Happy Saturday and Merry Christmas! Today I’m getting around to sharing part 2 of my holiday decorations – the upstairs!
Since this is our main living/dining room that we spend a lot of time in, I try to make it look festive, but not too cluttered. Keeping things simple helps me (and my family) feel calmer as we go about our days.
Every year I remix my holiday decorations a bit by combining the things I have in different ways. This helps keep things interesting and challenges my brain to find new ways to create the simple holiday magic I’m looking for. It also means I don’t have to go out and buy all new decorations each year. So, yay for saving money!
I put my cute little ceramic houses on our bar cart this year, adding a bit of height with a marble top cake stand. I love how the contrast plays off all the other black and white in the room.
For the mantle this year I purchased two inexpensive garlands from Walmart. They were such a steal and look really realistic in person. Adding the wood bead garland I made two years ago completes the simple, neutral look I was going for.
I also added some faux garland to our stairs this year. Last year I made my own fresh evergreen garland and it was gorgeous, but this year I decided to go with faux to minimize the amount of needles that would drop on our stairs. And the the amount of vacuuming. 🙂
The new bookshelves are everything I hoped they would be for Christmas. They are the perfect place to add holiday decorations and are so fun to customize for the season. With our smallish house, I really feel like I don’t have that many surfaces I can decorate. These shelves give me alllll the horizontal surface I could want!
The vintage brass deer I’ve had for years seem right at home with the brass wall tracks. It seems to give off a very mid century scandinavian vibe.
Our Christmas tree this year is another fresh-from-the-mountain find. He’s very sparse, but was sturdy enough to add white and gold balls. And just to call out something amazing – the white balls are glass! I’ve had these since before kids and this is the first year since having my oldest 9 years ago that I have felt comfortable putting them out. Now that I write that I feel two things 1) I’m getting old and 2) my kids are growing up. Excuse me while I go find some tissues…
Looking back toward the kitchen you can see how our decorations are festive, but simple in a minimalist way. I like how it blends with our normal house decor and doesn’t scream “Christmas red”. Maybe some year I’ll get back to touches of red, but for now, I’m really loving the calmness of a neutral palate.
Well, that wraps up our tour for today. I hope you enjoyed getting a peek into our decorated home this year! I know I sure have been enjoying having the house decorated for Christmas and will be sad when it’s time to take it down. But I will be sure to savor every moment over the next week and will try to slow down and just enjoy the lights, colors, and textures of Christmas.
If you would like to see how we have decorated our homes over the last few years, you can read the posts below:
Merry Christmas friends!
