RE-decorating: Martha's Christmas Home Tour

If you missed them, you can see Reba's Christmas Home Tour  HERE, our sister, Elsa's Christmas Home Tour HERE and my own Christmas Home Tour HERE.  Since Christmas is around the corner, I am really happy we could get in one more home tour before the big day, and I promise this one is full of eye candy.

TRADITIONAL, BUT ALWAYS WITH A TWIST:  My dear friend, Martha, allowed me to photograph her Christmas decor for the blog.  I am very happy about this because I am sure many of you will enjoy seeing her decor.  Martha's Christmas decor is like she is: colorful, bright, fun, unique, charming with a warm, inviting vibe.  She likes traditional style, but she always does something to it to make it brighter and more fun.  Her living room mantel is a perfect example. The center art piece is traditional red & green, but she found decorative picks with red, green, turquoise, silver, yellow, & blue reflective confetti to add more color to the setting. She filled brass based glass containers with bright ball ornaments in these colors and used the picks as burst of color on the top.  Once multicolored lights are added to the mantel's garland as well, visitors are sent a strong first message that this is a festive home.  Martha has a relaxed approach to decorating.  She uses whatever looks good to her.  The stockings are not all the same. Some people might change out the stockings to be the same for a so-called "designer" look but Martha avoids uniformity.  There is a story behind the stockings not matching and Martha will be glad to share it.

NOTHING MEEK ABOUT THIS CHRISTMAS DECOR:  Martha is vivacious and creative and so is her Christmas decor. 

SNOW GLOBE COLLECTION:  Martha collects snow globes and she puts out a large assortment of them on a table in her living room.

FORMAL & JUVENILE TOGETHER? WHY NOT?  This is a family home, not a museum.  A very nice traditional snow globe can sit right next to a brightly painted juvenile one from the Dollar Store.  Again, no stuffy decorating rules here.

JOYFUL DINING:  Purple walls, green chairs with a red, green and gold table setting.   I had dinner in here last week when Martha hosted our Bunco club for dinner and it was a fantastic setting.  Unfortunately, I forgot my camera that night so I took these pictures right before Martha was hosting a kids' party.  Martha is going to set her table again this week so I promise to update this entry with pics of her table set with her Christmas china.  It looked FAN-TASTIC all combined so don't forget to come back to see them.  You won't want to miss it.

USING WHAT YOU HAVE:  As I sat at dinner, I was fascinated by Martha's centerpiece.  I don't know where she got the inspiration, but it all worked. She told me she went shopping around her Xmas tubs for stuff to use and borrowed the candlesticks from her mother. 

BRASS CANDLESTICKS? YES. Unless you are doing an older historic home and trying to maintain the period, I think most people would say that brass candlesticks are "out", well, they may not be trendy, but they were FABULOUS in Martha's Xmas tablescape. I sat there thinking "This is really gorgeous, all pulled together.  She used old brass candlesticks, but nothing about them feels dated here. They seem old-world, even a bit rustic, the way pine cones sometimes feel.  It is a visual contrast to all the glittery and shiny modern stuff.  Where did she get this cool idea? I even love the long runner shape of the centerpiece. It works with the table and the room."  Martha likes contrast, but it is her good eye for color and scale, that allows her to blend in so many different elements

THE HEART OF HER HOME:  They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, and it is definitely true in Martha's house.  Martha is a good cook and during parties, people always gather in her gorgeous, predominantly white kitchen. It has high ceilings and a large center island with a lower section which can serve for kitchen dining if wanted.   For Christmas, Martha put large red & white striped ribbons on her industrial pendants. So cheerful, right?  For the kids' party, Martha was making warm cider, put out a bowl of popcorn and was preparing water as a sugarless, healthy drink to offset the sugar overload at the cookie buffet table.

RED & WHITE:  In addition to the red & white striped ribbons on the industrial pendants, she put out red candlesticks that look like toy soldiers with green candles on the mantel above her stove.

CLOSE UP RED & WHITE STRIPE RIBBON ON PENDANT:  A section of Martha's kitchen has white cabinets with white carrera marble, another section has blue cabinets with black granite and the center island has white cabinetry with butcher block counter top.  Even though the cabinets and counters change throughout the room, they all work together beautifully and the red and white stripe brings a holiday cheer that compliments the entire room.

