Traditional Christmas Home Tour

I just finished decorating our home for the holidays with my husband and kids and I’m so excited to share our traditional Christmas Home Tour!

The fire is crackling, the cozy faux fur blankets and pillows are fluffed, and we’re very merry by the twinkling Christmas lights. I’m so excited to share our Traditional Christmas Home Tour as part of Jennifer Rizzo’s Holiday Housewalk! What is a holiday housewalk you ask? Well, imagine, a festive home tour you can tour right from the comfort of your own home. This week you can tour over 25 homes across the US and in Canada. I am such good friends with so many of these beautiful women, I wish we could go house to house in person!

If you want to start the tour from the very beginning, start on day 1 here. If you’re popping over from Tatertots and Jello, welcome! Jen’s colorful home is so whimsical! I bet you got some lovely ideas over there! I love the classic style of her home.

If this is your first time visiting my site. I’m so glad you’re here! Welcome to our Scituate Harbor home on Boston’s South Shore. We live in a small fishing town and in an historic home. You can see what our town feels like at Christmas here. I’m Danielle! I share our home with my husband, two sons, and two rescue dogs.

We’re stop number 19 on the tour!

We always, always, always decorate our home right after Thanksgiving! On Black Friday we’re putting the trees up. We spent all weekend getting the house ready together. This year I’m craving a relaxed Christmas filled with family time. Our children are getting bigger (they are now 15 and 12) and I’m realizing how quickly time goes. I want to enjoy every moment with them, but I’ll admit they don’t always want to spent time with us right now. Over the weekend we decorated together and made ornaments and we’re looking forward to lots of afternoons nestled on the couch watching Christmas movies and baking.

This year I’m embracing the traditional! It may be a surprise but I’m drawn to red this year. I know! I was surprised, too. One tree is red and gold themed while the other is a bit more whimsical filled with handmade creations.

Let me show you outside and then we’ll pop inside.

Traditional Christmas Home Tour – Exterior

That’s my handsome hubby doing the Christmas lights! I’ve put a mix of real and faux greenery in our window boxes this year!

You can see pops of red in the faux holly, real holly and sprayed branches.

I love adding lights to the exterior. It just makes it feel so much more festive.

Would you believe I was out hot gluing these starfish on in 30 degrees! I know. My neighbors must think I’m crazing…

Come on in out of the cold and warm up by the fire!

This post also contains affiliate links, if you purchase a product via the link I may receive a percentage of the sale. You can read my full disclosure policy here. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Thank you for supporting my blog in this way.

Traditional Christmas in the Sitting Area

This space might look a bit different from last year. We moved the leather couch from the playroom (to make room for a peloton and workout space for the entire family) into this area. We’re all loving having a couch by the fire, including Max.

He’s in his glory with the fur blankets, throws and pillows.

That throw is one of my favorites and I love having these ottomans. We spend so much time here reading books, magazine and the paper on Sundays.

We love making mince pies each year, get the recipe here. The one pictured is actually by Walkers and they’re very good.

I decided to do new ornaments this year. As I told you, I was really drawn to the idea of using red and gold. I already had the tree and the gold starry ornaments, tree skirt, and star on the top of the tree from Balsam Hill. You can see more about those elements in this post here. The red and gold ball ornaments were very affordable from Target. I found the red cardinals, more antiqued looking gold ornaments, and the clip on candles at Scout Vintage on the Cape.

I also hung some ornaments from my childhood. I haven’t wrapped gifts so I placed boxes filled with bows and boxes of our 2022 watercolor desk calendars.

This is the first year we’ve placed the tree here and thought it would be so fun to open gifts and enjoy coffee Christmas morning by the fire!

The wreath, garland, and greenery in the crock is faux. I’ve added some candles from HomeGoods along with vintage brass candlesticks. I love brass all year round!

My collection of antique books looks very Christmas-y.

The other part of this room is where we spend lots of time on all those Christmas movies. We’ve already watched The Holiday and Love Actually, but think I need to watch them again. We made this little sweet driftwood tree. The coasters and lazy susan are from Target, the jarred candle is from Stonewall Kitchen and smells like heaven!

I love mixing antiques, vintage and greenery.

Max is doing his best to collapse this couch! He sits on the top and goes crazy any time anyone or any dog walks passed…

My style is very much influenced by the past and nature – giant pine cones, driftwood garland and fishing floats in green.

Let me mix you up a Winter Gin and Tonic or get you a cup of coffee.

Shop the Look of the Living Room

Shall we go into the dining room – it’s just through these columns.

Traditional Christmas in the Dining Room

I like this shot of our tree and it’s not a view you often see.

My husband built our dining table with reclaimed heart pine. It was originally a factory floor and our slipcovered chairs are from Ikea. I’m so sad they don’t make them anymore. The chandelier and two larger pieces of furniture are antiques.

I kept things very simple on the Welsh dresser with my ironstone and some simple baubbles.

These ornaments are from Balsam Hill. I think I’ve had them for about six or seven years.

The tree is very special because we made many of the ornaments. I created some dried floral ornaments and I’ll be sharing the tutorial on Saturday.

John and I also made more orange slices this year and turned some into ornaments. I’ll do a tutorial for that, too, but I have this one for making a garland and some ideas for decorating with orange slices.

I love how they look like stained glass. Also on the tree are some ornaments from Balsam Hill and paper snowflakes handmade by the Paper Mouse. We’ve had this flocked tree for years and got it from Lowe’s, probably 10 years ago.

I ordered a tree collar for it back in October BUT doesn’t look like it’s come until the end of January. I just used a drop cloth instead.

On the table are votive holders and a blown glass hurricane from Ikea filled with faux cranberries from Crate & Barrel.

The brass candlesticks are vintage and the twisted candles I found at HomeGoods. I love the shape.

I painted this blue cabinet a few years ago and always change up the decoration for the holidays. This year a faux tree from Ikea in Ironstone. Along with a needlepoint a dear reader created from our son’s seagull drawing.

I’m toying with the idea of painting this room dark. It gets all day sun and I thought it might make it feel really cozy for dining. Would love to hear what you think.

A glimpse of our dining room from the kitchen:

Kind of a fun view:

I put everything in the kitchen to take these photos so let’s skip it for now. I only have a garland hanging in the window. Let’s go directly to he sunroom.

Shop the Look of the Dining Room

Traditional Christmas in the Sunroom

Welcome to our little sunroom which is now a four season room. We added a sliding door, insulation, and heat! Hooray! I can now enjoy this room all year round.

The couch and side table are new this year. I’ve kept it quite simple with real eucalyptus and evergreen in an antique ginger jar.

I have a teeny tiny shell wreath on one wall.

I actually dragged the chairs from the pool house in here (the pool house is now filled with all our outdoor furniture). The pendant light is new and I LOVE it. I got it at Flemmings and they rewired it for me because we don’t have electricity above the table.

We often have breakfast or lunch out here and this table doubles as my watercolor studio 😉

Let me give you a closer look of the table. I do plan on replacing this table with a smaller tulip table. Its just too big for the space now.

A different twist on Christmas. Dried baby’s breath in vintage vessels.

It’s been so mild our roses are still growing! This will probably be our last arrangement.

I’m obsessed with snacking on dried fruit and nuts (and this looks so festive). Olive wood nesting bowl from Trader Joe’s.

What do you think of the new touches in here???

Shop the Look of the Sunroom

Well, that’s our home tour this year. This is the only Christmas home tour I’m doing with bloggers. I may share a bit more in separate posts of other rooms. I know there were many photos so I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Before you go, I wanted to share Scituate Open Studios is happening tomorrow (12/3) from 2-7pm with a portion of the proceeds going to Scituate Community Christmas. I will have a beautiful tent set up in our front yard filled with watercolor originals and prints, note cards, calendars, and more!

Send me an email if you want to attend and I can send you a list of all the locations.

And this is how I felt the other day upon completing Christmas styling and photographing. I’m not a model and Luke isn’t a photographer BUT he makes me laugh and this was a genuine belly laugh. Ha! Ha!

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season filled with good health, happiness and joy. I glimpse of our home at night.

If you’d like to see our home on previous Holiday Housewalks you can see them all here: Christmas 2020, Christmas 2019, and Christmas 2018.

Next up on the tour is My Uncommon Life of Suburbia. Kristin’s home is beautiful and i can’t wait to see how she decorated this year!