Hey there!
Welcome to The Beazhive's 1st Christmas House Tour!
I am so excited to be joining Jennifer Rizzo's Holiday House Walk Linky Party this year! If you haven't already checked out all the amazing houses on the virtual holiday housewalk yet, you really must. They are simply gorgeous!
If you're visiting from Holiday House Linky Party, thank you! I can't wait to see all the gorgeous houses YOU have decorated for the season!
Now, there are a few things you must know
before we get started:
1. I am NOT an interior decorator. In fact, I pretty much fail at decorating my home, but I am getting better. At Christmas time I feel as though I do a bit better. Maybe it's because it's not permanent? At any rate, please do not expect Macy's worth displays!
2. I am NOT a photographer. I really, really, really love taking photographs, and I really, really, really want a DSLR. That is probably not ever going to be in my budget, though, so for now I take pictures on my phone. Mediocre pictures. I probably should read all those posts about taking better pictures on your phone that I have pinned.
So, please be kind! :)
3. I went BIG this year! Why? Well, last year we moved the day after Christmas. The year before we moved right around Christmas. The year before that we were living in a hotel until December 23rd. I feel like we were cheated out of three beautiful, peaceful Christmases in a row! I know that Christmas is not about the decorations and the presents & we try very hard to keep our family's focus on Jesus during the season. I just really love all the other aspects of Christmas that make it so lovely and magical. So this year, I'm going BIG.
Without further ado:
We moved to Florida last year & rented this beautiful house. Doesn't that entryway look beautiful with all the icicle lights? How about the 3 palm trees decked out in their holiday best?
My hubby did a great job!
Shall we go in?
We have named this the "Grand" tree because, well....it's grand. LOL
It's 7 1/2 feet tall with a base of 60 inches.
It sits in our foyer that for 11 months out of the year is basically 150 square feet of wasted space.
In my opinion.
I think the idea is the "wow" factor of opening that front door and being able to look across the entire house through the back WALL of sliding glass doors onto the patio & out onto the yard. It is very dramatic.
It may have suckered us in, too.
We didn't consider the cost of air conditioning that much square footage with up to twenty foot high ceilings in the main living areas. YIKES!
But now, the foyer is home to my beautiful blue & silver tree!
My husband and I are having a debate on where & when we bought this tree, which is weird because in the 10 or 11 years we've owned this tree, we've never even discussed it!
He thinks we bought it in Watertown, NY when Ames was going out of business.
However, our last Christmas at Ft. Drum we had a big beautiful live tree that really resembled this one. It was perfect, and the model for our "Grand" tree. We moved just over a month later.
I think we bought it the next year when we were in Hawaii and getting a real tree was bad option.
Not that it matters. It's still a gorgeous tree & we love it.
This simple yet stunning paper star was acquired at the swap meet in Hawaii.
I am smitten with it.
The tree would not be complete without it.
This year, I used a couple of cans of spray snow to lighten the green of the tree and adorned it with varying shades of blue, silver & white.
The dining room is off the left of the foyer. All of the walls in living areas are an interesting of yellowish, orangish, peach that I'm not a fan of. It took awhile to decide on a color that complimented it, but we finally decided on purple. Purple is not exactly a Christmas color, so this took some creativity. Luckily, the Advent candles matched nicely.
Hanging those ornaments was harder than I imagined. I love how it turned out, though.
Normally, three mirrors live on this wall.
Two of them had an accident, so we finally replaced them & put a wreath in lieu of the center one.
The wreath was one that I got at a yard sale this year. It was horribly ugly with old fake flowers hot glued to it. It's my first attempt at styling a wreath from scratch.
Not too shabby.
My china cabinet is still a work in progress, so check back next week for the update!
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| Did I mention there are no overhead lights in this room? |
To the right of the foyer is our school room. It's the room we spend the most time in.
I have a yellow, grey & black theme in this room because of our "bee" theme at the Busy Beaz Academy.
However, this is where the "Family" tree is located.
I let the kids decorate this one!
This baby is loaded with decades of special ornaments that we've all received over the years.
I really felt like a momma when I received that first gold spray painted macaroni Christmas ornament!
Here is our favorite ornament. It's a peek-a-boo Tigger!
PEEK-A-BOO! I have a thing for Tigger & have had this ornament for a LONG time.
Here is the gigantic built-in entertainment center in our living room. The living room is right behind the foyer. When we moved in we had a 32 inch tv in the spot. It was teeny looking! We scored that giant flat screen for $200 bucks off Craigslist! Of course, it's not currently working, so...
There will be 5 other family members joining us for Christmas this year! We are so excited.
We put up stockings for everyone from our extensive stocking collection.
For some reason, we seem to buy more every year.
It's getting a bit out of control. Kind of like the trees.
Maybe you should start keeping count of how many stockings and how many trees there are!
Our glitter silver nativity cut-out.
Sadly, this is the only nativity in our house. It's very had to find one that is both affordable and not breakable.
But that adorable baby in the manger is THE REASON FOR THE SEASON and we should never forget that!
MELE KALIKIMAKA!
(may-lay kuh-leaky-mah-kuh)
For those of you who don't speak Hawaiian, that means Merry Christmas!
This is the "Romantic" tree. So dubbed by J because it's in the master bedroom
Ahem. Moving on.
I'm not really a fan of skinny trees, but when I was working at Hobby Lobby last year, this tree was returned because the "lights didn't work". Mmm hmm. I rescued it from the trash chute for $5. Yes, five dollars.
This may be a good time to mention that most of the Christmas items you see here were all bought at after Christmas clearance sales. A great deal of them were 80% off (or more) plus my employee discount. I rarely pay full price for any Christmas item.
Back when we only had one tree, I used to rotate between my blue & silver ornaments and my maroon & gold ornaments and the family ornaments usually got mixed in too.
I always felt a little selfish wanting a "family" tree AND a "pretty" tree.
Now I don't have to feel guilty!
I did reserve that maroon ornament from some very dear friends of ours from our ARMY days in Hawaii for this tree, though. That Mrs. Bradley had a house straight from the pages of Southern Living & I loved it. Her tree had more lights and decorations on it than I thought possible!
Do you remember when I said we rent this house? Yeah, I didn't pick any of the paint colors. I'm very thankful that my master bathroom is not still the mauve color hiding underneath this color! However, I found some great ornaments in the Dollar Spot at Target (plus an extra 10% Cartwheel!) that compliment the lime green.
What? You don't have a tree in your bathroom?
A little more color for the bathroom.
My "Candy Land" tree! Love this one! It is so fun & whimsical.
This is the tree we bought last year when we celebrated Christmas in an empty house because the movers had already taken all our furniture. It was a bright, fun spot in that trying time.
I really need to take some daytime pictures because it's so cute!
One of the neighbor kids said they wanted to eat it up!
My kids love the "snow" in the jars.
I was going to hang red and white pot holders from the cupboards but J came up with this free solution of putting wrapping paper on them after how well my china cabinet turned out. Smart, frugal kid!
Yes, I already owned all those different red wrapping papers.
I'm pretty sure only one of them cost more than .25 a roll.
This post is so long & I've only just begun! I will leave you with this fantastically adorable snowman that is hanging in the hallway between the kids rooms,
but I really hope you'll come back to view the rest of my decorations!
Mr. Snowy wants you to come back too!
*Please feel free to ask any questions or leave a comment!*
*I love visitors!*
