Woman in Real Life

When I made my DIY Santa countdown art in November, I wrote 47 days on it. I felt a bit crazy and also slightly virtuous getting Christmas crafts done with almost 50 days until Christmas Day. Um yeah, as this post goes live, my Santa countdown dry erase art will read 21 days. Gulp. Not feeling so virtuous anymore. As in, somebody needs to go Christmas shopping. And perhaps make Christmas cookies that I actually freeze instead of eating.

On the plus side, joining up with other Canadian bloggers for this week's holiday home tour forced me to get my procrastinating butt in gear on the decor side of things. Not that it was easy. I decided I needed to organize my home "a bit" before decorating. And that was my downfall. I forgot just how long I can take to get organized. After about seven hours of shredding and sorting papers over two days, I realized I was going to have to give up on creating the perfect blank slate for my Christmas decor. That's when I shoved what was left to sort into the laundry room for "later." Okay, let's worry about later later. On with the tour...



I'm not gonna lie, I haven't got the porch done yet. So, we start with the foyer and this weird slanted wall inside the front door. Our house has lots of weird little slanted walls. I have these three doorknob jewelry hangers inside the door and I like to hang different things on them depending on the season. For this Christmas, it's a rustic twig Christmas tree, my husband's plaid scarf, a blue star ornament and a set of vintage-look keys. (Okay, the keys were there already. I just didn't bother moving them.)

We don't have much blank wall space left in our house. That's why our DIY rustic Advent calendar is hanging next to the staircase, above, I had to hang it really high too, in the hopes that Jolene the beagle mix won't pull down the bags in search of chocolate and candy canes.


For our rustic bench in the foyer, I used the same black swan pillow I put there last Christmas. If it ain't broke, right? I added my daughter's cute ukulele, a small tin lantern, little pinecones and other natural elements in a crystal dish and a nutcracker ornament.


I also placed this lovely silver Christmas tree next to the bench for the second year in a row. We renovated the foyer just last year. It's much calmer in feel than it was before. I like to maintain that calm feel with silver and blue decor to match the silver mirror, the grey and white walls and the teal and white wallpaper.


To decorate the mirror, I cut a grey and white cardstock snowflake garland with my Cricut Explore Air™. I also cut a "Hurry Down the Chimney" decal from silver window cling. It was meant to go on the mirror above the fireplace, but I ended up covering that mirror with a Christmas tree and another DIY project.


Moving on down the hall from the foyer, I placed a large black lantern on top of the armoire. I put a big pinecone and an ornament inside the lantern. I added some clipped Juniper and a candy cane garland. (That's my office to the right of the armoire. It has fun pink decor touches and I would like to add some pink Christmas decor, but I haven't gotten there yet.)


On the other side of the hall is the dining room, which we renovated for last spring's One Room Challenge. That's why the colours and the trimwork are in keeping with the foyer. The room has lots of colour so I decided to use whatever white Christmas decor I had in my stash. I bought a few things on clearance after last Christmas, including this pretty white crystal beaded garland (from Michaels) that I placed at the top of the china cabinet. We put a string of snowflake lights along the top of the window.


I did add these four purple "Xmas" candle holders to the dining room table. We really don't have any purple to speak of anywhere (except in my daughter's room), but I wanted to find a place for them. I got them really inexpensively at Bacon Basketware's warehouse sale.


I placed a DIY citrus garland down the centre of the table. You can find the instructions for making it in this post. I actually should probably make a new one at this point, because this one's a couple years old.



Our black hanging rope mirror was the perfect place to tuck in a candle surrounded by some natural elements and faux greenery. (Clearly I wouldn't leave this candle on unattended. Or any candle for that matter.)


I also got this white metal tree with silver ball ornaments at the warehouse sale. I think it was about $3.

As we move on from these calm, icy rooms, we come to the family room...


This room hasn't been renovated (aside from our DIY fireplace mantel), which I think allows me a kind of freedom when it comes to Christmas decor. The foyer and the dining room were so carefully planned out that I like to maintain the original feel we intended. The family room is where we live. We watch TV, do homework, argue, eat, read - all that good stuff.


This year I decided on a more traditional red and white colour scheme for the family room. Growing up, we used the same red ornaments every year. The balls were wrapped in red thread (that eventually started to unravel). In recent years, I've used every colour of Christmas ornament but red - we have lots of blue, green, brown, pink, silver, gold and multi-coloured ornaments.


But this year I find myself admiring clean red and white decorative elements for the holidays. Luckily I picked up the red and white striped cushion on clearance last year at Michaels. I got the Fa La La wall art at the Bacon Basketware sale. I also added touches of gold decor to match the gold framed mirror above our fireplace.


I made up some (very quick) mug decals with my Cricut in gold vinyl.  One is a snowflake. (I used transfer tape for that one.) The other is a reindeer - very easy to apply. I got the mugs at the dollar store. My daughter and I made some vegan gingerbread cookies this week and she happily decorated them for this post. Oh, and every Christmas I like to float cranberries and candles in water in a bowl.


I was surprised to find that we don't actually have very many red ornaments. (Because I never use them. Duh.) I didn't want to buy more ornaments, so I got creative, making up garlands of red cardstock stars to fill in the gaps. We also used mini candy canes (perfect for the red and white colour scheme) and red beads.


Each year we cut down a fresh tree from the Christmas tree farm. I like really big trees, but our ceiling is only 8-feet high. Usually our tree scrapes the ceiling, but this year I decided to try a shorter, skinnier tree in keeping with the lighter, red and white, kind of Scandi feel.


There's the aforementioned Santa countdown art. Find more about how to make the dry erase Santa countdown in this post.


I kept out the deer pillow I used in my fall home tour.


The Fa La La artwork above the mantel is another Cricut DIY. You can get the details on that in this post. I also cut a red and white "doily" garland with the Cricut. (I've said it before, I'm obsessed with garlands.)


I bought a couple of cute vintage Christmas-themed trivets at a thrift store once and wasn't really sure what to do with them, so I put them on the mantel along with vintage milk glass vases and a couple of vintage Avon red candle holders. (They were full of perfume still, but I couldn't stand the smell so I gave them a good washing.)


My sincere thanks to Shannon of AKA Design and Christina of  The DIY Mommy for hosting the holiday blog tour and effectively giving me a kick in the butt to get me decorating! The tour goes on all week, with new posts added each day. Come back each day to find the new tours via the links below. Lots of holiday decorating inspiration!

Have you started decorating for the holidays yet? What colours have you used/will you use?

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