A mini tour of our Christmas home using lots of festive red, white & gold decor items, all of which are budget-friendly and easy to recreate.
Merry Christmas, darlings!! I hope you’re enjoying the holiday season and spending quality time with all the people you hold dear! As we near the home stretch with only 9 more days until Christmas, I thought I’d take you on a mini home tour of our Christmas decor this year.
I kept things pretty simple and I’m so happy with how it all turned out. Originally, I thought that I was going to go with a rustic and neutral color scheme this year, but when the lights on our artificial tree wouldn’t work, my design plan took on a whole new different route…
Come on in! Let’s pretend that we’re enjoying a glass of cinnamon mulled wine together (because it sounds fancy) and I’ll tell you allllll about it.
Welcome!
My biggest priority for decorating was to keep it easy and simple this year. If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen that we’re slowly updating our kitchen and living areas on the main floor. Which basically means that our upstairs looks like a giant construction site and decorating in this space would be a complete nightmare!
I can’t wait to share those spaces with you all during the new year…
BUT since the basement {family room has been freshly updated}, I opted to keep most of the decorating down in that space. The playroom is also down there, which make for easy organizing with all the new toys the boys will be getting for Christmas without having to haul everything up and down the stairs.
We waited to decorate for Christmas until the week after Thanksgiving. We had family in from out of town for the holiday, and we spent the full week visiting and enjoying our time with them.
Once all the excitement from Thanksgiving settled, Ian got down all of the Christmas boxes and bins from the attic. I could hardly wait to start decking the halls!! Yippee!
That is until…our tree wouldn’t light up. Ugh!! We typically use an artificial tree and the one we’ve used for several years decided to poop out on us. When I plugged it in, only a tiny section on the very bottom of the lower branches would light up.
Ian played around with it for a while and we tried replacing the bulbs that we thought might have been causing the problem-but NOPE! A BIG FAT NOPE! NADA, ZIP, ZILCH…
Now, I know I could have just used some Christmas light strands that I already had and restrung the tree, but by this point, I was frustrated and I just wanted to get the tree up. RIGHT! THAT! INSTANT! (And I’m lazy and wasn’t willing to invest my time in a tree who wouldn’t even light up for me!! lol)
My boys were also giving me their sad boo-boo eyes…mama had to fix that!
So off I ran to Wal-Mart to save the day!
I ended up coming home with this tree! And ya’ll, I am smitten. It’s tall and fat and flocked, and there are pinecones and berries, and oh…I just love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I described it to my girlfriend as I tree I would have spied in an enchanted snowy forest with red cardinals fluttering about it….???
Once I got home, Ian set it up for me right away and it was so pretty that I almost didn’t want to put anything on it! (but then I came to my senses! ha!)
I share the deets on the tree a bit further down in this post, so keep reading…
Festive Family Room
For the rest of the room, I dressed the sofa and chairs up in a mix of cheery pillows. The “Peace” pillow was from Target a few years ago. I already had the cream colored pillow. The red striped pillows were a fun find from Marshall’s, and the “old-timey” holly pillows were covers that I ordered from Etsy a few years back.
DECORATIVE ACCESSORIES
Oh My Goodness! Those terrariums! Besides the tree, these are my favorite part of the room. I found these hidden in the clearance section of Marshall’s for just a few bucks each. Jackpot!!
For the life of me, I could not think of the word ‘terrarium’ and kept wanting to call these atriums! Ha! I finally sent this picture to my mom and was all like, “WHAT ARE THESE THINGS CALLED!” Ha, thank goodness for my mama. She was able to set me straight!!
To make them festive, I just shoved pinecones, cinnamon sticks, berries, and some greenery in them. The other decor items are everyday things I gathered around the house to make a cute little holiday vignette. That cookie was delicious by the way…?
REVIVE OLD DECOR
The wreath hanging above the tv was something that I almost threw away! It was smashed down in the bottom of one of our Christmas storage boxes. It looked totally gross and sad.
I decided to try and revive it by giving it a little dusting and fluffing of the branches. Then I added a few floral pics from Hobby Lobby (they were 50% off) and I was able to give it a new life. In all, I think I spent a total of $5 on the floral pics!
This sweet sign is from Small Woods Home. I topped it with a strand of holly garland that I already had in my Christmas decor stash. I used a couple of small push pins to hold it in place.
POPS OF COLOR
In order to get the bookshelves in the Christmas spirit, I turned all the spines around with the pages sticking out. The “noise” from all of the book covers was bothering me, and in my opinion, was clashing with the Christmas decor.
Nothing says ‘Christmas’ like my 8 million diet books and Ian’s odd collection of history books about the Nazi’s and WWII. Ha!
Turning the books around was a quick and easy way to quiet them up while creating a neutral backdrop to the space. I love the mix of all the white book pages. I added a few pops of red and a couple of Christmas accessories to the shelves.
Our nutcracker snowman is looking a little ratty and old these days. He’s even missing a button. He’s become one of our traditions and the boys love changing the numbers each day to countdown to Christmas morning.
RED, WHITE & GOLD DECOR ON THE TREE
The ornaments on the tree are a collection of items either handmade, bought, or passed down. I kept to the red, white, and gold color scheme.
I already had all of the ribbon and decorative items. The red ribbon is a deco mesh and the gold is the sparkly ribbon that I found at Michael’s a few Christmas’ ago.
The little crochet ornaments were made by my aunt. She started making them for me when I was just a teenager- “for my Christmas tree one day.” I remember telling her that when I grow up my Christmas tree was going to be all red and silver…well, I’ve stayed pretty true to my word. Most of my Christmas trees have been some variation of red with either silver or gold. ❤️ Love you, Auntie!
I’ve hung her ornaments on my tree every year and I love how they are unique and aren’t something that I could buy in a store.
I also like adding in non-traditional elements to my tree. These little Christmas postcards were in the dollar bins at Michael’s. I just shoved them right into the tree branches for something fun and unexpected.
We are ready for Christmas!
And here’s our new tree all aglow! So pretty right? Are you envisioning yourself in a snowy enchanted forest? ?
Ok, well now that we’re all decorated for Christmas, the fam has loved being able to plop down here in here to snuggle, enjoy the twinkle lights, and watch Christmas movies. So holly jolly, right?
Thanks for chatting with me and taking our mini Christmas tour. For a Christmas tree that almost didn’t happen, I’m so thrilled with how it turned out. Did you have any Christmas decor disasters? Let me know in the comments! Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year!!
Christmas Blessings!
