In a perfect world, my Christmas Home Tour post was written in early December. Now it’s January 10 and the reality is that I’m just sitting down to write and my decorations are just now coming down. In my defense, I actually decorated our home for Christmas right before my annual client Christmas decorating job with my realtor/home stager friend, Stephanie Mellom, after Thanksgiving, but you know how it goes. December seems to kick my bum a little harder each year…
Today, I’m going to share some pictures of our newly painted foyer with this year’s Christmas decor and tell you how I’m transitioning into Winter with the same decor. Very simple and one of the many reasons I love using alot of neutral colors at Christmas!
Front Porch/Exterior
Christmas: In late November, early December, my magenta mums were still looking pretty, so I kept them a few weeks before switching them out for pine. My succulents stayed throughout Christmas.. apparently didn’t get the Winter memo! It was nice being able to use them and I just added pinecones around them to cover the dirt in the bare places.
Winter: Believe it or not, the large succulents made it til now. I guess because they’re in a covered place? Throughout February, I will keep the same wreath on the door, but remove the greenery swags on the lanterns on each side of the front door, as well as the wrap around porch garland. The pine has lasted the whole month of December, but I’ll keep changing the greenery in the urns throughout the cold months.
Christmas and Winter: I added arborvitae and cypress, as well as pinecones and berries to these planters and will probably just switch out the greenery another time or two over the Winter. I love my tribute statue to Blue, our beloved male Weimaraner, that we lost back in late Summer to cancer! Love the burlap bow, too, and just might keep that through Winter, too. We miss that beautiful boy SO much! 
Foyer
Christmas: I really loved the way this space felt this year during the holidays with the new Linen White walls! Such a fresh, but warm change and I also love that the foyer wall art seems more prominent now. I added Ballard Design’s faux garland and the same ribbons I used last year to the stairway, and added a pine wreath on the antique gold mirror above the skirted foyer table. After our Fontanini nativity scene was set up, I added some pine cone and mercury glass trees and small gold and silver ball ornaments to the clam shell. Right before Christmas day, I add fresh greenery around the nativity scene to celebrate our Savior’s birth!
Winter: I removed the stair garland and nativity scene, but left the pine wreath on the mirror, ball ornaments in clam shell, rearranged the decorative trees into a grouping of 3 in the center of the table, added a few touches of greenery and mercury glass, then added an antique dog plate on an easel to balance things. I also add a good, strong, seasonal candle to this area year round, as its the first space you enter in our home.
Living Room
Christmas: This year, I found the cutest pheasant ornaments at Target, so they were my inspiration for this year’s rust, gold, bronze, and silver living room tree. I love using pheasant feathers from Fall through the Winter season, so with this year’s pheasant themed tree, they were a natural choice! When I recently completed this space for the One Room Challenge, I used shades of rust, coral, and magenta throw pillows on our Williams Sonoma linen sofa, so the tree beautifully complimented those colors. I collected lots of cypress to place in the Ballard Designs lady head planter and to mix in with the blue and white vases on top of the creamy white armoire.
Winter: Honestly, I would love to leave both trees up throughout January, and I think they would work beautifully as Winter trees and not just Christmas, but we are getting a new puppy soon, so I need to get everything ready! So in this living room space, I will remove all the greenery, as well as the tree, and use faux pine with pinecones in the lady head planter for a Winter touch and keep the bowl of sparkly pinecones throughout the Winter months, as well. My favorite elements for transitioning from Christmas to Winter are faux pine or cypress, pinecones, mercury glass, and white flowers. I think the mix of natural wood + greenery + the shiny glass are the perfect rustic elegant Winter mix!
Dining Room
Christmas: I layered holly dinner plates and Spode Woodlands salad plates on top of gold chargers, then used coordinating plaid and paisley table linens to continue the rust color and rustic elegance into the dining room. I used coral roses, magnolia, hypericum berries, and more pheasant feathers as the centerpiece and added cypress to some blue and white vases on either side, as well as antlers and gold/silver ball ornaments for a refined/rustic juxtaposition. I found the deer highball glasses at Target and mixed them with crystal goblets for more of the same refined/rustic look. I feel for this 4″ mocha satin ribbon and used some around the chandelier with magnolia and some around the napkins. I tucked a piece of cypress behind the flatware on each place setting.
