{ Holiday House Tour }

We made our move just before all the holiday rush, and though many boxes remained unpacked I was anxious to get out some of our Christmas decorations and make our new house a home. Here are some of the main living areas we decorated. I’ll have to share more of the house as I slowly start to decorate and finish unpacking.

Here is our kitchen from the front room. There is a hallway just past the refrigerator that leads to the garage, laundry room/mudroom and Aaron’s office/extra storage pantry room.

A view of the kitchen from the sunroom. I am realizing how much I would like a wider angle lens. These pictures really don’t do the space justice. It is just so open, I love it. This kitchen is definitely the heart of our home. It brings me so much joy to have many hands working in here at once. The kids will be at the island doing homework, someone at the stove cooking, someone else making Family Home Evening treats in the corner, others talking to us while all standing around the island, all while the little boys run around and open drawers. It is my idea of heaven. It’s one of the things we made sure we did when designing this house-make this area have lots of room so we could all be together in one spot-talking, laughing, eating, having good old fashioned bonding time. I love it.

My Christmas wreaths this year were just a simple evergreen wreath hung from ribbon. It was totally simple, and I loved how it looked. Here they are in the sunroom looking out to the back yard.

And here are some in our kitchen above the sink.

A view from the garage hallway leading into the kitchen

Our stockings hung on our banister. Erika saw a picture I had in my idea book that I would carry everywhere with me as we were building the house that had stockings hung from the staircase. She was adamant that that was where our stockings were going to be hung as well.

We ended up having to hang them all the way up the stairs because we had so many of them. I love that!

Our sunroom that is just off our eating area in the kitchen. There is a built in desk just to the left along the wall. I love having a space out in the open to have the computer. It’s perfect because I can work on the computer and see the whole backyard, or talk with someone in the kitchen or front room. I love our open floor plan so much. Someday those boxes will get unpacked, there will be nice soft cushions on the benches, some cozy pillows to lean on while reading a book, and maybe even some pictures actually hung. Someday soon I am hoping.

My favorite wooden trough filled with ornaments. I ended up adding some real evergreen branches to it and a few more ornaments. I used mostly green, silver, and turquoise colors to decorate this year and I LOVED it! I never thought I was a turquoise person, but I am really loving that color in my house.

Our elf on the shelf Chadwick in one of his hiding spots this year-on our counter with some new dish towels and my IKEA basket. When we were building I had picked out these small white subway tiles for the backsplash. I was a little nervous they would be too small and busy. They are by far one of my favorite things in the house. So simple, yet such a great classic look.

Another view of our island and our refrigerator. We get a lot of grief from people about how big our refrigerator is, but with 9 people in the house, I am so glad we went with it. It is a Frigidaire separate refrigerator and freezer that sit side by side with a trim kit. It has the look of a VIKING or a SUBZERO, but with a lot nicer price tag-I think I love that most of all. We have been so pleased with it so far. A funny thing to note for my own memory-the kids were concerned it didn’t have a water dispenser in the front of it, and Austin asked one day, “So where are we suppose to get water?” Um, try the faucet? I realized at that moment how spoiled we are. So far they have managed to get water from the faucet with ice from the ice maker and are surviving just fine.=)

We were able to do a Christmas tradition I have been wanting to do for years. My good friend Libby has done this with her family and I loved the idea. We have finally gathered enough Christmas books through the years to have one for everyday until Christmas. The kids took turns wrapping them and we displayed them in a basket in the front room. Each night whomever’s prayer night it was (We rotate ever night..Brianna is always Monday, Austin is Tuesday…) they got to choose a book from the basket, open it, and read it to us. It was so fun to hear all those stories again. Some were religious, some were heart warming and had a touching giving message, some were just silly and fun. After we read them we displayed them on top of our wainscoting ledge that runs through the main living area. The kids would pull down their favorites on some afternoons and read them again and again, and Scott and I would usually pick one for our naptime story. It was a fun new tradition.

And last but not least our Christmas tree this year. I loved that we were able to put it in the piano room and shut the door. Ryan was constantly taking off the ornaments-you can see the random one of the hardwood floor, and try to rip holes in the presents. We had our manger by the fireplace at first, but Ryan kept pulling all the hay out of it too, so it ended up in the piano room as well. The kids loved to go in there and put their presents in piles and play guessing games with them. It was funny to over hear the games they made up. Some had to do with closing your eyes and having to find a present for a certain person or guessing what was in each one. Those presents got quite man handled before Christmas morning.

I was really glad that we got to move in around a holiday, it made our house instantly seem like home to have some of our decorations up, when it would normally take me months to find what I wanted to put on the walls. It was a nice transition.