Holiday HouseWalk 2017

Hello and welcome and to one of my very favorite posts of the year - our Holiday Home Tour! I am excited to be joining Jennifer Rizzo's Holiday HouseWalk again for my third year. Thanks so much for including me again, Jen.

It is always a bit intimidating to put my humble DIY home next to all of the other amazing bloggers' homes in this tour. If you are following along and coming from Kristin's beautiful home at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, welcome!

Just a quick intro. in case this is your first visit - I'm Courtney and together with my husband, Billy, and 3 growing boys we have totally renovated our 1950's split level home in Northern NJ just outside of NYC. Oh, and I also should mention the namesakes of this little blog - our 2 very spoiled golden retrievers named Keeper and Dax. They are the stars of the show around here. So let's get started!

As a side note, I have been sharing posts of many of the rooms in our home over the last week to keep this post from getting too long. I will add a link to each of those room tours so you can click over to see even more pictures (and find the sources for most items). Let's start in our family room.

I kept things neutral in here this year and I am loving the calm and serene feel of this space. Truth be told, it can be overwhelming to try and come up with a new theme for each year. I always find it helpful to find one item I love and use it as inspiration to create the look I am going hoping for. This year, I started with the cabin in snow with deer throw pillow (new from HomeGoods this year) that is on the hearth. I love how it ties in the color of the stone on the fireplace with the rest of the white and neutral items. And although I didn't go with the traditional Christmas colors, it still gives a nod to our family's love of the mountains. We will be spending Christmas week at our family's cabin in the Adirondack Mountains again this year. 

I made the "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" sign to hang over the fireplace because I wanted this space to reflect just that - a winter walk in the woods. We are looking forward to a walk in the snow after our big Christmas breakfast on Christmas morning. Fingers crossed that there will be snow this year!

I also kept things more neutral on our winter themed gallery wall. I always enjoy displaying family pictures along with a few fun items in this space.

Our tree is in front of the triple glass door this year and it sparkles when the sun shines in during the day. I used the same sled that I hung over our kitchen island last year as a tree base this year. Our flocked Nordic Spruce Christmas tree leaves enough space in between the branches to really see the ornaments. I added the glittery pinecones (from Michaels) to the ends of the branches for some extra sparkle.

The simple details are always my favorite. I added a piece of flocked garland to the candles in our antique dough bowl and also threw in a string of mercury glass pinecones that light up (from HomeGoods) to it. The green striped linen runner underneath is from Target.

Next, let's head up to the kitchen/dining/living level of our split level home. We recently added a DIY pot rack over the kitchen island. I love the shimmery copper pots with the flocked garland.

I kept things simple over our sink with an old favorite, a DIY bottle garland filled with evergreen cuttings. It will add some freshness to this often used space throughout the cold winter months.

You can read more about our Christmas kitchen here. 

The tree in the dining room is our traditional family tree where all of our collected and treasured ornaments are displayed. I re-used our DIY family crest tree topper again. As much as I enjoy changing some of our decor, it is equally important to keep Christmas traditions going year after year for our family. This area is the heart of Christmas in our home this year. I painted the tree farm signs several years ago and they have become somewhat of a tradition around here. This year, I used them over our faux fireplace mantel in the dining room. I displayed a few tree farm related ornaments in the garland on the fireplace. More about our dining room here.

It is always fun to add some festive touches to our mudroom, even if it doesn't stay that way for long. You can read more about the entryways in our home HERE.

Upstairs in our Master Bedroom, we added a full size tree and lots of pops of red. I also added some Christmas touches to our Master Bathroom. You can read more about both of those spaces here.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of our Christmas home. Happy Holiday from our family to yours!

Be sure to continue with the rest the tour. Next stop is the beautiful home of  Zevy Joy.

Even more holiday decor inspiration:

2016 Home Tour

2014 Home Tour

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Our Red and White Master Bedroom at Christmas

I enjoy decorating the entire house for Christmas, but over the last few years I have come to find that our bedroom is the spot I quietly enjoy most of all. When I go up the stairs at the end of a long day, I love to see the twinkling Christmas lights on the tree there to greet me.

