First Christmas in Our New Home {2013}

I've had a couple of people request a Christmas post showing my decor and am happy to share with y'all. We had a blast decorating and showing off our nest to family. This is our third Christmas being married but our first in this house. Everything wasn't completely decorated since this was our first time having a mantle and fireplace. Hopefully next Christmas it will be more like I want it. 

The first picture is a shot of the living room from our front door. We did some rearranging to accommodate our chubby little Christmas tree but it's not much different from how it normally is set up.   We even got to pick and cut our tree this year up in the mountains with Colin's family. My sister-in-law was sweet (and brave) to invite us all to stay the weekend after Thanksgiving. Thanks again Nicole! :)

One of my favorite decorations is my great grandmother's dough bowl. I'm sure I've mentioned it before and tell all my guests about it. It gets new decor with every season but hasn't been used to make biscuits like she always did. 

Riley was my Christmas present 3 years ago so I call him my Christmas kitty. His favorite thing about Christmas is drinking from the tree. Now that the tree is gone we actually have to remember to fill up his water bowl. :)

Our buffet got a full makeover with Christmas decorations. It made our kitchen very festive! Here are some other shots of Christmas decor around the kitchen:

I try to update my chalkboard every holiday to add some personal "art" to keep things interesting. I added an old bottle and some berries plucked from our yard to my antique scale. My blue mason jar was filled with an assortment of small silver ornaments to add a little cheer.

See that green bread box? It's an antique our neighbors found and gave to me. It's a perfect addition to the kitchen and I love it! My mom cleverly filled a mason jar with candy canes to add some color and holiday spirit. My little reindeer was an after Christmas sale find last year. He holds our Christmas goodies for guests (and us). Again, we stole some berries and leaves from outside and stuck them in an old bottle. That cute bird with a top hat was a welcome winter guest.

Colin was very excited to decorate the outside of the house this year. He's already talking about how we need to get more lights and decorations to keep up with the neighbors. We got these little trees from my grandma for Christmas and I think they are adorable!

See our nice stained front porch? I was slack and didn't share the before and after pictures of that yet. Maybe I'll get that post up soon because it was a huge difference! I love how this picture shows off our rocking chairs. 

And here's a night shot of the whole house. We're missing the candles in the windows and the trees on the front porch. It was so nice to come home when the house was all lit up and pretty!

Lastly, here's a picture of us on Christmas day at my grandparents house. Thank you to all the family that came by to get the tour of our nest. We thoroughly enjoyed getting to show it off. To all those who couldn't make it for the tour, I hope you enjoyed this virtual tour. 

New Paint: Transforming Crazy Color to Cottage Chic

The second thing on our to-do list was to have everything inside repainted. I mean everything, the walls, trim, closets, it was all begging for a facelift. 

The previous owners had several bold color choices (blue in the master bedroom, yellow in the half bath, and two different greens in the kitchen/hallway). They had it decorated really cute with fun patterns and colors. We really didn't notice the paint colors the first time we walked through. I actually didn't mind the blue in the bedroom and the yellow in the bathroom but since all the rooms connected it was kind of a color explosion. Needless to say, we were wanting to tone everything down with nice welcoming neutrals and maybe in the future add more colors. Also, check out how the kitchen and hallway used to look with the chair rail and two different green colors. See why I'm in love with the beadboard?!?

The kitchen is painted Sprout and it ended up being a lighter green than we expected. It looks even lighter in this picture than it does in person. We realized that the little paint sample seems to change once it's put over a large area. But, it's starting to grow on me and I'm glad we decided to paint it a different color from the rest of the house.

Everything else is painted Barcelona Beige and I'm really happy with how it looks. Again, the picture doesn't really show how it looks in person. It's a very good neutral and it gives all the rooms a clean and cohesive look. All the trim and beadboard are painted Greek Villa and it looks great. The trim looked pretty yellow before so just picking a whiter color made it look brand new.

Oh, and here's a before and after picture like I promised. The before picture makes me like our paint choice even more. It was a little old fashioned and too minty before. What do you think? I know I'm a little biased but I think the new paint has transformed the crazy color to cottage chic. :)