Matt + Chelsea's Christmas Home Part 2: Main Living Spaces

Back as promised with the second part of our holiday home tour! We sure do have fun decorating our home to celebrate this most special birthday, just as we do for one of our own family birthdays. This season, despite all it’s busy-ness, is covered in so much joy. I pray that you’re feeling it in some way.

On Wednesday I shared our bedrooms, so today please come on in and explore our main living spaces!

A few subtle and not so subtle additions in here this year - garland is easy but with such an open main living space now, I didn’t want to just drape it everywhere and overwhelm the space. I love it over our sliding glass doors and decided this would be it for garland this year. Just enough.

In such a shared space as this I am more aware than ever of any ‘excess’. For Christmas decorating this year we unpacked a lot from our Christmas boxes, but less than usual. I more just wanted the space to feel comfy and cozy for the family and guests over the holidays, so adding plush pillows on the dining chairs where we don’t usually have pillows and twinkly lights where we don’t usually have twinkly lights, have been subtle additions that add a lot of impact.

Our tree this year is small but mighty! For such a stout little thing it is happy, healthy and strong as an ox! Not a single dropped ornament and completely self sufficient. Last years tree, which we named Mariah Carey, was a regular diva, requiring us to anchor her to the wall because she couldn’t stand straight on her own, and her flimsy branches wouldn’t even support our homemade paper ornaments. In honor of our Mason’s favorite Eagles player, we’ll call this years tree Darren Sproles; a 5’6” pack of dynamo.

Our one of a kind Christmas tree skirt was a fun DIY a few years ago when I scored a 9x12 vintage rug for $20. It was a steel because the entire thing had been severed in half and then duct taped back together. (!!!) I used my old tree skirt as a template and cut out 6 tree skirts from the rug, (and a few coasters)!

Our kitchen is seeing a whole lot of action this season, wth weekly batches of pumpkin bread and hundreds of Christmas cookies, (I mean, you can’t just have 2 sandtarts in a sitting, people). I need to keep my counters somewhat open but a couple pretty plants and a wintry windowsill make it a very happy place to work and play, indeed!

Well there you have it! I hope you’ve enjoyed coming through; it’s so fun inviting you in every holiday season! This time of year comes with a lot of expectations that are hard to meet; but there is One we can count on each and every day, who came to triumph our despair and give us hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you so much for coming by today and Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Pinch of Merriment Home Tour

You know, I really debated whether or not to even take photos of our home over the holidays this year to share here - I feel like every year I do less and less out of preference for simplicity in this house! But Cate and I just love celebrating home in all its forms, be it a bedroom to call your own, temporary military base housing, or the home you’ve lived in for 35 years. This home of ours has gone through so much as our family has grown and evolved within its walls. And it dawned on me that sharing it here has been an unexpected way of documenting life as we know it! So I share our home today less for today, and more for the future, when I will look back on this chapter and remember how very good it was, indeed.

Since I just shared our main floor after the kitchen reno, let’s start upstairs in the master!

Just a swag of fresh garland from Trader Joes, ($7.50 for 15ft), and we’re done! Odds and ends from the kids tend to find our bedroom fast, so I really like taking advantage of the wall over the bed for one pretty thing, rather than adding more items to our surfaces.

And on our main floor we would like to introduce you to this years tree, Mariah Carey! Every year I have named our Christmas tree after a person, (fictional or real), based on looks or personality - we’ve had Paul Pheiffer from the Wonder Years, Rosemary Clooney…. This year our tree has been a total nut. It refuses to stand up straight and has fallen over, so if you look really closely you can see the fishing line my husband is using to hold it upright. It’s not even standing on it’s own accord!!!! I had to name our 2018 tree after the diva herself, (it’s lustrous needles sure are pretty, after all). And yes, I prepped that star before taking a photo and it was straight before I turned around to take the shot. You get the name now?

Other than Mariah, just a few little things peppered around this space. Most of it has either been gifted, or I found at a holiday craft fair our first year of marriage - I hit up every single one in a 20 mile radius that year, not even kidding!

I’m very excited about one little project I worked in this season - the bench of my dreams! After Cate designed and started making these to order last Fall, I have been eager to make one for our own home! I actually commissioned one for a design client who’s bedroom I was working on last Winter, but to finally have one of our own is such a treat. I love it! Cate’s very easy to follow tutorial can be found here for anyone curious.

Still getting used to this view! That deep teal island used to be an L shaped wall!

One of my favorite objectives when I am decorating, whether it’s my own home or for a client, is to create as much impact with as few items as possible. I’m not a stone-cold minimalist, but I sure do crave simplicity! It’s funny the things that strike our fancy, isn’t it?

Wrapping this thing up at the kitchen! Isn’t that where company always ends up? I have been loving it in here since we took down that wall, but not by myself! The best part has been using it together! Having this space to interact with each other and with guests is the gift that keeps on giving.

