It’s that time of year to share our Christmas Home Tour! I’m sharing via Jennifer Rizzo’s fantastic blog’s link party and with the great group listed at the bottom of the post!
Here we go!
Welcome to our home… if you are new here I’m Jen Migonis and I live with my hubby AJ and two kids in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. We’ve slowly {very slowly} been renovating our Cape style home and in the past year have added on our front porch and added a middle window to the front of the house. I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun it was to decorate it the porch this year now that it looks great out there so let me welcome you onto the porch first and then we’ll head into the house. Oh, and pretend I’m giving you something yummy to eat and drink because this is a long tour.
In typical fashion for New England this time of year it was snowing as I tried to take photos of the porch and it had been raining so much the prior days that you can see how wet the porch is from it. I snagged some great flannel from JoAnn Fabric to make the pillows and “throws”, which are really just pieces of solid red flannel. I added in other red accents like a watering can filled with greens and the wagon that I also added a bunch of greens from the woods to.
We recently had to replace our oil tank in the basement. Not a fun thing to do right before Christmas… they aren’t cheap to replace but on the plus side we did end up finding a pair of vintage skis that the previous owners had stored behind the former oil tank. It was a good find… but I wouldn’t recommend anyone spend thousands to replace an oil tank just to find a pair of vintage skis.
The wreath was one of my easiest projects this season. I bought a faux wreath at Michaels, sprayed it with snow neige and tied and ice-skate to it.
All right… come on in to our kitchen…
I adore our kitchen. I love how light and bright it is and how easy it is to decorate it for any season. I never decorate with red but for some reason was feeling the itch to get a little bit into the kitchen this year to see what it would look like and I loved it!
I love the look of wreaths in kitchen windows and I especially love the look of this pine roping wreath that I bought at our grocery store. For only $5.99. You can’t beat Market Basket, folks. I then decided to dress up our mug holder with a vase in the center filled with holly and a few other sprigs of greens.
I wanted something special on our island and kitchen table that would be safe from the kids and that I wouldn’t have to move for meals so I made two little arrangements under some Pottery Barn cloches we got for wedding gifts and then I filled the containers with mercury glass and greens. It’s incredibly simple and I love it!
As a way to separate the kitchen and the eating area we built a little hutch. I just added some greenery and left out our fruit.
The table and the buffet are on the opposite side of the kitchen.
One lucky reader will get to take home these five mini vintage ornaments that I bought yesterday at a gorgeous store in our town. Simply comment below for a chance to win!
UPDATE: THE WINNER IS GRACE BLANCHETTE!
I love the way this buffet turned out. It’s incredibly simple with our Willow Tree nativity and a framed Dear Lillie print; this set up sets the whole tone for Christmas. This is what it’s about. I haven’t officially introduced you to this buffet yet… This was my most recent side of the road find. It’s a Drexel dresser so it’s a decent piece so I want to sit on the orange-y stain for a while and brainstorm what to do with it.
This nativity is one of the best I’ve ever seen. My parents started my collection and then over the years they and AJ has helped add to it.
Before we walk into the living room I’ll show you where I hung the stockings this year. I decked out the stairway in faux and cut greenery and special ornaments. Every year I buy a new ornament for everyone’s stockings. The past couple of years I’ve purchased a travel related ornament for AJ as reminder of all the places we would love to go together… last year it was The Leaning Tower of Pisa and the year before it was the Eiffel Tower.
Come on in to the living room:
As you come in from the area by the kitchen table you’ll see the desk AJ uses. It is never clear. Never. I just moved all the stuff into the kitchen for this photo. Behind the desk is the adorable little tree we got from Coastal Windows & Exteriors yesterday (you can get a one for free as well if you’re from the area, click HERE to find out how). If their name rings a bell with you they were the great company that installed the new windows in Drew’s room and in the living room. The tree was about five feet when I got it but I cut the bottom off and used the greens for the buffet in the kitchen. It’s now potted in a champagne bucket from Pottery Barn. That bucket gets used constantly… and never for champagne.
I trimmed the tree in tiny ornaments that I picked up at Specialty Thoughts (a little store near us that is a step up from Dollar Tree). I had these great plans for big white bulbs on the tree and then as I was in the middle of hanging them my bulbs died. Follow me on Instagram and hopefully you’ll see an updated photo if I can replace some of the big bulbs.
** I’m not a slacker forgetting to close the drawer and cabinet for a photo. For some reason they just aren’t closing properly. That’s real life. **
The lighting was so terrible by the time I finally got to taking photos of this room. I’m going to try and come back later today and replace them with better photos. We have fresh greenery and birch accents everywhere.
