Christmas Home Tour + 7 Steps For Creating A Festive Christmas Home

Unleash the magic of the season with our 7 essential steps for creating a festive Christmas home! Make this season merry and bright with our savvy decor advice. And tour our home dressed up for the Holidays.

Welcome to our Christmas home! Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you.

Decorating our homes for Christmas can often seem like such a daunting task. There is so much to do, beginning with lugging those big blue bins up from the basement or down from the attic. Do we really use all the decor in our storage bins? Most of us don’t! There is an easier way!

With these 7 tips and a tour of a few of our rooms ready for Christmas, I can help you be less stressed, more organized, and have a plan to dress up your home for the Holidays!

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I am thrilled to be a part of The Bloggers Best Holiday Home Tour 2023. A big THANK YOU to Kelly at The Tattered Pew for all of her hard work organizing and hosting this tour. Kelly is as lovely and colorful as her beautiful home with vintage touches. I met Kelly at a blogging conference years ago. She is such a sweetheart!

If you are coming from her wonderful tour, welcome!

I’m excited to show you how I decorated our home this year. Let’s start in the foyer and chat about tips 1 and 2 for creating a festive Christmas Home.

Tip 1- Choose The Perfect Color Palette And Theme

Decorating for Christmas is so much easier when you take the time to establish two things before you add a faux garland to a mantel or one Christmas ornament on your tree. Choosing a color palette and a theme for your Holiday decor will give you focus and help you choose only what you need to decorate a gorgeous Holiday home.

I know I often sound like a broken Christmas record. But I am convinced that when we nail down Christmas colors that work with the colors we are already using in our home and have a theme that we can effortlessly thread throughout our homes, we can create Christmas decorating magic.

This year, I was inspired by a few things that helped me decide on a color palette and theme.

In the fall, I dried oranges and fell in love with them and their color. The oranges reminded me of stained glass, and I just knew I had to make them part of my Christmas decor color palette.

This year I chose a Christmas color palette that is so different than I have ever used. I was inspired by a couple of things. The oranges, of course, and an almost forgotten tree, I will talk about later in the post. Both of these things gave me the creative push I needed to get the wheels of Christmas decorating inspiration working.

The Foyer And Theme

Welcome to our Christmas foyer. Some of the items in the foyer might seem a bit familiar if you follow StoneGable because they are.

This year, the words transitioning decor have been playing in my head like an earworm.

I’ve been so fascinated with the idea of easing into and through and then out seasonal decor. So, I wanted to use some of the things from my fall decor, tweak them a bit, and use them for Christmas. There is no need to recreate the decor wheel! This is recycling at its most useful.

The lanterns on the foyer table were part of my fall decor. The candles had a blond-colored leaf collar around them. To make them more festive for Christmas, I added sprigs of evergreens and tiny pinecones. An easy transformation from fall decor to Christmas. I also added pinecones around the base of the candlesticks. The pinecones and evergreens give a nod to this year’s Christmas theme, Woodland Walk.

In the center of the foyer table, I added a simple bowl of gold pears, silver ornaments, pinecones, and evergreens. As you tour our Christmas home, you will see lots of repeated woodland elements, both real and faux.

Repeating things is an easy way to carry a theme throughout your home when you decorate for Christmas or any other time of year.

You might like to know more about Repeating Elements In Decor and how to use this concept like a pro.

The Color Palette

As I said earlier, I knew dried oranges would play a role in our Christmas color palette this year. However, instead of bright orange, I chose a more muted copper color.

In the foyer, I hung a wreath on the vertical hook with a beautiful silk copper ribbon tied up in a bow on it.

A pinecone and acorn ornament were hung on copper velvet ribbons from the wreath, and a set of vintage-style bells also hung on the hook.

I moved the basket from the front door into the foyer under the wreath. The colors this year might be a bit unusual, but hopefully as festive as more traditional ones.

Tip 2- Create Decorating Zones In Your Home

What are decorating zones? And why create them to decorate your home for Christmas?

Decorating zones are a way of sectioning off your home. It’s that easy! In our home, our foyer is one decorating zone, our living room, dining room, and kitchen are another decorating zone, and our sunroom is yet another.

Keeping my color palette and theme in mind for every room, I can feel comfortable decorating each zone with its own personality, tweaking it, and making it just a little different than other zones in our home.

