Just a quick post today to share a few scenes from around our Christmas home!
With the way our house is laid out – one main open room on the first floor, so only a few walls and corners – we just don’t have that many surfaces to decorate. While our nativity may be clustered around our TV instead of luxuriating on a foyer table or piano top, I think this year more than ever we made the most of what we do have.
Come on in!
Before we step inside, let’s pause on the porch. I envisioned Christmas wreaths on our front gates before they were even built and they live up to all my dreams! Wreaths are from Trader Joe’s and the bows are from Etsy.
These cardboard gingerbread houses were a very fun after-school project last week! I cut shapes from a delivery box and we all used white paint and white paint pens to add detail. The paint pens made it easy to achieve an elegant look even for our five year old. We didn’t trust Annie with them, but she had fun going to town with the white paint – the kids decided her houses were in the midst of a snowstorm, ha.
Popping a few bows in unexpected places was a new addition this year.
We had a German Christmas pyramid growing up and it was one of my very favorite decorations. I asked for the exact same one as a gift the first year we were in our house – this is it! The tablecloth is from HomeGoods.
All dressed up for Articles Club last night!
The pine garland is a new addition this year and is excellent quality. Sadly, it’s sold out (I went back to buy another for our stairs!), but I’d put in your email to be notified if you’re interested! That’s how I snagged these two earlier this year. Here are the candles (battery operated but with real wax!) and candleholders.
This canvas, one of Lindsay Letters’ very first, was a wedding gift more than a decade ago.
This may be of niche interest, but I wanted to share just in case. I bought two of these little caroling books ($4!) at the start of the season, and they have been fun for guitar singalongs. June, especially, loves them and has squirreled one away to her room in an attempt to memorize the lyrics to every Christmas song :)
Finally, here is a peek at our Christmas card! June and I chose the design together and I love that it’s festive while still working with our outfit color palette.
Thanks for stopping in, friends! If you have any questions about anything I haven’t mentioned, just drop a note in the comments.
We’re in the middle of what seems to be an unplanned mini-series right now – if I was savvier, I’d have called it something like “living with kids, simplified” :) I guess the back-to-school spirit is in the air!
In my last post, I mentioned that particularly prized pieces of artwork go on our kids’ bulletin boards. After it went live, I realized I haven’t shown you those bulletin boards! They’re simple, but they’ve been a bit of a missing puzzle piece for us, so I’m happy to share.
A few pain points were resolved in this space. First, pieces of artwork that needed a worthy display found a home. Second, our kids got a spot to customize on the first floor. And finally, we made good use of a previously-empty hallway.
I purchased three of these framed linen bulletin boards (the 20×30″ size) and hung them up in a row. They have the neutral, classic look I was hoping for (gotta let that colorful artwork shine!) and the price is great ($24 each (!!) at the time of this writing, marked down from their usual $60 (which is still a great price!)).
Just so you’re not surprised if you buy one, I’d say the surface is a bit harder than your typical cork, so I do need to help the kids push in the pins at this point.
Each child has free rein to decorate his or her board, and it’s fun to see their personalities come out to play. Shep pins things up with abandon, while June adds things very selectively. June’s board also houses her calendar, where she keeps track of her specials and other relevant information for her life. Annie’s gets additions from me and her siblings :) I appreciate that the bulletin boards are centrally located, but not facing into the main living space, which makes the free-rein-ness easy to grant, ha!
All in all, adding these kids’ bulletin boards was a super-simple project. It did exactly what I was hoping it would – give us an extra display space, and add a little colorful fun to the hallway – for minimal effort and expense. A back-to-school win!
Up next: the final post in this mini-series, on after-school jobs!
Our solution to the voluminous piles of artwork our kids bring home is right around the corner from our solution to kids’ shoes: the art basket!
A solution is necessary not only because of the amount of artwork that comes home (and random scribbles, and folded pieces of paper, and worksheets, and yarn clippings (Montessori life IYKYK)) – if left to my own devices, I could efficiently cull the keepers and toss everything else.
But that’s not what happens, because the idea of throwing out a just-created masterpiece of any kind is anathema to my pint-sized artists. Tossing almost anything in front of them is asking for a daily battle over what gets kept.
