Pretty Handy Girl’s Christmas Home Tour 2013

Welcome, welcome! I see you made it here from Songbird’s beautiful home. If you are coming here first, be sure to check out Marianne’s home:

I can not tell you how excited I am to have you in for the tour. Last Christmas we were living in a demolition zone. So, it feels wonderful to have our kitchen complete and be able to focus on decorating for the holidays.

I’m also enjoying low fuss decorating. Like this fake wreath that looks fabulous when you tuck some live greenery inside (thanks for the idea Colleen.)

Another lazy decorating trick is to wrap garlands around the chandelier.

And the centerpiece is as easy as setting a tiered tray inside a store bought wreath. The runner was a drop cloth that I stenciled last year.

I’m also on a frugal kick this Christmas. Who wants to pay for greenery when you can steal salvage trimmings from a landscape company and make your own garlands.

My pen and ink sketched plates were a little lonely on the wall, so I pulled a few plates from storage and the rest I bought at a thrift store.

The rosemary star wreath was plucked from the garden for a total cost of $0! I created a temporary valance with a tension rod and some fabric.

By far my favorite spot to decorate this year is the two open shelves in our kitchen. I literally hung them last week. They were the final item on the “to do” list to complete our kitchen.

Those gorgeous corbels are from Southern Accents Architectural Salvage in Cullman, AL. They have an online shop where you can find the most amazing salvage finds! Or they can produce something custom, like my corbels. If you like them, you should contact Garlan and tell him you want my corbels!

Speaking of antiques, do you see that washboard in the background?

That washboard hung in our kitchen growing up. My Mom recently gave it to me because it was made in Raleigh, NC (where we call home.) It is wonderful having a piece of my childhood here in my kitchen. I added some Christmas and winter themed post cards to it.

Our kitchen desk is decorated with a few candles, and other holiday décor.

I had fun building this rustic chalkboard to display a holiday message this year.

Our tree has actually been decorated a while, thanks to Michaels who challenged me to decorate a Dream tree.

I made a lot of the ornaments from cheap $1 finds at Michaels.

This year I wanted to indulge the kids’ desire to decorate and continue to encourage their creative play with their stuffed animals. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw our bursting population of stuffed animals. My boys are IN LOVE with all of them. So much so that they wanted to make gifts and stockings for each animal. I set up a little tree and ladder in the corner of our dining room. My oldest decorated the tree himself. And the clutter at the bottom of the tree are the gifts the boys have been making for the animals. So cute!

I realized early on that our schedule was a bit too busy to visit Santa at the mall this year. I decorated an old metal tin to act as our North Pole mail correspondence with Santa. House of Smiths has a whole line of polka dots that you can use to decorate gifts, objects or your home! Check out the falling snow kit!

Each December the kids leap out of bed every morning to open their  advent calendars. I was seriously thinking I might have to keep them up year round because it helps so much with the morning wake up.

Speaking of sleeping, I’m a bit worn out. I hope you enjoyed the tour of my home.

It was such a pleasure to have you here today. I hope you’ll come back soon. And now, hurry along because Traci is waiting for you at Beneath My Heart:

Have you been following the Christmas Home Tour all week? You can catch up here:

Blogger Christmas Tour of Homes

Monday

• Just a Girl
• Nesting Place
• Hi, Sugarplum
• Tatertots and Jello

Happy Holidays, y’all!