s not called a “tinsel tree” or an “aluminum tree,” so I just just stumbled on it when looking for champagne trees, and am so glad! It’s absolutely perfect for our home.

We will be using our old tree in another room next year when more spaces are complete. But this year, we have this one tree, and it feels pretty magical.

Our sunroom is kind of chilly this time of year, so we don’t spend much time in here, though it’s warm enough that my plants are happy. I have draped some bead and homemade pom pom garlands over the door and hung my favorite glittery peace wreath in front of the doors. The doors stay closed most of the time, but I opened them for this cozy photo!

When Phil and I were newlyweds, I used a lot of red and green in our home’s decor all through the year, so it felt natural to use a lot of it at Christmastime. But now that I’ve honed my home’s style a bit more and have gathered favorite things through the years, I have a more specific vision of festive decor, and surprise! It’s mostly neutral. I like to use lots of white and winter themed items, because we can keep them up longer, but also because it fits my home’s style. I also add more glam this time of year because, well, ’tis the season! Disco balls, glitter, and silver tinsel aren’t things you’ll see me use any other time of year, but it would seem I can’t get enough of it at Christmas!

Next year I may add more natural elements like homemade cedar garland, but we’ll see how the spirit moves me. :) More rooms will be ready, so I may even do different themes in different rooms! Am I a little Christmas crazy? Why yes, yes I am.

I found these paper globe lantern lights at Target, and bought the last three they had in stock. No regrets! I’m only using one in the living room for Christmas cheer, but I plan on using the other strings year-round in the kiddo spaces of our home when those are complete. They’re so fun, glowing and cozy in the evening, but when they’re unplugged, they still look nice hanging there by the window!

The silver peace wreath hanging on our french doors was found at World Market a year or two ago. But I saw a friend of mine made her own myrtle version this year, and I thought it was perfect!

Our new TV is hung by the chimney with care, but the stocking are still tucked away, because, well, I had planned to hang them on the stair rail, and as you know, the entryway isn’t looking very festive just yet. But! We are just so elated to be able to gather in our finished living room to watch Christmas movies and read Christmas books together as a family. We watched my childhood favorite, The Muppet Christmas Carol, with the kids over the weekend, and it was a smashing success. 

What’s your family’s favorite movie to watch this time of year? We love the Polar Express too, but I’m still looking for a really good one about baby Jesus. In the meantime we love that A Christmas Carol teaches about the perils of greed and the joy of giving. xo

At long last, I’m ready to share the full tutorial+tips for building this wall of shelving! I built this entire thing completely by myself, and yes, you can too! I was able to use construction-grade pine lumber, but a lot of elbow grease and a few tricks helped make them look much nicer. I shared the entire process at A Beautiful Mess, so head on over to check it out if you’re keen!

Another fun project I shared at A Beautiful Mess this week is this fun mandarin tower table centerpiece. This craft was a huge hit at our house, as Lucy was able to make one without any help from me (shocked my socks off!), and the girls loved plucking mandarins from the tree to have for a snack.

We’re hosting a gathering on New Year’s Eve, and I think we’ll make a couple more towers for decorating our snack spread. They look so fancy, but they’re simple and economical to make.

Same for my shelving system! Well, okay, so it’s not exactly simple. But as far as woodworking goes, this is pretty straight forward. If you end up building something similar in your own home, I’d love for you to share it with me!

We’re very eager to finish up the last details of the kitchen project, which seems to be dragging on and on. It’s so tricky when you’re working on two spaces at once. We also have just finished up the living room completely (!!!!) and I’m sooo excited to share that with you very soon. Home renovations are exciting, but man, they are all-consuming. I’m ready to finally decorate for the holidays and take a little breather from all the drywall dust everywhere!

When planning out the decor of our living room, I knew I wanted a large, minimal, mostly white abstract art piece to go above the credenza, sort of to anchor the space, since the wall is just a large mass of whiteness. Realizing how expensive original art can be, and how difficult finding the perfect oversize print can be, I decided to make my own! Well, sort of. I commissioned my children to paint an abstract piece for me.

Of course, when you commission your children to make art, you never know what you’re going to get. I was a little nervous, but I figured, hey, if we hate it, we can let them paint over it until we like it! Which is sort of what I did anyway. Here’s my experience…

I purchased large canvas stretchers from a local craft/art supply shop, and a piece of canvas by the yard. I used my staple gun and clamps to stretch the canvas across the wood frame, then rolled over top of it with some wall primer, because we always have plenty of it around, and I didn’t want to have to buy a ton of gesso to prep the canvas.

I bought some large bottles of acrylic paint, and mixed a variety of neutral hues and shades into disposable bowls. Then I grabbed a couple of roller sizes, a paint tray, big paint brushes, little paint brushes, and put out two shades of paint to get the kids started. After Lucy became bored with the paint and brushes she started with, I brought out different brushes and different shades of paint.

Now, you might wonder how much guidance I gave as the kiddos painted. Really, this was more a sensory exercise than it was an unguided art experiment, so yeah, I was definitely involved with art directing this piece! Ha! I obviously selected all of the colors (or lack thereof) involved, but I was pretty surprised with how much I liked what Lucy created with it. I would suggest things from time to time, like, “What about working in that corner over there?” Or, “Have you tried to make blotches with the tip of the brush?” I suggested blending more, splotching, long brush strokes, and whatever else came to mind, but she did with those directions what she wanted. And honestly, the reason I had the kids make the art instead of me, is because I love how open-ended their minds are, without any preconceived notion of what they want their creation to look like. At least at this age, they can just paint abstractly in a way that I never can.

Juniper was newly two years old at the time of this art project, so I gave her sections to work on, and she just enjoyed painting with a small brush. She definitely smeared the paint around a bit with her body at times, but it all adds to the freeform charm of the thing!

I do plan to frame the canvas soon, and try some more canvases of medium and smaller sizes with the kids. I’ll share more about different guidance techniques and more of letting Lucy do whatever she wants on the canvas. I’m really excited to see how her creations come together!