My Home for Christmas

Oh, hi. Looks like I arranged for myself to share a Christmas home tour with you today. Nevermind that I have done zero Christmas shopping and we’re still eating off Halloween themed-paper plates over here and these types of things give me the sweats.  You don’t mind, right?

What’s that? I can’t hear you over the store-bought sugar cookie I just shoved in your mouth.  Here, have some eggnog.  Let’s look at this one square foot of cuteness at my front door:

I like this little spot. Nice and simple. I painted the white pine cones, but the others were an experiment from last year where I attempted to bleach them.  It works and looks pretty cool.  Just soak them in a bucket of bleach for a few days, then let them dry out completely (far away from pets and kids duh).

Down the hall a bit we run into my Christmas mantle which you’ve seen before.  It’s still there, but the baby has pulled down the stockings a few times, that jerk.

Just kidding, he’s the best and he can’t ever make me mad, even though he broke, knocked over, pulled down, and tore up about a hundred things yesterday.  If you missed the post, there is somewhat of a stocking tutorial in it, so check that out if you wanna.

Now we come to the dining room, which I lovehate.

It’s a cool room with these fun pillars, but I’ve given this room hardly any attention at all since we moved here in May.  It just has a long way to go. I will now refrain from pointing out all the things I don’t like about it. Man, house tours make me anxious! Why am I a blogger again?

The last three Christmas’s we have been in three different homes, so it’s a little crazy trying to figure out new places for old things over and over.  But I love this new guy here:

I found the cake plate and the oversize cloche at TJ Maxx, and they were each around $10 or so.  Bargain alert! I’ve had it on my table since Halloween, where it housed my glitter pumpkins. It has yet to house a cake. But I think it looks pretty cute with some bulbs stuffed inside.  Tip: fill the center with white cotton batting first, then arrange the bulbs around that for a fuller look.

We don’t have a chimney here in Arizona, so we have to leave ol’ Santa a key.

In case you’ve been hitting the eggnog extra hard, you’ve probably noticed a gold/white theme happening here.  For the longest time we had a red and white theme, which gave way to gold and white, but I think I’m going to try black and white next year, still with plenty of gold. I don’t aim for a ‘trendy’ tree, but I do feel the itch to switch things up much more often now. I blame blogging for my short attention span. What were we talking about?

Basically my tree looked exactly like this last year.  I didn’t handcraft any new ornaments or come up with a super hip tree theme that will blow the mind of the blogosphere, but it’s a nice tree. Even if it kind of feels like Santa barfed on it. I guess I’m feeling the urge to switch it up and simplify at the same time.  Too much.  Not enough? Is this the most depressing Christmas tour ever? I’m sorry! I’m the worst. Here, have more eggnog.

I love how the tree skirt turned out, if you can even call it that. Its just a set of those $4 tulle curtains from IKEA with Christmas lights underneath.  Easy.

My gold glitter deer silhouette art held up nicely from last year.

And since I don’t want to leave you without a before and after, let’s pretend this counts:

Woah! What changed? Nothing, other than the settings on my camera.

If you’ve been trying to get pretty glowy pictures of your Christmas tree and failing, here are a few tips.  I am by no means a pro photographer, and there are plenty of tutorials out there that can give you much more technical information than I can, but these are a few simple tricks I’ve learned.

1. DON’T USE FLASH! Ew! Gross! No!

Even if you don’t have a fancy DSLR camera, your basic point-and-shoot should still have the option to turn off the flash.

2. Use a tripod.

If you don’t have a tripod, that’s ok. Use a stack of books or something similarly sturdy, but don’t rely on a steady hand.

3. Play with the settings on your camera. You can see the settings I used on the right picture above, and it makes a world of difference. Many point-and-shoots even have settings you can play around with, so give ’em a go. It’s not like we’re paying for film anymore people.

Well, that’s it.  Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Hey, don’t forget your cookie!

Check out more home tours from my blogger friends: