Simple Christmas Ideas (Holiday Housewalk 2022)

We spent the weekend decorating and I’m so excited to welcome you into our home for a Christmas home tour! For those of you who are new to my blog, our home is 2000 square foot 1927 Dutch colonial in Scituate Harbor on Boston’s South Shore. You will find a mixture of coastal treasures, English antiques, and nature for our Christmas decor.

I’m delighted to be taking part in Jennifer Rizzo’s Annual Holiday Housewalk! You can start the tour right at the beginning, but if you’re coming over from my friend Lucy’s home welcome! Isn’t Lucy’s home absolutely stunning? I always love seeing her creative and artistic touches.

I’m stop 11 and I’m so excited to share some very simple Christmas decorating ideas with you! I love the holidays and enjoy celebrating with my husband and two teenage sons and our two rescue dogs. This year has been a very, very busy year for our family. I’m sure you all at home understand how life gets more hectic as the kids get older. I’m so grateful that my watercolor and stationery business has grown and that has been keeping me busy too! I share an online shop with my teenage son and you’ll see some of our stationery and art in this home tour.

I’m finding myself craving the idea of simplicity. In this tour you’ll see naked trees with just fairy lights, lots of real greenery, and some very simple touches.

Christmas in the She Shed

You’re in for a treat this year! I decided to do a little decorating out in the she shed / pool house.

We actually store all the pool furniture out here BUT we’re a little behind in the fall clean up department.

The window boxes are decorated with a mixture of real and faux. I love layering the two. My husband built the window box for me. I’m thinking of writing a separate post on my window boxes. The wreath was originally from Balsam Hill several years ago and is pre-lit. Each year I swap out ribbons to give a fresh look.

Doesn’t Poppy look so sweet outside. She’s supposed to be black but I know she currently looks brown – she got sprayed by a skunk in May and the peroxide bleached her hair. I can’t believe she’s already 12 – it seems like yesterday when we adopted her.

Let’s go inside the little shed shall we?

We completely redid the inside of this space. Originally it was a basic shed we turned into a she shed and then when we installed our pool we created a modern coastal pool house. Luke built the slat-front benches, the butcher block counter and the raw edge shelf.

Here’s a peek at our 2023 desk calendar and I always love to have one of Minot Candles lit in every room!

I find a simple green tree with fairy lights so magical and it was fun to try this look out this year (and inside our dining room).

Christmas in the Living Room

Let’s go inside where the decor is much more traditional. We have dark woodwork throughout our home and lots of period details. That is one of the things I fell in love with when we first saw our home (nearly 10 years ago).

This is my favorite spot to read or sip a warm cup of coffee or tea.

Max’s favorite spot is on top of the couch. He is slowly collapsing it! Ha! Ha!

We moved the bar cart and fish print to make room for our Christmas tree which is decorated simply with French Country Ornaments from Balsam Hill. I’ve had these for years and they’re still a favorite holiday decoration – I also love using them scattered or placed in ironstone bowls.

The faux tree on the bar cart is from Ikea. We’ve had it for probably 12 years, but it looks so realistic.

I know roses aren’t traditional holiday decor but John had them left from his school play and they looked so pretty on the counter. I mixed in some greenery…

So the above tree is the same one I used in the she shed / pool house. This gives you an idea of how it looks simply decorated with ornaments and clip on candles.

Christmas in the Dining Room

I’m very excited because we have a REAL tree in the dining room this year and it smells amazing. We went to put our flocked tree out this year and it was shedding like crazy and most of the lights were out….. Soooooo, we thought it would be fun to get a real tree!

I felt like it was just too pretty to put loads of decorations on it so we just added simple white lights.

Since we live so close to the ocean, I have a coastal theme going in here with shells and fish.

This boxwood wreath with the adorable fish was made by Cindy Mceachern of Foraged, Found & Flowers.

Of course, I decorated my little blue cabinet:

I made a little centerpiece for the table and plan on writing a whole post on that. Here’s a peek:

Are you starting to write or think about your holiday cards? We have a collection of holiday cards you may want to check out:

Christmas in the Kitchen

Our kitchen is on the older side and one day I dream of having something more English and maybe expanding it into our dining area as we all love to cook!

Our little red bronco tea towel makes a lovely Christmas gift and I love using them in my own home for drying up dishes.

I love holiday baking with my kids. We love making gingerbread cakes, snowball cookies and mince pies.

I love how you can see a glimpse of our tree from the kitchen.

If you look close enough you can see Max. He always follows me around…

Well, that wraps up our home tour for today. Be sure to check back because I’ll have more detailed posts on and several tutorials. You can see a reel of our exterior here and a reel of our living room. This post shows more sources for our living room. But for now you can see it at night:

Next up on the tour is Sheila’s home and I love her French country style! She’ll be sharing her kitchen and I can’t wait to see it.

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