I hope you enjoyed the tour, but mostly that you were able to relax and take advantage of a few moments of peace while you were scrolling through! Those moments are hard to come by these next couple weeks but the Lord can use even the brief ones to rest and restore us. We invite you back on Monday for a tour of Cate’s holiday home, and then next Wednesday, December 19 I’m giving away TWO gift cards to a very sweet and talented friend’s home goods shop. I don’t secret well so I’d better jet before it all spills out. See ya next Wednesday, friends!

Thank you so much for coming by today!

*Have some shopping to do? Check out our gift-buying guide here!

*Need a Christmas tree skirt? Our favorites are here!

Chelsea's Scandinavian Holiday Home Tour

For more Christmas home tours, click the button! Courtesy of Jennifer Rizzo.

Our Christmas home tour starts with a tall, skinny, (somewhat) sparse tree. {Here are all our lumberjacks - I see one lost his shoe!}

I'm calling this years' tree 'Paul Pfeiffer' since he reminds me of Kevin Arnold's pal from the Wonder Years. See the resemblance? Both a little awkward but they mean well. :)

As with all of my styling projects I took a cue from the main focus, (in this case, the tree), and let that dictate the rest of the holiday decorating. Our tree is really simple this year, and simple is just what my soul needed. So I looked around at some Scandinavian inspiration and went forward!

Scandinavian style defined: A mixture of the the right amount of light and color.  It is the convergence of functionality and shape.  It often intermixes old and new with a little bit of irony. (source)

This is my home base - As much as I love and am influenced by so many different styles, (bohemian and mid-century, especially), I tend to blend styles together in a very Scandinavian inspired way. So while I was decorating our home for this Christmas season, it was my intention to keep things as simple and cozy as possible, but also special at the same time. Let's look around!

Front Entrance

I shared the easy deets on this faux succulent wreath a couple weeks ago, and you might recognize these rustic homemade pillar candle holders from this post!

Living Room

This little musical train going around was a gift from my grandparents years ago and has entranced the kids every year since they could stand up to watch it!

The little wooden O-J-Y train was a Christmas craft fair purchase before our first married Christmas together almost 10 years ago. I had prayed we'd have little ones to enjoy it one day, and now they sure do. :)

Paul Pheiffer, in all his glory.

One tree. With all our old, collected, and homemade ornaments. That's all I need.

Copper and wood trees from our friends at Axel Co, and last years' geo painted coasters; how-to here.

Dining Room

This is the first time I'm sharing our 'new' table here! I sanded down our dark stained World Market Garner Extension table in good faith that the natural wood underneath would be 10 times better for our space! It's such a fun contrast to our pipe shelves, (I can't believe we just built those exactly a year ago! Feels like they've been there forever).

You'd better watch where you stand around here or you might get a smooch!

A few pheasant feathers from A.C. Moore add a little more dimension and 'bulk' to our boxwood garland.

Simple centerpiece with a festive surprise inside.

I didn't use a lot of red this year, but these berries peeking out are one of my favorite things in the whole room!

Kitchen

This isn't a huge kitchen and quickly gets overwhelmed with dinner prep and dishes. The whispy wreath that echos a few feathers from the dining room garland and the simple green plaid dishtowel are the sweetest little whispers of Christmas without over-filling the space.

Master Bedroom

While I don't add much, I do enjoy bringing a little Christmas to the bedrooms. These trees add a healthy dose of holiday cheer given their small size!

This room got a fun makeover right at the beginning of this year, after I had packed up all the holiday decor from Christmas 2014! The Cutting Edge Stencil's 'FUJI' stencil has been on the wall almost one year and still makes this room feel so fresh and fun! Details on stenciling this wall here.

One of my favorite decorating tricks that I just discovered this year, (from our pals Cassie and Sarah at Sweet Clover Barn), is covering accent chair seats with small rugs - especially ones with fringe on the end!

Colin and Mason's Room
(ages 6 and 4)
More of their room here.
 

Shire's Room
(age 6)
More of her room here.
 

Last year's magazine tree plus some foam trees she decorated from the Target $1 spot add a jolly little touch to her bookshelf!

That's it, folks! I'm sharing our holiday home tour in adoring memory of Matt's grandfather, Carl Snavely. He slipped away peacefully this past week to go be with Jesus and we will be celebrating his amazing life with family and friends this weekend. As a family it was our little tradition to go visit him and Grandma up in PA between Thanksgiving and Christmas. During our visit we would all bundle up and Grandpa would walk us through the charming downtown Lititz, where they lived all their life. Christmas there is pure magic. And Grandpa wanted to be sure we got a taste, every single year. So this little tour, though simple and far from magical, is for him. A small taste of Christmas, to you and yours.

Grandpa playing marbles last year with Mason, our youngest.

Thank you so much for coming by. It's a pleasure to celebrate with you this precious time of year and Christ's most treasured gift. I pray that time will move slowly for us all during this busy time so that we can enjoy those we treasure to the fullest.