Winter: I removed the ribbon/ place setting cypress sprig, the magnolia and ribbon from the chandelier, and the ball ornaments. The holly and Spode Woodlands plates and antlers will stay and the cypress and floral centerpiece will get switched/refreshed as needed. I added rose placemats , exhanged the gold charger for a dark brown wicker one, and switched the more formal flatware for bamboo. This really says “rustic elegant Winter setting” by easily removing a few things and it could not be simpler!
Kitchen/Family Room
Christmas: On the kitchen table, I added a white and pinecone sparkly centerpiece to an antique dough bowl and worked some fresh arborvitae in around the edges. I didn’t use my usual linen holly runner this year, but kept it casual with IKEA placemats instead, then tied Ballard Designs mini boxwood wreaths to the chair backs with coordinating French script and black houndstooth ribbon. Simple HomeGoods cypress topiaries flank either side of the mantle and linen and white fur stockings were hung by old dollar store French inspired design stocking hangers. I carried over the indigo, white, and natural accent colors from last Summer in the family room and found gold antler picks at Pier 1 this year to use in the tree top. I absolutely LOVE the feel they added to this space this year, and they’re also great at adding a little more height to our 7.5′ tree. I love using silver and gold Christmas ornaments in our family room with the rustic beams, as it dresses it up a little and looks so elegant with the white lights. I draped a brown faux fur tree skirt around the base for added texture and a cozy look.
Winter: Just like the pheasant inspired tree, I love this one so much and don’t want to take it down yet! But a strand of lights went out, which I’m not fixing this year again, so there’s that :/ When we take the tree down, the loveseat will go back across the room to the other side of the fireplace so that the dog beds can go back in the corner ( we’re getting a new puppy this weekend..did I mention that already? ha More on that later 🙂 ) The 2 club chairs will go where the loveseat was next to the tree, and I’ll put the black table between them again. I took the stockings down, but left everything on the mantle, just because that was very neutral Winter decor and not Christmas-y in particular. I will leave up the gold and silver balls inside the book page wreath for a few more months because, well…January needs as much sparkle as it can get!
I will keep the dough bowl full of the white sparkly berries and pinecones and greenery on the kitchen table throughout the Winter months and I love using white and green floral arrangements during January and February with a colorful bowl of clementines! One of my upcoming projects in the new year is to repaint the kitchen cabinets the same color of the walls, Linen White by Benjamin Moore. They’ve been County Cork with an antique glaze for the past 10 years and it’s time for a change…
Powder Room
Christmas and Winter: In our little downstairs bath, I used to use more Christmas decor, but have adopted more of a natural look and now just use oyster shells, mercury glass candles and ball ornaments in a tray, and greenery. Christmas to Winter with no change.
Master Bedroom
Christmas and Winter: Only a few simple touches to our Master bedroom. I always add fresh flowers each week or two to several places in the house. This coral dresser is one area, so for Christmas and Winter, I just add a little greenery to the florals. A few years ago I made this ball wreath ornament for the sunburst mirror above our bed, and love the sparkle it adds during the bleak months. You just have to keep a little sparkle, right?
Just as Epiphany arrived and I was getting ready to start taking down all Christmas decor, we got a Winter snow warning in North Georgia. We Atlantans have ignored some of these snow predictions and seen situations like 2014’s Snowmaggedon, and heeded other wintery mix predictions and bought enough groceries for a month and gotten only a dusting. This time it was pretty accurate in our area and the snow starting falling on a Friday night through early Saturday morning. We got about 2 inches and it was truly a beautiful and cozy weekend, but then started melting in the next day or two. Just the way I like snow 🙂
This is what our house would look like if we had a White Christmas, which is rare in Atlanta.
See, procrastination does have some benefits…
Hope you’re staying warm wherever you are in the Country and that you are remembering to write “2017,” instead of “2016.” Truthfully, besides getting back on track with healthy eating, that’s the toughest one for me!
See you soon,
xo
Wendy says
August 13, 2020 at 12:47 amWhat color is used on your front door. It is beautiful!
mimirobins says
September 26, 2020 at 2:45 amHi Wendy, it’s Mermaid Net by Behr in this post, but I have since changed it to Iron Ore by Sherwin Williams! It’s a dark gray now.