The first decorating zone was the foyer. Now, let’s head into the living room, which is part of another decorating zone in our home.

The Living Room

While I kept the foyer light and airy, the living room and dining room have a moodier look. Same color palette, and same theme as the foyer, just interpreted a little bit differently. This is why knowing how to use decorating zones in our homes is so important! We can make subtle changes without these changes looking overwhelming, disjointed, or confusing.

The White Buffet

The white buffet holds the most important Christmas decoration in our home. Even more important than the Christmas tree. For it reminds us of the reason we celebrate Christmas!

The nativity is new to us this year. My two little granddaughters carefully took the nativity down off of the white buffet, piece by piece, and played with it on the floor for a long time on Thanksgiving evening. It was lovely to see them holding baby Jesus with such care and reverence. They took turns hugging him up to their faces. What a blessing to be able to see.

This is also the first Christmas for the antique mirror above the buffet. I thought this would be the right spot for a big evergreen wreath tied with a copper bow.

On the right side of the mantel, a white vase holds Norfolk pine and white pine with the addition of pheasant feathers and fairy lights. Norfolk pine branches are very popular this year. They are everywhere on the internet. I think they are so pretty and droopy, but I prefer them mixed with other evergreens. All evergreens look great mixed together. Give it a try!

All my greens are faux this year. No mess, and since I use them year after year, they have become an economical choice. You might like to see two posts filled with great information, tips, and ideas for using greens…

Best Tips For Decorating With Faux Christmas Greens

Tips For Keeping Live Christmas Greens Fresh

One of the easiest Christmas decorations you can create is a small bowl of ornaments with sprigs of greens. Instantly festive! To a small gold bowl filled with silver ornaments and small sprigs of evergreens, I also added pinecones, which are a big repeated element in this year’s Woodland theme. Such an easy idea.

When you don’t know what to put on a flat surface, craft a pretty bowl of Christmas joy!

The Mantel

I decorated the mantel in late fall with Norfolk Pine, pinecones, glass acorns, and pheasant feathers. Here’s how it looked…

With the addition of a few more organic elements like various evergreens, and more pinecones, the mantel took on a more Christmas look.

And I added a trio of neutral-colored stockings!

A cluster of pinecones, pheasant feathers, and glass pinecone ornament adorned the center of the mantel.

The brown pillow on the chair is one of my favorites. I used it to decorate our fall home, and it works for our Christmas woodland home, too.

The Curlacue

I think the Curlacue chest is my favorite piece of furniture.

The Curlacue chest, like the rest of our Christmas decor, has a woodland flair. Three candles are encircled at their base by a simple and sparse evergreen wreath. The candles coordinate with the burnt orange velvet ribbon used to hang the acorn and pinecone ornaments on the tree.

The stately reindeer has been a few colors over the years. Now, it is gold. If you like the shape of a piece of decor but not the color, paint it! I kept his metal antlers their original color.

Tip 3- Add One Christmas Worthy Arrangement To Every Room

The Coffee Table

The coffee table gets a mention here because it is the eighth coffee table we have had in the living room in the four years we have lived at the Tanglewood House. And it’s a keeper! Thank goodness.

A large Advent dough bowl sits in the center of the coffee table, mimicking its shape. It has graced our sunroom’s coffee table, our dining room table, and the kitchen island, and now here it is in the living room.

The image below shows the living room with the candles lit. You can see how to make the Christmas Advent Dough Bowl HERE. Did you notice the dried oranges in the dough bowl?

Tip 4- Make Your Tree The Star

Your Christmas tree should be the star of your home during the holidays! It should be dressed up in your Christmas color palette and theme, and all the decor in your home should work to support it. If you have lots of meaningful Christmas ornaments, you use year after year, add ribbon or colored balls to your Christmas color palette to help your tree look more cohesive with the rest of your home.

This year’s tree is so different than the trees in the recent past. When I was thinking about the theme for this year’s Christmas decor, I remembered I had this tree in the basement. Once we dug it out and set it up I knew a woodland theme was perfect this year. Unfortunately, the tree is no longer made, so I don’t have a source for it.

Some images in this post have the tree lights on and some off. It’s so much easier to see the details on the tree without the lights, but when they are on, the tree is magical. I think I’ve used the word magical four times in this post, but it’s such a good word to describe how Christmas looks and feels.

Wrap gifts in paper and embellish them with bows and other organics that work with your color palette and theme.

