holiday home tour

I thought about skipping the annual holiday home tour, because I feel like it doesn't change all that much year to year - trying to work with what I've got, plus we always put the tree in the same spot, I tend to go with a similar color scheme that matches my regular decor, etc. But then I remembered one particular big change, our newly painted front door! It inspired a colorful front porch setup that I'm just loving and couldn't not share.

 

Plus, we hosted part of the neighborhood holiday open house on December 1, so our halls were fully decked before the month even began, and I'm loving it! If you look at previous holiday home tours you'll see most of the same stuff, just moved around a little, but I did add a couple of new things (door mat - couldn't resist! - pillow, farmer's market arrangements for the front planters) because I had in mind having all kinds of people over who had never been in the house... but mostly it's the same elements with lots of greenery, wherever I can think to stick it. This year I did start phasing in some artificial garlands - Target has a lot of good options, like this and this - so that I can just use the same ones annually, and cut down a little on the pine needle cleanup in January. Real tree always though!

I also did Hendrik's book-a-day Advent calendar again, which is so fun. Went with some colorful wrapping paper I found in the dollar spot at Target (and put 1-24 stickers on them, but you just can't see them in these pictures because they kind of blend in), to go along with the cute llama banner that we spotted there as well. He's loving opening up his book each morning, and I'm having fun seeing how great he is at reading the "I Can Read" type ones that I picked up from the library/Amazon to change things up this year. Also fun to rediscover some of our holiday favorites of years past - I'll link some of them below.

So that's how things are looking around here this month, and I'm so pleased for how merry & bright it all feels, especially with all of our gray skies! It's hard to mind the weather when you've got the cozy glow of the Christmas tree and flameless candles all around - which is why December is the part of winter that I love...


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