Christmas Home Tour: Green Plaid, Metallic, & Natural

A green plaid, metallic, & natural Christmas home tour showing how to use your cherished holiday decor again and again, just in new ways.

Welcome friends to our Christmas home tour! Every year I feel kinda weird about doing a home tour because I don't want any of you to think I 'have it all together' or have amazing decorations or anything. But I do it for a couple reasons:

• I hope to encourage you by the fact that you can see how I reuse our Christmas decorations from year-to-year (check out our past home tours here to see what I mean: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011).
• And I hope to inspire you to see that changing how you use those same decorations can make them seem new again (case in point: the vintage music sheet wreath that anchors this year's mantel is 4 years old and has never been over the mantel)
• I like to show you how simple DIY's can be fun to make (they're really simple!) and create a unique look.
• It's fun to invite you in to have a look around - it's the next best thing to having you over for coffee!! (Though go ahead and pour a cup while you scroll through the photos and know I'm right there with you...)

So lets through our cottage decked out for the holidays!

Green Plaid, Metallic, & Natural Christmas Home Tour

This is the view when you first walk in our front door with the tree on your right.

As you can see, we have one big great room with the living room divided from the dining room and kitchen by a half wall (check out our general home tour to see all the rooms and details if you haven't yet - we've completely transformed this from what it was when we bought it!).

Here's another view of the living room with the tree all lit up. The tree lives in this spot each year since it can be seen from the window and doesn't block the room like it would next to the half wall.

We always get a live tree (we do live in a Christmas tree state after all...) and this year was the first year we can remember having a hard time finding a good one. We heard it was maybe because we had a drier than normal summer and the trees suffered.

Whatever the cause, two areas on the bottom were broken by the time the tree made it into the house so there are major holes. I actually had to use floral wire to hold some branches up - a first for me!

I use the same burlap ribbon, gold and silver bead garland, glittery ornaments, chalkboards, and book page ornaments that I've used for years and I love it. We all just really love our tree and the memories many of the ornaments carry.

If you remember the Christmas decor plan I shared with you, I wanted to add touches of green plaid - my one new addition this year. The first thing I made with the fabric were a couple of quick pillows I made using the same easy envelope pillow tutorial I used for our fall plaid pillows.

I'm really in love with this plaid - it's pretty different from all the busy red, black & green plaids I'm seeing all over and this is just so quiet and calming to me.

If you look back at the whole living room picture above, you can see that I also tore long pieces of the plaid and wrapped them around plain linen pillows, gift-like.

I also used some of the plaid to cover paper mache letters to spell out Noel which became the starting point for the mantel.

Taking my cue from the quiet-calm of the plaid, I decided to give our vintage music sheet wreath a place of honor this year, keeping the mantel neutral with touches of glimmery metallics, boxwood clippings and antlers (from the box of cast off antlers my stepdad gave me last year- quite a treasure now that they continue to be popular!).

My daughter dipped a few of the antler tips in gold paint, which is a fun touch.

I did purchase one other new thing besides the fabric - this adorable pillow from H&M. It's so cute and was only $5.99 with a coupon I had, can you believe it?

Behind the chair you can see our chalkboard decked out for Christmas with the DIY pom pom wreath that previously spent a couple years over the mantel.

I think the dark chalkboard really makes the pom pom wreath pop, don't you?

My daughter did the hand lettering for the board, using a sign we found on Pinterest as inspiration.

Here are a few other vignettes around that show you how I'm using some of my past DIY projects again this year.

You can find the tutorial for the 'Joy' sign here (it's made from a cupboard door) and the sheet music coasters here.

I'm also really loving being able to decorate our new side tables - the card catalog we made into a table and the set of nesting tables Brian made from plans we found online.

The green plaid shows up again as a runner in the dining room (here is the super easy, no-sew tutorial for that), along with the pom-pom garland and more greenery.

My daughter hung our book page ring garland and music sheet ornaments from the dining room windows, which was a totally new way to use these.

And it's the best ever, I think - I really like how this accents the windows.

I also used our Dollar Store chair decorations again this year, just adding a simple sprig of rosemary instead of the cypress.

The centerpiece is cut boxwood and laurels with candles, antlers, and small vintage ornaments on a platter so it's easy to move when we need the table for other things (it's our only dining table). You can find all the details on the centerpiece and table setting here.

I feel like I've written "I" an awful lot here, but I hope you come away with the idea that it's okay (even preferable!) to use what you have and love - and keep using it again and again.

And maybe find some new ways to use your older, cherished decor to keep it all fresh.

If you see this and think, "that's a lot of decorating" just realize that it's only a few surfaces here and there and only in these two rooms - I don't decorate the whole house!

Just do what works for you and your family.