2019 Annual Holiday Tour of Homes

Welcome friends to the 2019 Holiday Tour of Homes! I’m so excited that you’re here for the start of what will be an inspiring week of 30 beautifully holiday decorated blogger homes. A big welcome to readers following along the tour from Southern Hospitality! Rhoda always inspires me!

I’m glad you’re here and following along with the tour!

I also want to thank our organizers of the tour Evolution of Style and 11 Magnolia Lane!

This year, the tour is a little different than years past. Instead of each blogger sharing a full home tour, this year, specific spaces are broken down by day and bloggers will be sharing the space for that day. You can see the tour schedule at the end of my post that details the spaces featured each day along with the bloggers who will be sharing those spaces so you can easily follow along.

I am thrilled to kick off our first day of the tour featuring holiday decorated outdoor spaces/porches.  I’m really excited to share our outdoor kitchen/pool house all decked out for Christmas gatherings.

For those of you visiting my blog for the first time, after many years of dreaming of building a year-round dream outdoor space in our backyard, we finally turned our dreams into reality two years ago.  The space is truly the ultimate dream space for our family and we use it all the time for gatherings and just hanging out. We pretty much live in this space all year!

Just to give you perspective of how the space was transformed, below is what our backyard looked like before we started the project. Notice that we had a split level yard that was more than four feet deep of dirt.

Here is how our outdoor kitchen/pool house looks today- all decked out for lots of Christmas fun!

 

Two years later, I still can’t get over the transformation!

We live in East Texas, where the weather is just perfect in December. Not too hot and not too cool (average temp in our area for December is 62 degrees).  I grew up in Minnesota and while I do miss the snow at Christmas (just for a minute),  I am really loving being able to be enjoy the outdoors during the holidays. Although, summers in East Texas are a different story!

Before I jump into sharing our Christmas space with you, I do need to introduce you to our tour welcoming committee! Say hello to Ava and Coco, our sweet German Shorthair Pointers. Coco is new to our family and is 5 months old. She is the sweetest puppy ever and she thinks Ava (who is 9 years old) is her big sister.

We decided that we want to hosts several holiday gatherings in our outdoor space this year, so we turned into the Griswald’s and pretty much added lights everywhere we could on trees, overhead bistro lighting and several lighted Christmas trees around the space.

This is the first year that we added a Christmas tree to our outdoor space.

While the tree is covered and protected somewhat from wind and rain by the retaining wall/back of the pool house, I only used plastic shatterproof ornaments and huge sugar pinecones from the Lake Tahoe area on the tree. I thought I would do a trial run this year with ribbon and see if it holds up through the holidays.

When I started picking out furniture for the space, my goal was to have plenty of seating for large groups when we entertain. I purchased a 13-piece outdoor sectional (that I love!!!) and I broke it up into separate seating areas throughout the space. The seating area by the fireplace is the main gathering area.

One of my favorite things that I have done with this seating area is to slip an old outdoor buffet/console table behind the sectional to use as a sofa table for seasonal decorating. I almost threw that piece out because it didn’t work anywhere with the new space and I just slipped it in there to see how it looked and I have loved having it there and change out the decor seasonally.

I have so much fun in our outdoor space layering pillows! Pillows are my weakness and I just can’t help myself.

 

The coffee table is from Pottery Barn and I have had a lot of fun decorating the table as well each season.

For Christmas on the table, I mixed sugar pinecones with plastic ornaments and silver garland in a pewter bucket.

 

At the seating area at the front of the pool house, I pretty much mirrored what I did in the seating area by the fireplace/Christmas tree.

Our fireplace has already seen a couple fires this fall and we are looking forward to more of them during the holidays. I added faux pine and cedar garland to the mantle with a mistletoe ball in the middle.

I had an extra small lighted Christmas tree and just happened to set in the bucket on my hearth and I ended up loving it!

Our main kitchen center island is the gathering place and the spot where we always set up a buffet when we entertain. I always like to have something dramatic and fun for the centerpiece of the island. We potted two large poinsettias in a large pot with placed metal reindeers to each side of the pot.

Our uncovered side patio is another great overflow spot that we use when entertaining. I’m hoping that we’ll have beautiful weather for Christmas to have our Christmas brunch here.

Ever since we built our outdoor kitchen/pool house, I have been collecting melamine dishes because they are shatterproof and perfect for outdoors (especially around a pool).  I love to mix and match the fun melamine patterns.

We are really looking forward to a great holiday season in our outdoor space.  If you want to walk-through our space, my daughter Bella made a video of the space below. At the end of the video, she did a night walk-through so you can see how pretty the lights are.

Thanks so much friends for stopping by today along the tour! We wish you all a wonderful holiday season!!

The next stop on the tour is Julie’s beautiful home at Less Than Perfect Life of Bliss.

Below is the schedule for the rest of the week for you to check back and follow along.

Monday, December 2nd (Front Porch/Outdoor Spaces)
Cyndy at The Creativity Exchange | Julie at Less-Than-Perfect Life of Bliss | Annie at Most Lovely Things | Heather at Southern State of Mind | Sara at Sincerely Sara D | Rhoda at Southern Hospitality

Tuesday, December 3rd (Entries/Dining Rooms)
Amy at 11 Magnolia Lane | Tammy at Pink Peppermint Design | Tam at Citrine Living | Cindy at Rough Luxe Lifestyle | Heidi at Home by Heidi | Deb at Seeking Lavender Lane

Wednesday, December 4th (Living Rooms/Dens)
Marty at A Stroll Thru Life | Heather at Setting for Four | Jen at Stylehouse Interiors | Rachael at This is Our Bliss | Amanda at Dixie Delights | Paige at The Pink Clutch

Thursday, December 5th (Kitchens, Laundry Rooms, Misc Spaces)

Summer at Summer Adams | Heather at Setting for Four | Andrea at Life on Cedar Lane | Emily at Eleven Gables | Laura at Duke Manor Farm | Amy at 11 Magnolia Lane

Friday, December 6th (Bedrooms)
Christy at 11 Magnolia Lane | Jenny at Evolution of Style | Heather at The Heathered Nest | Shand at Quarters One | Amanda at Sincerely Marie Designs | Christy at Our Southern Home

Cheers!

Cyndy