I adore our tree and love having the lights on all day. About half of the things you see in this room, or our house for that matter, are free, side of the road finds, from thrift stores or were from Craigslist but my Christmas tree is different. I don’t have handmade ornaments on it. I have gorgeous ones I search for and love. The majority of them are from Restoration Hardware about six years ago from their 75% off sale and then over the years I’ve collected ones I love from Pottery Barn, Home Goods or from gifts.
I’m still in search of the perfect tree topper but in the meantime we have twinkling white lights and sparkly ornaments and bells.
To separate the desk and living portions of the room we have this pallet box which I switch out each season. This year I’ve filled it with our collection of tree stumps that we’ve written a memory on each year. You can read more about that HERE.
Let’s go up upstairs now … our second floor is made up of three bedrooms and one full bath. Come on into the master…
I love to cozy up the mantle in our bedroom since it doesn’t have a TV on top of it the way the mantle in our living room does. I get so many questions about this fireplace. It’s an electric fireplace that AJ and I purchased six years ago right after we got engaged. It was half price at Home Depot after Christmas and AJ gave it the coat of white paint. Our bedroom is long and narrow and because of that we have the added benefit of a little sitting area on on side of our bedroom. To give you a feel for the room I am sitting in the walk-in closet talking this photo.
I decked the mantle out in things that wouldn’t die this year. I hated coming into our bedroom last year and just feeling like there was one more place I needed to clean up needles so this year I oped to make sure it would look just as good as it did when I first set up the mantle a month later.
Let’s move into Elle’s room…
I always wanted a little girl to dress in adorable clothes, decorate with and go do girly things together. With Elle I’ve met my match. She loves her shoes and adores sparkles. We just put her babies to bed three times last night and we do the same routine each time. So when I decided to decorate her room I opted for girly and fun. I added giant snowflakes to the windows from the Dollar Tree and just tacked the ribbons to the underside of the cornice. The table is an adorable one that my mother-in-law gave to Drew a few years ago and then, being as crazy rough as he is, about a year ago he really damaged the top of the table so I used this house tour as a kick in the pants to give the table a makeover so we couldn’t see the damage anymore. The letters spelling “peace” are from Michael’s dollar bin last year and the sparkly tree is from Marshalls years ago.
The shelf across her tiny room is decked out with the ornament topiary I made HERE and more silver ornaments from Dollar Tree, they also sit in confectioner sugar.
Come on into Drew’s room…
Drew is very excited about Christmas this year and will tell anyone who asks that he’s asking for a spyglass (telescope), an umbrella and guitar for Christmas. He’s definitely excited this year and I’ve tried to use that excitement to tell him the real meaning of Christmas. We’ve been reading the Christmas story in his Bible and have been doing our advent calendar. In his room I decked out the area above his headboard with the great reindeer sign from Peabody and Sassafras with fresh greens on top of it and then added a free printable from Craftberry Bush (it’s no longer free though… it was a 72 hour deal) to his nightstand which he of course loves because it’s a Bug and he thinks those are so funny.
His new dresser got a little Christmas / winter lift with a vintage sled (also found behind our old oil tank), a wire basket I found on clearance at Pottery Barn about three years ago that I’ve stacked his Christmas stories in and a reindeer with a cuddly scarf wrapped around his neck.
This is the second year we’ve gone to the side of the road and cut Drew down a Charlie Brown tree. I’ve given him his child-safe ornaments to put on the tree. It’s about once a day the tree will get knocked down. He’s rough. And you wonder why I had to repaint the table I put in Elle’s room.
I am thrilled you’ve joined me on a {long} tour of our home!
Today is the last day of the Christmas Hospitality and Inspiration tour. Make some time to sit down with a glass of wine or mug of hot chocolate because these house tours are just gorgeous.
Monday:
The Happy Housie | Everyday Enchanting | Maison de Pax | Life on Virginia Street | Unskinny Boppy | Setting for Four
Tuesday:
rooms FOR rent | Town and Country Living | On Sutton Place | Design, Dining and Diapers | At Home with The Barkers | Cottage in the Oaks
Wednesday:
House by Hoff | Jenna Sue Design | Love Grows Wild | Craftsberry Bush | All Things G&D | DIY on the Cheap
Thursday:
Rain on a Tin Roof | Making Home Base | The Wood Grain Cottage | Capturing Joy | Making Lemonade
Friday:
Migonis Home | Just a Girl and Her Blog | Fox Hollow Cottage | City Farmhouse | Ciburbanity
Don’t forget to leave a comment for a chance to win the gorgeous vintage ornaments! Giveaway ends on Monday, December 15 at 11:59pm
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