Christmas Inspiration

Hey there! 

Just thought I’d post a few cozy inspiration pics for you to enjoy while you’re getting ready for Christmas! These will go at the beginning, because the rest of the pictures are more real-life (meaning they’re not perfectly decorated, styled, photographed, or anything else but at least they’re real!).

Some of My Favorites

I love this view of our bedroom decorated with a rustic Christmas look:

Our entryway all tidied up! This year it doesn’t look quite like this. We are switching out this railing for one reclaimed from a very old house and it’s leaning up in the stairway at the moment. 

This picture is from our Boston clients’ yard. I don’t think I would be up for a winter in the Northeast, but they certainly do have us beat in Tennessee when it comes to wintry scenes. 

Some of Dave’s Favorites

We’ve been enjoying the soft glow of our little ceramic tree “forest” (Dave’s favorite) and our new big tree this year. Dave always loved his ceramic tree as a kid and now hoards them. I’m okay with this since they’re back in style.

I’m not sure why only the blue lights show up on the big tree but it’s actually kind of retro-multicolored. I tend to like white lights better, which was what our old tree was (bless its little burned-out heart). We got an LED tree this year that does both color and white. It has bigger bulbs than usual, which remind me of the tree my grandpa had in his house when I was a kid. Here’s a very non-professional phone photo of it at night:

Note: the rug in the picture above is usually littered with Legos.

My other favorite trees are the midcentury tinsel ones. This year we only put one out because of our three kitties. Our big tree is regularly climbed by kitties, so you might notice that the only ornaments on it are candy canes. (Kind of like when tiny tots get old enough to start milling around and pulling down everything in sight).

I will spare you what our master bath looks like this year, but here it was in all its decorated glory.

Those little vintage tinsel trees look good anywhere and are so festive! This year the trunk is strewn with the less-than-pretty things, like mouthwash and hairbrushes and stuff. It would be nice to have a cabinet in here with storage instead of the pedestal sinks, but I just love the look the way it is. 

Gingerbread Houses

We continued our tradition of making gingerbread houses too. This year there weren’t tears about the graham crackers falling down. We found a photo from 2010 with us making gingerbread houses, so we recreated the shot with our now-big kids. Here’s what the older two looked like in 2010 (the littlest guy was in his crib during the action):

This is Bennett at age 2 (the little lady on the left) and Judah, age 4, who are now 11 and 13. Here they are this year:

We tried to recreate it exactly but now these two tots are several feet longer than they were in 2010. I’ll include a pic of Deacon, since it wasn’t his fault he was in his crib back in 2010.

Something New

Here’s our cozy dining room, which is most used as a workspace for kids and for me. I decided to do blue and white this year on the table for fun. I love the look of brass candlesticks with it. We try to have the kids clean off the table when they’re done with it so it looks inviting for everyone else.

Here it is while I’m working on this blog post! It’s a lot more fun to do work when the surroundings are nice. This coffee is probably going to keep me up way too late, but it’s just so much cozier with it.

We got mugs! And lots of other exciting stuff happened! An updated is long overdue, as well as pictures of some of our favorite kitchens we’ve done this year. We’re also working on some exciting things with our designer friend Holly Mathis that will be up and running in 2020. Thanks for sticking with us!

Have a very Merry Christmas!