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We’ve got a little farmhouse modern Christmas home tour going on at our place, and we’re so glad you’re here!

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Deck the halls with boughs of holly, / Fa la la la la, la la la la. / ‘Tis the season to be jolly, / Fa la la la la, la la la la...

Well our “halls” are “decked”…with cedar and ribbons and twinkle lights galore.

This week bloggers all over the internet are virtually walking you through their homes and we’re happy to be participating as house number 16 of 30 in the All Things Home Christmas tour. And we couldn’t be happier to show you our most complete house tour to date!

Welcome

Welcome to our home – all decorated for Christmas!

We did have snow…briefly. Unfortunately I didn’t get out with my camera to capture how beautiful the house looked with a fresh white blanket and it has all since melted away. (If you like snow, January is the time to visit us! Right now it’s sort of cold…and a little bit crunchy.)

Although from the street our house looks like a bungalow, it’s actually a back-split. Basically that means that on the main level is the living room, dining room and kitchen. Then the levels “split” – 5 steps up to bedrooms and a bathroom and 7 steps down to the family room, laundry room at the back of the house. Thus the term back split.

I kinda love our front porch – which believe it or not is significantly larger than the tiny stoop we had at our last house!

My amazingly sweet brother-in-law tromped through the bush at their farm (in the rain) to cut me all those wonderful greens and birch branches that fill the urns I bought right after we moved to this house last December. I think he honestly saved my over $100…buying that stuff in the city is expensive!

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Would you like to come in? It would be rather silly to come for a house tour and stay outside, yes?

To be honest the entry hasn’t changed much since our fall tour. I did manage to pack away the pumpkins, change the message on the chalkboard banner to say Merry Christmas and Dean installed new closet doors (thank goodness I don’t have to look at that mess of coats and shoes anymore!).

Living Room

Our entry foyer (btw, our Canadian-selves says it as foy-yay, not foy-yer!) opens up to our Living Room, which is all decked out in cream, tan and RED for the first time in YEARS!

For the last ten years we’ve had black leather furniture and I always felt the need to lighten it up with blues, greens and silver at Christmas time. But this year when I pulled out those colors with the new-to-us cream love seats, the room looked so monochromatic – and not in the good modern country neutrals kind of way!

When I bought two of my friend Lucy’s deer head pillows (available here), I sort of fell back in love with the woodland/country/lodge look. I may be a city girl at heart, but I did spend a significant number of years growing up in cottage country! 

From there it wasn’t too hard to add Oliver and a generous dollop of red via a poinsettia (that’s mysteriously dying rather quickly) and some $9 pillows from the grocery store! 

Natural elements like garlands and cedar clippings from our own yard mix well with the cozy neutrals and candles are always a charming addition to casual winter gatherings. 

My mom gave me this little wire house last fall and although I’ve displayed it before I think this is my favorite use so far.

And since we got a new hutch in the dining room, the very first one that Dean built for our family is currently residing in the living room filled with all sorts of goodies. (The bottom conveniently houses my camera gear, printer and laptop!)

Kitchen

Our kitchen obviously needs to be functional, even during the holidays. As such, decorations in here are minimal, but add just a little festivity to the space.

A couple of unadorned small potted evergreens, a red towel here…

A few more potted winter plants (does anyone know how to keep poinsettias alive?) and some glowing candle light there…

A little greenery, number art and stacking boxes up on top…

And some simple paper snowflakes on the windows over there…

Which leaves plenty of space for holiday food preparation!

Dining Room

I loved decorating the whole house this year, but I think I had the most fun decorating the dining room. It is wonderful to have a farmhouse table again (we ate off a folding table for the first nine months we lived here!), and I adore our chandelier complete with faux greenery tucked into its arms.

And check out our new gray buffet! I think I’m in love. Both with the buffet…and with Dean for hauling it home for me! (Would you believe it used to look like this? All it took was sanding, painting and waxing! And I used regular flat paint from Sherwin Williams! Crazytown!)