This year’s tree is filled with ornaments, real and faux, that represent things from a walk in the woods. Pinecones, acorns, and pheasant feathers mixed with velvet ribbons and homemade Christmas balls.

Some of the Christmas balls were crafted from old balls. The ornaments were painted and rolled in flour or cocoa powder to give them a pretty distressed look. Look for a tutorial on how to make them coming soon. They smell delicious!

Now, let’s head to the dining area and chat about Tip #5…

Tip 5- Light Up The Night

Lighting up Christmas nights with candles, lanterns, and strings of lights makes our homes look and feel so special. This is the time of year to use these accent lights liberally.

My favorite way to do this is with plug-in or battery-operated lights and candles on timers. No worrying about a live flame or remembering to turn off or on the lights.

The Dining Room

The tall centerpiece on the dining room table is a white lantern I’ve had for over a decade. Instead of using it as a lantern, I’m using it here as a chunky vase. It’s filled with Norfolk pine and a bit of snowy white pine, like the greens on the pendant light above it. I put fairy lights on timers in the pines so they light up when it begins to get dark outside.

I think Norfolk pine branches look so pretty in a tall vase or container.

Instead of using tall candlesticks on the dining room table, I added two swags of evergreens with copper ribbon looped in them and brown votive candles with little tea lights.

Tip 6- Christmas Music And Aromas

Fill your home with the scents and sounds of Christmas. Play your favorite Christmas tunes when decorating for the Holidays, and sing along. Decorating will seem much easier and a whole lot more fun!

Diffuse your favorite Christmas scents to help to get in the Christmas spirit. I like to diffuse Fraser Fir when I decorate my artificial tree. And a combination of cinnamon, orange, clove, and Fraser fir during the evenings when Christmas tree lights are on.

But my favorite scents are made on my stove in a Christmas Simmer Pot! Here’s a little look at what I’m making in my kitchen. A fresh Christmas simmer pot…

And one made with dried fruit and other ingredients for gift-giving…

Listening to Christmas music and beautiful aromas wafting through our home are the joys of Christmas.

Find out how to make both Christmas Simmer Pots HERE.

Tip 7- Take Pictures

Do yourself a big, big favor and take a picture of everything you decorate in your home. Taking pictures serves two main purposes.

First, a picture is like a decorating assistant. It can show you what you can’t see. When I decorate my tree, I like to take a picture of different parts of it because the picture can show me if any ornaments are wonky. And no one wants wonky ornaments.

Pictures are also a fabulous record of how you decorated your home in Holidays past. Thank goodness, I have a record of my Christmas decor through the images on my blog.

And when you need to buy decor to fill in what you have already decorated, it’s so nice to have an image on hand when shopping!

Click To See More Christmas Inspiration

Shopping Guide

It’s time I say goodbye for now and send you on your way to another home so you can find even more Christmas ideas and inspiration! The next home on your stop is my dear friend Suzy at Worthing Court. I love Suzy’s beautiful southern style and the talented way she decorates. Suzy will be visiting me in one week. I can’t wait!

Thank you so much for touring our Christmas home. I wish you and those you love a heart and home filled with love, peace, and joy!

Make sure to come back and check out all the bloggers sharing their Christmas homes all week!

Bloggers’ Best Holiday Home Tours

This week I am joining some of my blogging friends for the Bloggers’ Best 2023 Holiday Home Tours. Thirty talented and creative women will be opening their homes up for you to tour all week long. You can visit each home tour by clicking the links below. Enjoy!

Monday’s Tours

The Tattered Pew // StoneGable // Worthing Court Blog

Southern Home and Hospitality // Our Crafty Mom // My Thrift Store Addiction

Tuesday’s Tours

A Life Unfolding // Living Large In a Small House // Cottage On Bunker Hill

Bricks ‘n Blooms // Cottage In the Mitten

Wednesday’s Tours

WM Design House // The Ponds Farmhouse // Shiplap and Shells

Simply 2 Moms // Robyn’s French Nest // Amy Sadler Designs

Thursday’s Tours

Midwest Life and Style // White Arrows Home // White Lilac Farmhouse

DIY Beautify // Thistle Key Lane

Friday’s Tours

She Gave It a Go // Pasha Is Home // This Is Simplicite

Decor to Adore // Le Cultivateur // Peacock Ridge Farm