Christmas Home Tour 2016: Where Friends & Family Gather

Whew! We made it to Friday and this is my fourth Christmas home tour to be participating in this week. On Monday I shared our front room (piano room) and living room,  on Tuesday our kitchen and loft, and on Thursday a glimpse of our family room and our new traditional tree. Today I’m sharing a popular spot where friends and family gather in our home. That’s a lot of tours in one week. I’m a little a lot exhausted and need a nap or I’ll settle being swept away to a remote island.  With a cabana and sangria, of course. No rest for the weary when you’re having loads of fun decorating, right??

Are you feeling the Christmas spirit yet? Now that our home is all decked out for the holidays it’s kind of hard not to be in the spirit around here. Plus it snowed today so that’s extra bonus points!  As always, I’m thrilled to be a part of this Christmas Home Tour hosted by our lovely host, Marty at A Stroll Through Life. She always rounds up some fabulous bloggers to participate. Over 30 on this tour. Loads of inspiration so I hope you can check them all out!

(**affiliate links are used in this post for your shopping convenience)

Let’s start in our basement family room, shall we?

For all my faithful readers, I’m so happy you’re here, once again. Hello & welcome to all of you stopping by our Colorado home from Far Above Rubies. I swoooooon over Anita’s romantic home!  Notice I said Colorado home? We have a little beach cottage too where we also spend a lot of holidays. We’ll be there soon and I cannot wait for some warm, sunny beach!

I like to say that our basement is really where all the fun happens. Whenever we have friends and family over, we all gather here. It’s cozy yet big enough to hold crowds. We’ve had quite a few of those over the years.

This is where we will spend Christmas morning watching the boys tear through their gifts. There’s no salvaging the wrapping paper here. Does anyone do that anymore??

For the past few years I’ve had flocked trees, but this year I really wanted to go back to the traditional green Christmas tree. This is the tree that holds many of our special family ornaments, white, gold & glitter ornaments and even a few little animals. The paper garland was from Pottery Barn years ago, unfortunately they don’t carry it anymore.

Other than our decorated tree I kept the rest of the holiday decor to a minimum this year. Using what I had on hand and not going out and buying anything new. I simply tucked a couple of frosted pine branches into my favorite gold metallic vase.

I love the little ice crystals on the branches.

Every year I get excited when I pull out this berry and pine garland. When I open my Christmas storage bins for the first time of the season I get as excited as a child would on Christmas morning opening that first present.  I always forget the goodies I have stored and then get a little giddy realizing I’ve collected some good stuff over the years. We’ll hang our stocking on our mantel just below this garland on Christmas Eve.

Speaking of presents, our Ethan not only has made us homemade ornaments (you can see those in this post), he has been wrapping a few gifts as well and sneaking them under the tree. This one in particular with the gold glitter stripe paper, the stripe is actually duck tape. He wrapped his gifts in paper bags and duck tape. Love that kid. I’m hiring him as my official gift wrapper.

This scrumptious candle is my all time favorite candle in the world. If you’ve ever walked into Anthropolgie and had your nose swept away in heavenly scent, this is it.  It’s a great hostess gift or even for a friend. I’ve included it in my Holiday Gift Guide just in case you’re stumped on what to buy this year.  Merry Christmas to me, I bought myself another one too.

Our “new” leopard ottoman steals the show and screams, “hey! look at me!”  If you’re visiting our home for the first time, feel free to tour around and you’ll see that my love affair with leopard print runs wild.

I confess that this little gift is a prop. I may have sneaked it from our little guy’s bedroom.  Looks pretty cute on my Homegoods tray.

On the other side of this room is our bar.  All of our entertaining happens here. We host a big annual bash every year and is one of the reasons we designed this bar to be chic and modern. I love it!

We’ve stocked up on champagne because we are about to celebrate a new exciting adventure for 2017!  Are you a bit curious?? Then go ahead and subscribe to my blog at the end of this post and you’ll be one of the first to hear the big announcement when it’s released!

With all this blogging I’ve been doing this week I keep sneaking down into the basement and eating up these chocolates. I survive on coffee and chocolate lately. Guess who’ll be hitting the gym January 1?

You may recognize these black goblets from this tablescape. They found a home on our bar shelf.

A simple pine garland, a few scattered ornaments and this cute little tree is all this bar needs to get our guests in the holiday mood. I may need to go buy more chocolates.

  

I snagged this photo from last year’s Christmas tour so you could see a glimpse of our island. Currently, it’s covered with puzzles in progress.  Dylan and Ethan have been quite entertained with them lately so I just keep buying them. They may even have a few new ones under the tree.

Ethan actually helped us build this bar island (that story here) so he deserves to enjoy this space however he wants. The champagne bucket was a score from Homegoods last year.

The last room of this tour we can peek into is our guest bedroom which also happens to be down here in our basement. Are you still with me?? I know this is a photo heavy tour so bear with me or feel free to take a nap and come back. Or just refill your coffee if you’re a coffee drinker like me and let’s keep going!

My buffalo check pillows keep multiplying in our home. Sometimes when I really love something I go a little crazy and buy stock in it. I found them at Hobby Lobby over the summer. I’ve looked there since and haven’t seen anymore but similar options are here & here.  The look is classic and should stand the test of time for a while.

The red paisley pillows are from last year’s Christmas tour in our living room and the Merry Christmas pillow was also from last year in our bedroom.  I found them at Homegoods.

This room didn’t change much from last Christmas. The boxwood wreath is the same. I  love how the sun shines through it. I did switch it up a bit just by adding this pretty blue ornament from Target.

  

Is it possible to love this mini tree as much as my big Christmas trees? yes, I think so.  Another Homegoods treasure.

Well friends, that concludes our tour.  Are you ready to just crawl in this bed and snooze? I just may do that. I’m so happy you came to visit and hope you leave our home with a little holiday cheer in your heart.

Next stop is Duke Manor Farms. Laura always has a fabulous tour so go check it out!

Merry Christmas!

The FABULOUS Line Up of Christmas Home Tours

Common Ground

Life on Virginia Street 

Decor To Adore

Haneens Haven 

Hymns & Verses

Nesting With Grace 

Cuckoo4Design

It All Started With Paint

Pink Peppermint Design 

Remodelando La Casa

Simple Details

Decorating Delirium 

21 Rosemary Lane 

Lynzy & Co.

A Stroll Thru Life 

The Chronicles of Home 

Simple Stylings 

Design Post Interiors

Thrifty and Chic

Our Southern Home

Setting For Four

Life and Home @ 2102 

Dimples & Tangles

Our Fifth House

Making Home Base 

Far Above Rubies

Duke Manor Farms

Rain On A Tin Roof

Guest Bedroom Sources

(scroll & click on image to shop; similar items sourced where original not available)

Family Room Sources

Bar Sources