Favourite Holiday Home Tours 2014

It's Christmas week! As of today I'm officially on a break from work and am looking forward to relaxing, spending time with family, and doing tons of cooking. Today I wanted to pop in and share some of my favourite holiday home tours with you. Click through for the full tour of each of their homes.  

Designer at Sarah Richardson Design, Lindsay Mens Craig's holiday decor is subtle and elegant. She matched her holiday colour scheme to her existing palette of blue - my favourite colour. 

Jennifer from Dimples & Tangles used lots of red, green and gold and a variety of patterns and textures to create the ultimate, traditional holiday home. 

Though not an official holiday home tour, Julie from Elliven Studio shares a ton of pictures of her gorgeous Christmas tree and other little snippets of holiday vignettes around her living room. 

Over at The Hunted Interior, a lot of Kristin's holiday decor is colourful and bright, incorporating lots of pink in a way that meshes youthful elegance in the space, and I love all of it. But there are also a few subtle moments around her home like this one that I equally love - faux fur, a little greenery and mixed metallic ornaments in an oversized champagne bucket under her bar car.

I've been slowly incorporating holiday moments into my own decor this past month and still have a little more to do before hosting my family on Christmas day. I won't be posting my own holiday home tour here on the blog, but I will share vignettes here and there on Instagram, so be sure to follow me if you aren't already so you don't miss any updates. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Best wishes to you and yours! 

Where I Shop: Chapters/Indigo (Holiday Edition)

Can you believe there are only 8 days left until Christmas?!! Where did the time go?? I still have a couple of people on my list to buy gifts for, but I'm not stressed about it, I already know what I want to get them, it's just a matter of getting out there and buying it. I'll be spending this last weekend before Christmas doing my last minute shopping and present-wrapping. If you'll be doing the same then I suggest you spend some time checking out Chapters/Indigo. If you think that this is only a bookstore, you need to reacquint yourself because they have so much more than that - they have a wide selection of home decor items, tabletop and entertaining, tech products, toys, fashion accessories, and so much more. There will be something for everyone on your list whether you are shopping for a parent, a friend, or a child. Or for yourself! Just check out the amazingness of the holiday products this year:

The red and black buffalo check and faux fur mixed with natural woods gives this scene a very Canadiana cabin vibe.

Black and white is my favourite combo, I'm loving this tabletop setting!

Glassware of all types to stock your bar. There is a glass for every type of drink you can think of.





I love all of the marble and wood items. Marble is timeless and never goes out of style but can sometimes be a bit cold; the mix of wood on these pieces warms up the look.

 

 



 

Here are some of my favourite items from Chapters/Indigo:


Moose Snow Globe / Round Wood & Marble Board / Woodland Animal Lowball Glasses / Gold Cursive Mug / Snow Covered Pine Candle / Gold Rim Vintage Coupe Glasses / Cabin Check Throw / Cloch with Base / Luxe Cozy Throw

 

 

I purchased this moose snow globe for myself, it's a stunning piece that I know I will be bringing out of storage at Christmas each year for many years to come.

This snow covered pine-scented candle smells so real, it is the perfect item for anyone who has an artificial tree but wants the smell of a real tree. It burns very slowly, I'm amazed and impressed by how long it lasts.

This glass cloche with wooden base is so versatile - fill it with pinecones and battery operated twinkle lights, a colourful mix of ornaments, or cover the bottom with fake snow and set up a craft-store mini tree under the dome. You don't have to put this away when the holidays are over - it's a great piece for displaying any of your treasures year-round.

If you'll be out shopping this weekend, make sure to pop into a Chapters or an Indigo store to see the beautiful holiday items. The photos shown here are pictures I took at the holiday media preview last July, but the store set-up looks just a great. If you're doing your shopping from home, it's not too late to order online and still receive your purchase in time for Christmas (check the site though for shipping deadlines to be sure). 

Happy Birthday To Me!! And Merry Christmas To All :)

It's my birthday! Happy birthday to me! For me, today is all about sleeping in, having breakfast in bed, relaxing all day, then later tonight my boyfriend is making a special, surprise dinner for me. And of course, there will be champagne. Lots of champagne.  :) 

image via coco+kelley

Because I didn't get the chance to send my holiday wishes out earlier this week, I also want to take this moment to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays; I hope you celebrated with the season with the ones you love. And for those in Ontario dealing with the ice storm - I hope you had power! If you didn't, hopefully you were able to get somewhere warm. My mum's house was without power for most of the day a couple of days before Christmas - branches heavy with ice on the huge tree in her front yard fell down and took out some hydro wires. Though the power came back on, it wasn't guaranteed that it would stay on since the hydro guys needed to shut it off to fix the downed wires. We didn't want to take any chances, so my mum packed up the turkey and our family's Christmas celebration was hosted at my house instead. Every year we take family photos with our Santa hats (a tradition that my dad started, that we continue to do in his memory), and this year we used the "photo booth" from my Christmas party a few weeks ago as the perfect backdrop.  

Christmas 2013 with my mum and brother (and my brother's dog Stan). My brother found some grey hair spray leftover from a previous Halloween and decided to give himself a Santa beard.   :)

I didn't have very much time for holiday decorating this year, didn't even have time to get a tree, but I'm very thankful to my friend Trish for bringing me this live mini tabletop tree (it's only about 2' high) - not only did I not have time to get a tree this year, but due to my new living room configuration I don't even have space for a full-size tree. This little guy is perfect:  

As I mentioned, I set up a "photo booth" for the Christmas party I held earlier this month, complete with a selection of props including a Santa hat and beard, Frosty the Snowman's top hat and carrot nose, Naughty and Nice arrows, elf hats, and my favourite, Rudolph's antlers and red nose. For fun, I tried to hold the antlers and nose up to one of my cat's faces, and as you can see from the series of photos below, he wasn't too keen on holding still for the photo!   

Finally, I wanted to share a couple of photos I took of some ice-covered branches from the storm. I snapped these pics on Christmas Eve, the first sunny day after the storm, before the sun had a chance to melt the glittering ice away. I was amazed by the ability of this ice storm to bring about so much damage, causing power outages and property damage from fallen trees, and yet Mother Nature still dared to be beautiful in the face of her destruction. It was lovely to see friends and communities coming together, those with power opening up their homes to those without. That is the real and true meaning of Christmas.  :) 

Today is my special day, the sun is shining and life is good - I raise my glass to you all!  Cheers!  

Holiday Trend: Decorated Busts

Hello there!  Did you miss me?  I hope so, because I’ve missed you.  I spent the last couple of months balancing a heavy course load at school, a full-time job, and launching a website (more on that later), and that didn’t leave me time for anything else.  Something had to give and blogging was sacrificed, but now that I’m between semesters at school and will have a break from the office over the holidays I’m hoping to find time to write again.  

I may have been too busy to produce my own blog content, but I managed to find time here and there to keep up with what other bloggers are up to.  I’ve especially enjoyed viewing bloggers’ Christmas home tours.  As I made my way through beautiful images of living rooms, dining rooms and entryways decked out with holiday decor, I couldn’t help but notice a trend – at least a few busts had been decorated, and I must say, I’m loving this look!  Here are some of my favourites: 

From Dimples and Tangles:



From The Hunted Interior:

From Elements of Style:

I'm so inspired by this trend and would like to give it a go myself - going to try it out on my Nefertiti bust this weekend!

What are your thoughts on the decorated bust trend?


*UPDATE*
I wrote the above post during the Christmas season of 2013 and I was happy to see the decorated bust trend continue in Christmas 2014 decor.  I just love this vignette created by Sherry Hart from Design Indulgence: