Today is holiday home tour here at Living with Landyn and I am excited to share what I did this year.  Let me start with a little back story.  As you know, we are in the middle of a renovation right now and the attic space where I store all of my Christmas decorations happens to be right over the closet space that is getting renovated.  When the electricians were doing work in the attic they basically just threw everything in a big jumbled pile and left it that way.  Do not even get me started.  I literally can not find where any of my Christmas decorations are because it is such a mess.  Both Sandi (my mother-in-law) and I put our foot through the ceiling trying to find things and after that we basically just threw in the towel and gave up.

You are probably wondering why I am telling you all of this.  What it all boils down to is that the theme of this Christmas is simple.  I wanted a more simple Christmas this year, both in our decorations and how we approached the season and the renovation just helped me do that.  So less is more this year and I wanted to create a really beautiful, clean, simple, more modern Christmas look this season.  Everything is white and shades of gray with greenery providing my pop of color.  My inspiration piece was some white wood beaded garland that I saw at CB2 when they first released their holiday collection this year.

skirt (for 25% off use PRETTYTHINGS25)| top (marshalls) | shoes | earrings

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

I guess the theme of this year’s holiday decor post is backstory, because I have another back story on the tree.  This year I got a wild hair and decided that I wanted a fake tree.  I know.  I am a maniac.  I also decided that since I wanted a really simple and modern feel to Christmas this year that I wanted a non-traditional tree.  I ended up ordering the Alpine Balsam Fir tree from Balsam Hill when they were having a big sale.  My love for a Charlie Brown Christmas tree runs deep, so I fell in love with it as soon as I got it out of the box.  The only problem is that I have three other people in my house that are not in love with the Charlie Brown style Christmas tree and they freaked out.

Luckily, when I was stopping by my local tree stand to pick up some greenery I spied a beautiful flocked tree across the tree lot.  My local tree lot has real trees that they flock for you and set up in a stand.  You can even buy them with the lights already on them, if you want.  They are perfect because they are completely low maintenance, like a fake tree.  I don’t have to water it, it doesn’t shed, etc, but it still smells and looks like a real Christmas tree.  It is truly the best of both worlds.

Unfortunately they did not have a 9 foot flocked tree available at the lot, so I had to improvise.  I bought a 7 foot tree and when I got home I took a sturdy rattan basket and turned it upside down.  Since the tree was already in a stand, all I had to do was set the stand on the basket.  In order to hide the ugly tree stand, I got a yard of white fabric from JoAnn’s and just wrapped it around the base of the tree.  Problem solved.

I hit up Michaels with my 50% off coupons and literally bought them out of every size white glass ball ornament they had.  I wanted everything on this tree to be white and silver, so I also grabbed a couple packs of the large silver balls when I was at Homegoods.  I love doing large ornaments like these because they are great filler and make a huge impact.  You just want to make sure that you use an odd number when using larger ornaments.  I picked up the really modern wire star ornaments from World Market and called it a day.  I told you simple and modern was the theme this year.

THE MANTLE

As I mentioned above, the white wood garland was my first inspiration piece for my Christmas decor.  The next thing I found were these awesome gray and white stockings by Sugar Paper at Target.  They came with blush and white pom-poms on them.  Obviously blush wasn’t in my color scheme so I just cut off the blush pom-poms and left the white ones.  That is a good tip.  Don’t be afraid to modify something you find if it is not exactly what you want it to be.  You don’t have to settle for something you don’t 100% love,  you just have to make it your own.

I actually broke with tradition on my mantle greenery and went with faux greenery this year.  I know, I know.  The greenery sprigs I found were just so realistic and pretty.  I just wired together several individual sprigs to make the garland.  I must admit, it is kind of nice not to have evergreen needles shedding everywhere.  I think since so much of the main floor is a constant mess because of construction this year, I just could not handle one more thing to clean up.

To anchor my simple, modern mantle, I found these awesome glass Christmas trees from CB2 and I knew that they would be absolutely perfect.  They really are a great example of the overall look that I am going for in my Christmas decorations this year.  They also are a good choice because you could leave them up through out the winter because they don’t scream Christmas.  A good bang for your buck!  They come in four different sizes and three different finishes.  I would definitely check them out.

THE KITCHEN

I always put a second tree in my kitchen.  It is our family gathering spot and the room we walk in when we come home, so I like it to feel festive too.  For years, I put my awesome flocked tree from Walmart in the kitchen.  This year since I had a real flocked tree in the family room, I convinced the family to let me keep my Charlie Brown tree and use it in the kitchen.  I will say that the family has warmed up to it some and says it looks better now that it is decorated.

The kitchen tree is usually where we put all of our family and sentimental ornaments.  Since I wasn’t able to get to any of those this year, I went ahead and continued the theme from the family room and used white glass ornaments.  Since the branches are really spread apart in this tree I did not want to use the traditional Christmas lights because you would really be able to see the wires.  I opted for the wired LED fairy lights on this tree and I love how it turned out.  I must admit I am completely obsessed with these lights.  You can use them for anything, mantles, tablescapes, I even used mine on the white logs in my family room fireplace.

For the mantle in the kitchen, I wanted to keep a very similar look to what I did in the family room so I used the same gray stockings that I had in the family room in the kitchen.  I paired it with a faux fur stocking that I picked up at HomeGoods to give a little extra texture.  I also used the same glass Christmas trees and faux garland that I wired together.  You will notice that I also incorporated the twinkle lights into my garland.  I love the glow that it gives to the mantle.  The best part is that they are battery operated so they do not require any wires or plugs.  Perfect for mantles and tablescapes.

AROUND THE HOUSE

MY SIMPLE + MODERN CHRISTMAS DECOR