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Our Classic Christmas Dining & Living Room

Good morning! I am continuing to share a few rooms decorated for Christmas before it is my turn to share at Jennifer Rizzo's Holiday HouseWalk on Friday. Have you been following along on the HouseWalk? This is always my very favorite blogging week of the year! For today's portion of my home tour we are in our living and dining room areas. It's always difficult to figure out what to call these spaces because of our open floor plan. If you are new here, our house is a typical 1950's split level that we knocked down many walls in to suit our family better.

I use the term "dining room" super loosely because we are not a formal dining room sort of family. This is our everything table - family dinner, homework, craft projects, puzzles, gift wrapping - no formal place settings here.

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Our Christmas Kitchen 2017

Today I am so excited to share our kitchen with Christmas decor for this year. I have some fun new additions to share in this space, including a DIY pot rack and new barstools, as well.

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Our Christmas Mudroom and Entryway

Welcome to my very first Christmas post for this year! I enjoy adding Christmas touches to most of the rooms in our home and will be sharing them over the next few days. Then, I will finish up with the big HouseWalk tour at the end of the week. Let's start in the mudroom, where both our family and most of our guests enter our home. This is always one of my favorite spots to decorate for the holidays.

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Favorite Things 2017

Hello friends! Today I am excited to be joining Melissa from 320 Sycamore for her annual Favorite Things bloghop. I always enjoy reading these posts from other bloggers but this is my very first time putting one together myself. I hope you enjoy it and maybe get an idea for a gift - for someone special on your list or even yourself!

*Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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Late Fall Mantel with a Metal Photo Print

It seems I always get an itch to fit in a couple of projects in our home in the fall before ALL THAT Christmas decor takes over. I enjoy putting away all of the fall decor and letting our home breathe a bit for a couple of weeks before decorating for the holidays. But I just can't leave our fireplace mantel empty so I added a new Metal Print that I recently received from Nations Photo Lab. It is an image of a barn in Keene, NY that I took shortly before it was knocked down. It was a sad day when I learned that this iconic barn would be removed due to safety concerns. So I am happy to have this print to remember it by. It is printed on metal and I love the mix of textures with the stone on our fireplace. I adore the cozy vibe it adds to our family room as we hunker down and welcome the colder weather.

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Autumn in Vermont 2017

Hello friends and Happy November. Today is the day that everything magically turns to Christmas in blogland. Ha! Not ready for that yet so I thought I would pop in to share some pictures of a recent quick trip we took to Vermont.  It has been an odd fall foliage wise, for sure. But the tradeoff has been some amazing warm temperatures throughout September and October so I am not complaining. On this trip, we visited southern Vermont, an area that is farther to reach from our cabin in the Adirondacks. Billy and I escaped for a couple of days with Dax. We had a blast.

Ever since I first saw a picture of Sleepy Hollow Farm in Woodstock on Pinterest a few years back, I knew I had to experience it for myself. It certainly did not disappoint. It's definitely the stuff Vermont dreams are made of. I read stories of traffic jams and rude people during peak fall season on the road above the farm on the internet. Fortunately, it was just us, as the foliage was past peak. Dax and I spent a few minutes dreaming about what it would be like to live in this setting.

Quite frankly, this area is a bit too upscale for our taste to live in but it was a lovely place to visit. We also came across a covered bridge in Weathersfield that made up for all of the lackluster leaf color.

We headed down to the river's edge and Dax was itching to take a swim.

We stopped for lunch in the village of Grafton.  This quintessential general store is oozing with charm and, more importantly, the people there were friendly and kind. That hasn't been the case in a couple of other general stores we have stopped in. Vermont isn't always so welcoming to us flatlanders, but Grafton made us feel right at home.

 This village had me at their library. Seriously, can you imagine this being your local library??

 I have always dreamed of visiting Vermont in the fall and we will definitely be back next year. Thanks for living up to all the hype, Vermont! We will see you soon.

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