Monday, December 17, 2018

Girl's Christmas Playroom

One of the main reasons why I decorate and create is because I want to make life magical for our three little girls. I want them to look back on their Christmases with happy nostalgia. The outside world can get ugly, but I want them to always know that they will always have a safe, beautiful home to come to. So although decorating the playroom may seem silly, I am happy and eager to do it. I may joke that I cant live without the playroom, because its nice to have some place to send the kids when they get crazy, but I also like that they can have this one place that's their own. A special place made for dreaming and imagining.







I picked up these cute mint green boots at the Target dollar spot and I love them as Christmas décor, but I also feel like I will be able to use these year round in here.



Oh the teepee! I usually have a lot of questions on this teepee whenever I post a picture of it on Instagram and I hate to say it, but I made it. I know. I'm sorry. But when something is so expensive and I think hey, "I can make that for way cheaper." I usually end up doing it. Sometimes it ends up being more expensive, but sometimes the quality ends up being better than what I would have purchased and sometimes I end up making something and its a total fail. If you don't try you never know! There are many great options out there though if you are looking to buy one.



 I kind of went a little crazy with the fairy lights in here. But they're so good!


Just so that you know....the playroom is NEVER this clean! Most of the time, I can't even open the door to get in. It really only ever gets cleaned if I decide to do a photo shoot in here.



Posie didn't want to miss a little photoshoot either.



I recently made over the girls kitchen set and added some wrapping paper to the back to change the look a bit. I was originally looking at removable wallpaper, but it was too expensive for such a tiny spot. The nice thing is that the wrapping paper is just as easy to switch out if I get tired of it. Looking at all the great options for removable wallpaper made me want to find places to put in the rest of the house! There are SO many cute options out there.




I also painted this three tiered basket tower gold to blend in better with the colors of the room.


Last year I found a similar wreath to this on Terrain and I had to re-create it. I put some more fairy lights in and a candle. Remotes are great for these!



Another thing we added to the room was this white shelf above the kitchen set. I wanted to have some more display space, but I think it also helps to make this side of the room look more finished.




On this side of the room I just put a little chair and some more fairy lights. I have been wanting to change the gallery wall out, but I haven't decided on what to do yet. Any ideas? I was thinking maybe some hooks for dress-up dresses for a mini mudroom look? Or maybe a French inspired bench?




That concludes our playroom tour. Hope you are having a great start to your week! Can you believe Christmas is a week away!?

Monday, December 3, 2018

Christmas Home Tour 2018

Good morning friends and Happy December! I haven't done a blog post in a while and I am sad and sorry for that, but there have been a lot of ideas bustling around in my head concerning my blog over the last year and it has just been a little bit overwhelming for me. It is something that I really enjoy doing and I love being able to share my home and ideas here, so I hope that I will be able to get back into the groove soon. But I feel like the one thing I don't like to miss doing is my yearly Christmas Home Tour. So I wanted to make sure that I at least got this posted! It has actually been very helpful for me to look back on years past and remember where I put everything and what ideas I had even if I change my mind and do things differently the next year. I highly recommend taking pictures of your Christmas decorations every year so that you can look back to remember what you did the year before! It is so helpful. It also is fun to see the evolution and change that happens in our homes year to year. Even if it is just little changes, it still makes a difference.
As I was looking at last year's Holiday Home Tour I realized that the day I shot those photos was the day that we got our kitchen backsplash tile installed. Literally, right after I finished taking the photos for the home tour, the guy came to install the tile. So it has been exactly a year now that we have had the white tile in our kitchen. It was a change that made such a huge impact in the overall look of our kitchen. Painting our cabinets white, was huge. But adding the white tile and getting rid of that yucky old tile was the perfect thing to finish it off and make it ours.

Now it's time to come inside and see what we did this year. So grab your coffee and slippers and come on in!


My youngest is going to be our hostess today. Hello!



I'm still waiting on a Christmas door mat for the front porch that I ordered. I have been loving this layered rug look that a bunch of people are now doing. I don't know if I can ever go back to just one!



This entryway that we made over about a year ago (you can see the transformation here) has been both so fun and so useful for our family. It provides the perfect spot for putting on and putting away shoes for the girls and it has been so fun for me to style in all the different seasons. Last year, this is where we put one of our flocked trees and I decided to keep this space a little less crowded this year and put the tree in the dining room instead.


You can see a peak of it here. We will get to the dining room a little later in the tour.




Having fun yet?
Here is our living room/ family room. I have been slowly changing this room's Christmas colors from red to green and this year it finally has switched over completely. I love that the colors now blend in effortlessly with the everyday colors in our home.








If you remember from last year, we bought three of these white flocked trees (from Walmart) and they have been so awesome. I love that they are so easy to put up and down and that they look so great naked! I have one in my master bedroom that I am experimenting with ornaments this year, but really these look so gorgeous as is.






This record player was an early birthday gift from my husband. It is probably one of my most favorite birthday gifts that I have ever received. It is kind of a relaxing thing to put on a record. You can see why they still sell them. There is just something about them and they sound amazing. I feel like this weird hutch space was made for this record player. It seems to belong there.




Earlier this year I showed on stories how I put on this removable wallpaper. I love this IKEA unit even more now. It just added a little bit of character to an otherwise basic piece of furniture.






And now we move onto the kitchen, which is the one place in the house where I still like to use a lot of fun classic Christmas reds! Our white kitchen is the perfect backdrop for making the red shine.





I found these paperwhite starts at my favorite grocery store (New Seasons) and was so excited that I didn't have to start them from bulbs. Since discovering the Dear Lillie blog years ago, where she uses them in her Christmas décor, I have always associated paperwhites with Christmas. I feel like they are a staple. And they smell so amazing!








I found these cute little gingerbread cookie cutter lights at Michael's this year and I couldn't pass them up. Aren't they the cutest!?










This year I decided to use faux greenery around the kitchen sink window. I just remember last year sweeping up all of the pine needles constantly and it was driving me crazy! Now I can re-use this same garland next year and I won't be sweeping up needles all Christmas season.




We have had a bucket list on this kraft paper roll since Summer and the girls love it. They are always asking what list is next. We did a Summer and Fall bucket list. Even if you don't get to everything on the list, (which always happens to us) it is still fun to try and do all the fun things every season. This year we added "Random Acts of Kindness". I am not sure yet what that will entail, but I am excited to try and get the girls to do something like that and start to get an appreciation for how lucky they are and what a good thing it is to do kind things for others. If anyone has any good ideas for little kids, message me in the comments below. I would love to hear ideas!


Now we arrive at the dining room and this is where I put our other flocked tree. I put it up right before we had people over for a "Friendsgiving" this year and I have to say, I loved having a Christmas tree up with all of the Thanksgiving décor. It just seemed very fitting. As if to say, "This holiday is good to give thanks, but an even better holiday is right around the corner.".






I am getting the itch to switch this piece out, with something bigger, with more storage. I have to start the craigslist hunt for the perfect piece.


In the meantime I took out all of the books that used to be here and started playing around with different things.



Here is the buffet that I made over earlier this year. It was a lot of work, but I love how it turned out. You can find the post on how I painted it here.



That's all for today. I hope to get a post up of our master bedroom, girl's room and playroom soon, so check back later for more! Hope you have a wonderful week!

You can find old Christmas Home Tours here:

Christmas Home Tour 2014

Christmas Home Tour 2017