So, we sidestep. Here’s what I do instead…
Everything that comes home from school or church goes in the art basket. We ooh and ahh over things as needed, and sometimes they pin items on their bulletin boards. But if it’s not going somewhere else, it goes in the art basket – no matter how lowly or how precious it might be.
The art basket is on the shelf of the bench in our front entry, so it’s right at hand when they’re coming in the door after school and emptying their backpacks and lunchboxes.
Eventually, the art basket fills up. Once it’s threatening to overflow, I’ll find a time when the kids are not around to go through it. I’ll sort through the stack and pull anything I want to keep in their memory boxes, then recycle the rest.
Here’s a very important key: the recycled papers MUST go in the outside recycling bin, NOT the inside one. Trust me, I’ve had plenty of things spotted and removed from the bin in the pantry, but so far they have not started dumpster diving in the outdoor bin. I leave a thin stack of papers in the bottom of the basket so it’s not 100% empty, and neither kid ever seems to notice I’ve been there.
As for those memory boxes, I recently added letter stickers to them and they are looking pretty cute! They’re from Joy Creative Shop, but I actually purchased mine from my friend Kaylee’s shop, where they were on sale. The bins are from Target. All three are stored under the beds upstairs!
Any questions? Happy to help, and godspeed with your own paper adventures this fall, friends.
About a year and a half ago, I shared inspiration for our master bedroom refresh. As often seems to happen with these more private spaces (as opposed to the more public spaces that everyone enjoys), our bedroom wasn’t at the top of the priority list (even though it is very much a hub of family life). We have finally completed what we set out to do, though, and I’d love to share the finished space with you today!
To refresh your memory, here’s where we started:
As we discussed, this room does A LOT. It’s where we sleep, obviously, but it’s also where our kids’ clothing is stored, where they get dressed in the morning, and where they pull on their jams at night. It’s our workout area, where our Peloton and weights live. And on top of all that, it’s John’s office 3-4 days a week. While it’s a good-sized room, again, that’s a LOT.
Here’s the landscape painting that inspired the color scheme. This was my gift to John on our wedding day eleven years ago – it reminded me of the dunes near his family’s cottage in Michigan. It has hung in our room ever since.
And here’s the after!
Ahhhhhh. It turned out even better than I had hoped :) Here’s a little breakdown of what we did:
We painted the walls. Thanks to longtime reader Emma, we went with Benjamin Moore Pale Smoke and I think it is the perfect color for this space – calming and elegant. We hired our handyman to paint and it was 100% worth it, as always.
We bought an actual bed (!!!). Those of you who have been here awhile know this deserves all the exclamation points. I think I started talking about wanting a real bed in 2013, ha! After much debate, we went with the Charlotte bed in Zuma White, which now appears to be called the Tilly bed. We have been so happy with it!
We refreshed our bedding. We kept the same quilt (not replacing that puppy until our kids are out of diapers, ha!), sheets, and big blue pillows, but added the green shams (in sage green) and floral pillow. (For the latter, I went with the 12×24 size and 100% should have gone larger for our king bed. Was trying to save money but wish I hadn’t in this instance :))
We switched out the curtains and hardware. I splurged on these custom curtains in an extra-long length so we could hang them high and I think they make the room. Sometimes I turn the corner and they practically stop me in my tracks, truly! We got blackout lining (rod pocket style) and the quality is excellent. We paired them with this curtain rod – simple and classic.
I have recently been thinking a lot about what a blessing our mortgage is. We’re just past a decade in this house, and in some ways, it seems so crazy that we’re still paying essentially the same amount each month when rent, home prices, and interest rates have soared all around us. It certainly eases the pain of squeezing a bed, home gym, double closet, and office into one room :) Would this multi-purpose room be our choice if money were no object? No. But it is certainly the right fit for right now, and for that we’re grateful.
It’s not too often you invite a bunch of friends over for a tour of your bedroom, but here we are! I hope you enjoyed it, and perhaps leave encouraged that it’s taken us over a decade in this house to get to this point :) Of course, as always, please let me know if you have any questions – I’m happy to help!