I whipped up this sheet music wreath the other night using Donna‘s pencil rolling method. I’ve wanted to make one for a really long time and I always thought it would be much harder and take much longer than it actually did. Hooray for projects that take LESS time than you think they’re going to – ’cause that NEVER happens!

Here’s our little Embroidery Hoop Ornament from yesterday’s post.

I was so excited to find these bottle brush trees and tiny vintage-looking little house at Target last week. Look at me – I really am going lodge/woodland!

I love me some mason jars and striped paper straws – perfect for any festive occasion! And these “snowballs” are actually ornaments with the tops facing down, surrounded by a generous sprinkling of fake snow. I LOVE fake snow!

The tree has stayed pretty much the same since the Canadian Tire photo shoot, with the addition of our gingerbread salt dough ornaments and cookie cutter ornaments.

I set the table with my favorite Urban Barn rattan place mats (bought on sale for half price!) and a mixture of white and red plates of different sizes and designs. I adore the striped napkins from Pier 1. They are actually summer napkins that I bought on sale in October, but they are perfect the perfect colors to add a little bit of Christmas whimsy!

Our silver star / snowflake napkin rings get an encore use…for about the third or forth time since I bought them.

And our new bar cart – a $9.99 Value Village (thrift store) find! 

I just cleaned it up with some Brasso and gave the shelves a bit of a facelift with a stencil and some paint.

A useful and sparkly find!

Family Room

There’s one room decorated for Christmas at our house this year that I’ve never decorated before…the Family Room.

This is a big deal because NO ONE has seen it yet!

Really…

We started painting the brown paneling at the end of August and have slowly chipped away at the details, like lights, curtains, art and pillows. It’s not quite finished, but what used to be dark and dreary is now bright and cheerful and fun!

This room is a very multi-functional space: we watch tv here, we play here, we do homeschool here, we read here. (Sorry about the window glare – I totally forgot to use my external flash! Duh!)

After living in a tiny bungalow with a combined living room/dining room and no other common area for three years, our family room is something I’m very grateful for at this house!

Bedrooms

And last but not least…the bedrooms. Well really just a little peek. The kids rooms haven’t been decorated yet at this house (we’ve done a lot in a year, but just haven’t had time to get up there yet) and they’re rather messy. But each child has a tree of their own to decorate as they please… And we put up a simple garland with twinkle lights in our master bedroom. One day I’d love a big white or flocked tree in our room. But not this year.

Thank you

Well that’s all.

Thank you so much for visiting our little house. We  hope you enjoyed the tour and were at least a little inspired to fill your home with both coziness and sparkle for the Christmas season!

Don’t forget:

• Tomorrow is our Handmade Gift and Wrap Link Party with Shauna of Satori Design for Living

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For even more Christmas decorating inspiration, I hope you’ll visit the other beautiful Christmas homes on the All Things Home Tour:

Monday

Worthing Court
French Country Cottage
Atta Girl Says
Town and Country Living
Decor Adventures
Lilacs and Longhorns

Tuesday
Marty’s Musings
Mom 4 Real
All Things Beautiful
Making Home Base
The Happier Homemaker
The Lily Pad Cottage

Wednesday
The Everyday Home
Craftberry Bush
Celebrating Everyday Life with Jennifer Carroll
Home Made Lovely
Hymns and Verses
Our Southern Home

Thursday
Stone Gable
Adventures in Decorating
Newly Woodwards
Setting for Four
Back Porch Musings
All Things Heart and Home

Friday
Cedar Hill Farmhouse
Cottage at the Crossroads
Top This Top That
Domestically Speaking
Mommy is Coocoo
Shabby Art Boutique

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For our American friends, One King’s Lane is offering a giveaway of $200 gift card! Just follow the Rafflecopter widget instructions below. And for our fellow Canadians, I sincerely apologize that we don’t have a giveaway this time.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Merry Christmas!