ONE MORE PICTURE: just because I took it.

KITCHEN TABLE AKA COOKIELAND:  Martha put out a large assortment of baked treats for the guests on her red family room table.  The kitchen table is red year round.  Martha painted it that color and I am guessing it played a role in Martha picking the red & white ribbon for the room.  Martha has a modern light fixture over her kitchen table and she adorned it with garland and ribbon for Christmas.

CLOSE UP RIBBON:  Simple knots anchor the ribbon to the corners of the light fixture.

A FEAST:  This is the spread Martha put out for the kids party.  A HUGE assortment of cookies and baked goods.  She saw the assortment at Wal-Mart's bakery and it gave her the idea for the table.  She used simple white platters and plates to display all the brightly decorated baked goods.  To brighten up the table she added curled strips of ribbon and sprinkled peppermints between the platters.  Gold twine trees provide a focal point at one end.  

ANOTHER VIEW OF KITCHEN TABLE:  The kids certainly had a great selection of treats at the party.  When I commented on how much food she had for a relatively small group,  Martha agreed and said she "went a little crazy at the store and pulled an Eldarose" meaning she bought way more food than she probably needed.   Yes, I definitely tend to do that.  It drives my husband nuts because we always have too much food leftover.  By the way, I know you are noticing, yes, Martha has white and purple kitchen table chairs.  The room is always colorful and inviting.  She use to have a dark wood table and dark chairs in here and it didn't suit her personality as well.  The bright prints above the chairs and the big colors are more Martha's personality.

CLOSE UP OF PLATTER #1

CLOSE UP PLATTER #2

CLOSE UP OF HER GOLD TWINE TREES

THE CHRISTMAS TREE:  Martha put her Christmas tree in her family room this year off the kitchen.  She said she wasn't sure she liked it there, but I thought it worked great. 

SIDE VIEW

LOVE YOUR TREE:  Martha's tree doesn't have a particular theme.  It is bright and eclectic. She uses the same decorative picks with bright multi color reflective confetti from her mantel on her tree.  Because the picks have a lot of different colors, they help bridge all the various color schemes of the ornaments that otherwise would not match.

ALL SORTS OF ORNAMENTS:  Something great about an eclectic tree is that it never gets boring.  Whenever I stand beside Martha's tree, I notice a new ornament that I've never seen before and if I ask her about it, there is almost always a story that goes with it.

MARTHA'S CHRISTMAS TREE ART:  When I was taking pics, Martha said she had a craft for my blog and she asked me if I had noticed her Christmas tree art and I said "No, where is it?"  The funny thing is that it was hanging above her sofa in the living room where I had been seated for hours a few nights before at our Bunco Christmas party.   I had seen her Christmas tree art, but I had thought it was folk art she had purchased.

QUICKIE HOLIDAY DECORATING:  Martha had hung 2 blank canvases in gold frames above her sofa months ago, hoping for some inspiration to make them into a display.  She felt the wall over the sofa needed something more visually to fill the space, but she wasn't ready to buy a piece of art, so she thought she might be able to make something.  But, the canvases were left blank until the night of the Bunco party when she felt an urge to do something with them before guests arrived. So she grabbed several rolls of gift wrap, tore off pieces and pasted them to the canvas to make Christmas trees.

ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE QUICKIE DECORATING:   Firmly anti-banality, Martha didn't try to match the gift wrap colors or patterns. She chose an assortment to keep it fun and interesting. 

XMAS PILLOW:  Part of why I thought the Christmas trees were folk art pieces is because these are Martha's holiday pillows - 1 small angel pillow and a larger pillow with multiple ethnic prints and textures.  Some people might find the larger pillow a weird choice for a holiday pillow. While the pillow is not exactly traditional, the colors are repeated in other Christmas decor in her living room, plus here in Austin, keeping things a little weird and unexpected  is very very desirable.  

I hope you enjoyed Martha's joyful Christmas decorating.  I want to thank her for sharing her home on the blog.  *Waves to Martha*   As I said, I hope to take pictures of her dining room table set for dinner, so there should be more pictures to share soon.

