Christmas 2012 Home Scrapbook: Front Entry Hall

OH CHRISTMAS TREE! OH CHRISTMAS TREE! YAYYYY TREE! We got our Christmas tree this weekend and I'm kind of excited about it, can you tell? I'm not gonna lie, I was a little worried about the size of it when we first got it in the house. It's a BIG tree. Funny it didn't look that big at the Christmas tree lot ... but no worries, it worked out and it smells so evergreen good in here! With Christmas music playing, Rick is putting the lights on the tree as we speak while I just finished decking the halls - the front entry hall that is. It's a small foyer area but I still like to Christmas it up since it's the first area you see when you walk in, and it can be seen from the living room.

If I had to describe our decorating style (and by *our*, I mean *my* since hubby would probably stare at me blankly if I asked him that), it would be lived in-beachy-tropical meets Pacific Northwest-contemporary-eclectic-ish. Is that a style? It is in our house. In other words, it's a mishmash, and this hall area pretty much reflects that. It's not exactly Christmas traditional, but it suits us fine.

Most of the things I used to decorate this area are items I already had. I try not to spend too much on Christmas decorations and opt to reuse things in different ways, but I do buy a few new items each year just to freshen things up. I dressed up the hall table pretty much how you'd decorate a fireplace mantel. The new items in here are the cream colored poinsettia, the lights on the branches, and about a dollar's worth of fluffy white ribbon/fabric that I used as a mini table runner. The red wreath is made of curled wood (from Target) and is one of my favorite things. I love the pop of red in this little space! It cost more than I usually spend on my mostly DIY Christmas stuff ($39.99), but this wreath is so versatile - I can use it at Christmas, plus I can bring it out for Valentines Day, and then hang out in our bedroom during other times of the year. I also have the matching red wood pomade ball thingie that I use on my dining room table (here's a pic of it from last year's Christmas post), but I couldn't find it on the Target website so I'm not sure they still carry it.

I almost forgot about another new-ish thing in this hall - the paint job! This past summer while Rick was in Japan (surprise, Honey! It's like that when he goes on trips, he never knows what he'll come home to), I painted over the reddish-orange walls that used to be on this accent wall (you can see a glimpse of the old wall color here from last year's Christmas post). I loved the old wall color, but it was getting on at least 5 years and I wanted a change. It's amazing what paint can do to transform a room, even if you do nothing else! I've been meaning to share this paint project with y'all. Hopefully I'll get to do a more detailed blog post about it someday, but let's get back to Christmas decorating, shall we?

Here's a closer look at the details:

Above L: Shell balls that I use year round in a wooden bowl (both from Marshalls several years ago). They're already kind of like ornaments, right? I just Christmas'd them up with more ball ornaments. Above R: The nautilus shell vase (from Michaels, 2011) that's usually in the living room got moved to the hallway and is the perfect size for a small cream colored poinsettia. The green urn vase is one of my favorite colors and is something I've had for years from a local store that closed awhile back. Bottom L: That wreath, I love it so! (from Target). It's attached with a white fabric strip that I thumb-tacked to the top of the mirror, and then tied a snowflake ornament to it using fishing line that I pulled off one of the fishing rods. Bottom R: I moved the glass vase with the white branches from its usual home in the family room to the entry hall table, filled it with ornaments we already had, and wrapped white lights around the branches. The flocked greenery sprigs around the bottom of the vase were dug out of the Christmas boxes to hide the wiring and extension plug cord for the lights.

Initially I had hung this holiday photo collage I made above the console table. I was going to hang a bunch of other pictures and frames around it, but it was starting to look too busy with the wall pattern and I didn't want to put more holes in the stenciled wall so I opted to put the blue framed mirror back on the wall, and the rest is history. I'm glad I changed my mind because I really like how it turned out with the mirror and red wreath! The photo collage has found its new home in the kitchen. Do you move stuff around a lot too?

I'll post more holiday decorating pictures later this week as I go along but for now, it's time to work on the tree and then off to hula practice. Hope you had a happy and productive weekend!

Oh wait, how about just one more peek at that pretty year-round wreath made Christmas-y just by adding a little white ribbon and a snowflake ornament? Merry Christmas!

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