Our Christmas Home Tour 2009

Welcome to our Christmas Home Tour. We live in southern Ontario, Canada and with the recent arrival of snow and cold cold weather, Christmas is definitely in the air, both inside and out. If you've stopped by from some of my favourite bloggy linky parties, I hope you enjoy the tour! There are lots of pictures.

 Quoting one of my favourite bloggers, Melissa from The Inspired Room,

 "And no perfection allowed, as you will see. Real life. At my house, we are decorating for ourselves, not to show the world how perfect our home is (because it isn’t) or how magazine cover worthy every corner is (because CLEARLY it isn’t)." Melissa, The Inspired Room

Warning: Photo Heavy!

We went with a simpler theme outdoors this year, white lights, white muslin bows and greenery.

A newly quilted flannel wall hanging above our fireplace in the family room.

Santa's on the t.v. cabinet in the family room too.

Also in the family room is our main family tree, with all our collected, school made, and handcrafted ornaments. This is the tree we use for presents.

Ten years later we still do not have a fireplace mantel  in our family room. The fireplace was installed off centre and I am stuggling with an affordable design. I quickly put up these hooks to hold our stockings that I stitched. Hopefully, our fireplace wall will be a project in 2010.

On the back of each stocking:

Lots of cross-stitched ornaments and home made bows.

My guys love HOCKEY! We have lots of ornaments to celebrate this, including some favourites like...Vancouver Canucks (from Funky Junk Interiors Donna's province on the west coast.)

Closer to home, Toronto Maple Leafs.

Some special ornaments from our trip to Disney:

Our natural cowboy Christmas tree in the living room, and mantel shelf shown here.

In the kitchen is our advent calendar I sewed from a kit a few years ago.

A mini tree on the breakfast counter with wooden lights and muslin strips for bows.

On to our dining room...

I tied some extra strands of red wood beads on the chairs.

Some mercury glass pieces, crystal, silver balls and lots of white.

On our sideboard/buffet some red wood beads and candycanes.

On to our bedroom where I used a small tree and some garland on the bed, with details posted here.

Merry Christmas to all! I hope you enjoyed your tour as much as I enjoy the Christmas home tours, trees and ideas at these great blog parties:

Funky Junk Interiors by fellow Canadian, Donna

The Nester's Christmas Tour of Homes

Rhoda's Southern Hospitality Home for the Holidays

 

The Inspired Room's Holiday Linky Friday

Edited to add:Thanks for all the kind comments! I'm trying to get around to everyone but I've received several questions about the white rag garland. Nester, Nester people. She is the genius from whom I borrowed the raggamuffin garland idea. Nester even has a tutorial with tons of photos on her blog. Check it out. And when you stop laughing at her humourous ways of delivering the instructions, get ripping and tie, tie, tie. I cheated and wanted mine done in two hours so I used a rotary cutter and mat from my quilting supplies to cut a lot of the fabric, saved time but not quite the same as Nester's. Mine has a few stray edges, but is missing some of that torn loveliness. Ribbon and trim too, add ribbon girls. I may still try and go back and squeeze some ribbon and trim in.