WRITTEN BY ELDAROSE

P.S.  I just posted the recipe for the best pound cake ever. Seriously, this cake has the power to save marriages. It is a highly sought after recipe and Reba has stunned me by posting it on the blog for everyone to enjoy.  You can have it by clicking HERE

For more Table tops, click Here

RE-decorating: Rustic Christmas mantel

We have a fireplace in the living room, but that room is currently being used as storage for everything we have bought for upcoming remodeling projects.  Rather than try to tackle that situation, I decided to put up a simple mantel in my husband's study. The stockings are still in tubs so they'll be added soon.  I didn't buy anything for the mantel.  I'd call it a "stolen" mantel because everything on it was stolen from other areas.  It started with the decision to use our old front door wreath over the mantel and that got the ball running on a color and design theme.  I pulled the mini Christmas tree with burlap base from a storage tub.  It had neon colored ornaments on it so I took those off.  I would like to get another couple of these small trees. They are very handy for spots of holiday decor.  If any of my friends reading this happen to come across these trees while shopping, please pick me up a couple, and I will pay you back.  You know I'm good for it. :D The greenery was free. As I mentioned in my green & silver Christmas table post, I got a bunch of it from the tree trimming pile when we bought our tree.

The saint candlesticks are antique. They are usually on a table in the living room. We bought them a long time ago at Whit Hanks, a really nice antique shop here in Austin.  They are from the 1800s.  They are unusual which is a big part of why they appeal to me.  The glass containers are from the Dollar Store. I bought them this summer to make an outdoor summer dinner tablescape. (I have pictures of that which I will post soon.) I wrapped the glass containers with twine, also purchased at the Dollar Store. I hot glued the ends to keep them in place. For the mantel, I decided to fill them with an assortment of nuts to add some texture to this setting.  If I lived elsewhere, I would have used pine cones, but they are not readily available outdoors so I used what I had, hence the nuts.  The large green candle was from my old family room. It doesn't have a place yet in my new home, but it works for Christmas so I pulled it into the mantel setting. The red ribbon is silk shantung.  I believe it was a sash to a flower girl dress for my daughter.  I kept it around and when I decided to use the wreath, I went looking around for ribbon to match that hue of red and remembered this sash. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but they match almost perfectly.   She had an old velvet ribbon bow that would have matched as well, but I didn't find a place for it in the design.  Lesson here is think about repurposing/recycling old wardrobe items before they go to Goodwill.  The burlap is a remnant from the summer tablescape I did with the glass containers I described above.  I used a black permanent marker (Sharpie) to write PEACE on the strip freehand. I then cut one side of it in a scalloped shape, which was very easy and quick to do and I attached it to the mantel with clear tape. The good thing about using tape is that if your letters come out a little crooked, you can adjust how the strip hangs with the tape to help straighten it.  When my husband saw me hanging the burlap, he asked me "What is your obsession with burlap?" LOL.  I can't help it. I love burlap. It has a good earthy texture to it. It cuts easily and it works in a lot of no sew projects and since my sewing skills are limited to sewing buttons and hems, this is a big deal to me. 

A full view of the setting.  The office is masculine and we have religious art in it already, so I wanted to do something very natural and simple.  I considered not even doing the containers of nuts to keep it very simple, but I felt it was a bit too unadorned without something more.

My items stolen from other rooms work together here I think because they are all natural products. The nuts, twine, greenery, the wood Santo, the candle, the iron candlestick all come from the Earth.  Nothing artificial, nothing plastic. 

A close up of my glass container from the Dollar Store. I will feature this project again when I post the pictures from my outdoor dinner party.  For my summer outdoor dinner party, after I wrapped the glass containers with twine, I filled them  with votive candles and pebbles. My friends liked them a lot and asked me where I bought them, when I told them I made them and that I got the stuff from the Dollar Store, they asked me to please make some for them as gifts.  I told them "Ok. Merry Christmas!" and laughed.  They said they would sincerely love to get them as Christmas gifts.  I hope they still feel that way because they really are getting them for Christmas. 

We have collected religious art for awhile. The nice part of collecting religious art pieces is that on holidays like Christmas and Valentine's Day, they often can be incorporated into the holiday decorations.  I try to work with what I have as much as I can. Here, I was able to put together the mantel without spending a dime, even though I've never done a mantel like this one before.   I shopped around my own home for stuff to use and that is often the best, most simple option.

WRITTEN BY ELDAROSE



Click here to see more Christmas mantels at Southern Hospitality, the above blog

Clilck here to see more Christmas Mantels