RE-decorating: Christmas Home Tour

FRONT DOOR:  The asymmetrical original front door to Reba's Monterey style Colonial home with a red Christmas wreath and a garland decorated with red ribbon and ornaments. Several years ago, Reba and her husband bought and renovated his grandmother's home, a designated historic house.  All Reba's Christmas decor is traditional in accordance with the home's style.

FULL VIEW FRONT DOOR ON PORCH:  Reba kept all the original hardware to the front door and kept the original white and green color scheme her husband's grandmother maintained for the exterior.  The wood front door is painted a dark green and her porch floor has terracotta tiles. She has wrapped her front planters with red ribbon and filled them with poinsettias.  Poinsettias are very popular during the holidays where our family is from  in South Texas.  You may have noticed our sister, Elsa,  has poinsettias in front of her fireplace in our blog entry on her Christmas decor.  Poinsettias are Mexican plants also known as "Noche Buena",  Christmas Eve in Spanish.  They are as Christmas-y as Santa in our area.  Both of my sisters chose to use red ones this year. I usually use the newer white ones for my own house  in Austin.

RAILING ON BACK PATIO: Reba likes to wrap her outdoor railings in garland and red bows for the holidays. Very simple and traditional. Those are palm trees and other tropical plants beside the steps off the back patio. The funny part of Christmas in South Texas is that it can sometimes be warm enough for shorts on Christmas day.

LIVING ROOM: Another traditional Christmas look.  Reba's Christmas tree in her living room has a deep red color velvet skirt with gold trim. The tree is decorated with red and gold ribbon and her collection of glass angel ornaments.   She places her tree in the corner of her living room in front of a display of Santos.   She moves some of her Santos to her mantel and pulls her husband's collection of small bronze dog sculptures off the mantel for the holidays.

A close up of one of Reba's glass angel ornaments. 

FAMILY ROOM: Reba's family room Christmas tree is monochromatic gold with gold ribbon and gold angel ornaments. It has a regal color theme with a deep purple velvet skirt with gold embroidery and gold trim.

Close up of Reba's gold ornaments on her family room tree.

LIBRARY: For the holidays, Reba drapes garland around her paintings.  She has added a folk Nativity set to the table top display of religious art pieces she normally has.

A close up shot of one of Reba's folk art angels. As I mentioned in the entry on my own Christmas mantel, collecting religious art pieces is very convenient during holidays because they can be easily incorporated into holiday decor.  This is especially true during Christmas and Valentine's Day.  Just use a little metallic or velvet ribbon and greenery around them, add a candle and they quickly make a dramatic and romantic setting.  LOVE them so much.

She has a white, crystal and silver tree she adds to the mix sometimes, too, but generally Reba repeats her Christmas decor year after year.  Yeah, she doesn't get to join in on the trends much, but sticking to traditional looks is easier on one's schedule and like so many, Reba is especially busy during December. Our mother is not exactly domestic, (an understatement), and my parents are now older, so Reba has to not only set up her house for Christmas, she usually has to help set up our mother's house as well which usually entails plenty of errands. Neither of my parents like to shop either so Reba usually gets stuck doing their holiday shopping for them and our father's birthday and our parent's anniversary are both in December.

A place setting from our father's birthday party last week.  Metallic red chargers from WalMart & Spode Christmas china sit on top of a matching Spode tablecloth.  We use matching Spode stemmed glasses. This is our family Christmas ware. Sometimes, Reba uses red glass goblets with it at her house, but for the family, we keep it what my dad likes to teasingly call "matchy- matchy."  For the party, Reba put out Christmas crackers and set out small red boxes filled with chocolates tagged with holiday gift cards inscribed with guests names to be place cards.

The handsome man with the glasses and the guayabera shirt is our father. He turned 81.  Our niece and nephews are on his right and our sister, Elsa, is on his left.  (Daddy's girl deluxe.)  The enormous chocolate birthday cake came from a local bakery. So SO good.  December is brutal on diets, every single year.  

Reba promised to send more pictures later, but that's it for now.  Doing this blog has made me realize that our style while traditional, is still greatly influenced by our region.  Hope you enjoy seeing this South Texas spin on traditional American Christmas decor.  If you did, we would love a comment or two. We are new bloggers and we've just gotten our first comments this week and each one has been very exciting and encouraging to us.  Thanks for visiting, y'all.

Written by Eldarose

P.S. I am having trouble posting replies to the comments, but I will change computers tonight to post some. THANK YOU for your  encouraging feedback. All the comments are very special to us especially since we are so new at blogging. 

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

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