Christmas Home Tour

Merry Christmas! I’m so excited to share my Christmas home tour with you! Christmas is all about love and joy, and decorating for Christmas makes our hearts pound 🙂 You know what I’m talkin about! At this time of year we enjoy family time the most. Taking walks, crafting, looking at Christmas lights, watching movies together, and of course baking cookies! We’re very focused on having few presents, preferring to give to those less fortunate instead. I’ve been sharing this video every year since it came out, and every year it makes me cry:

This advent philosophy of spending quality time with loved ones and giving to charity (video above) is also partly what inspired me to donate 2 meals to kids in hunger for every Cookies book we sell. So when you buy my book, you not only support me and this website, but you also create the joy of baking with your family, and you help children in hunger at the same time.

And now that we’ve all had a good cry, back to the tour. Our mantle is up! Yay! (See the before photos HERE.) Since we were able to buy a home recently, we have room for a taller tree 🙂 You know how long you can spend searching for the perfect tree? That was me, searching for this tree, and it’s everything I hoped it would be! It’s narrow, but not as narrow as the “pencil” trees. It’s so lifelike that one of my friends asked me if we were planting it after Christmas! And it has that sparse, space-between-the-branches look that I was going for. As if all that wasn’t enough, it was only $100, and will last for many years!

I put the tree on top of a wooden thrift store basket, inside of this grey woven basket. This gave the tree even more height (about a foot), and I’ve always wanted to do a basket instead of a skirt. Yay! On the tree I used the lights that previously decorated the mantle in our old house. I could use another strand, but they look so great. They’re very lightweight and tiny, but so bright. The glittery silver and white snowflakes in different shapes and sizes were from the dollar store.

I got needlepoint stockings on eBay a couple years ago, for a vintage look. I felt nostalgic about the idea of needlepoint stockings, although I don’t think my family ever had them when I was growing up. Last year I made this paper village and carefully saved them in a box to use again. The village took a long time to make, but I love it to bits. I used white boxes to create two levels, for the appearance of a hillside. I found this kit at a craft store (I forget which one), and they have them in shades of white on Amazon.

Remember the peek of my ugly kitchen cabinets that you got to see in my New House post? Well, I’ve begun painting them! So far I’ve finished maybe a third of my cabinets, and from this view you can pretend that my whole kitchen looks like this, haha!

I’m using Annie Sloan chalk paint and finishing wax, which was recommended to me by readers, as well as a local friend. I saw my local friend’s chalk painted kitchen in person, and it looks fantastic! Annie Sloan is less expensive if you find a local retailer (as opposed to on Amazon), but it’s still twice what Home Depot paint costs. For me it was worth the cost, because it’s much easier to put on, and the paint Home Depot suggested I use was looking terrible when applied by this novice! So fingers crossed that I finish soon and that the paint holds up well! I’m also crazy about the hardware that I found, which is great quality, and I believe these are less expensive on Amazon than in stores.

Today we kicked off the season by baking the Chocolate Chip Cookies in my book! But Ginger has already requested “her cookies” next—gingersnaps 🙂

Waiting for Andrew to get my white Roman Shades the next time he has work near IKEA (I’m never in that area). The shades will go on the windows below. Fortunately, we don’t need the privacy, but it will be nice to filter the light and give us that coziness at night.

As I take more around-the-house Christmas photos I’ll add them to this post. Lots of love!

♥, Kelly

P.S. This weekend we’re offering our biggest sale yet, while supplies last! Use my code: ChristmasCookies to get 25% OFF anything in my Etsy store! We still donate the same amount to kids in hunger when you use this coupon! 🙂