The Real Deal Christmas Tour

Here’s a little fun fact about bloggers that all of you need to know.

We lie.

We lie through our teeth. All the time. What you see are these beautiful pictures… what we see 6 inches outside of each beautiful picture is… not so lovely. Don’t get me wrong… I love my favorite blogs and decorating magazines because they’re inspirational and beautiful… but I also know that a team of stylists and photographers have been scurrying around behind the scenes to make each photograph come to life. And my blog is similar. My stylist’s name is Charlotte and in a weird twist of fate, my photographer is also Charlotte. Last week, I shared our holiday home tour. Which was a big fat lie. (See above.)

Allow me to give you the real scoop. Thanks to my friend Chelsea from Two Twenty One, I’m coming clean.

Home tour foyer:

Aaaaaaannnnnd back her up 6 feet.

Let’s break this one down a bit shall we?

1. Tuft and Needle were generous enough to provide mattresses for our recent Bloggers Heart Habitat project. Did I move this into the garage? No I did not. There it sat for 3 weeks.

2. Facebook tag sale sites are the worst. This diaper pail sat on the front stoop for a day and the buyer flaked. Sooooooo…. like any organized person, I just dragged it into the foyer. I’ll have to re-list it soon.

3. 95% of my cleaning up strategy involves throwing things into an Ikea bag (affiliate). Exhibit A.

4. That arm on the chair? Still unfinished. I posted the foyer reveal months and months ago and STILL haven’t added the trim to the armrest. It’s cool… you can pin it.

Here’s the foyer from another vantage point. I shared this lovely image on Instagram. What I love about it is that it’s clean and simple. Not a lot of ‘noise’…

Psych.

Let the deceit wash over you for a minute and then I’ll get into some details.

1. Remember what I said about Ikea bags (also an affiliate)? I wasn’t kidding.

2. The yellow thing is a street light. No lie. I want to rig it up and hang it in the playroom. It’s been there for a year.

3. I JUST brought all the ornaments down from storage. And now you expect me to bring the storage box BACK up to attic so it’s not in the way? Your opinion is noted. Duly noted.

4. Why do I have so many Christmas table cloths? We only have one table and we barely eat an organized meal on Christmas. Wanna know what 5 small kids are NOT interested in on Christmas morning? A formal sit down meal. Pancakes for lunch, anyone?

Think it’s different on another day? Nope. Different day… new junk.

Curious?

1. Buddha normally lives on that little campaign dresser. It felt potentially awkward having a Buddha right next to my “God bless us, every one” light board. I feel like Buddha would be cool with it, but technically Buddha didn’t believe in God. Whoa… my messy room just got heady.

2. Those are boxes of glass tiles that I was all gung-ho to install until I realized two things: they are complicated to cut and the space I was thinking of tiling is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

And just because this makes me laugh… peer through the foyer into the playroom. I mean, that is a trashed room. Although no cushions have been removed from the furniture so it could be worse.

OK. Let’s move on to the next show stopping space in the home tour. (It’s cool if you need to come back and read the rest of this post later… jealousy can be a powerful emotion.) This is our office. I actually couldn’t get my act together to share this in the house tour so consider this a little Bonus Feature. Please set your eyes on the vacuum and more Christmas table linens. Also… that brown chair is homeless and so there it sits. Not matching and collecting crapola.

I haven’t shared the dining room and my holiday tablescape, but… what I can show you is this pile of returns that sat on that chair for a month. And actually… now that I look more carefully, it’s also our Thanksgiving tablecloth piled up there. Full circle, folks.

The real crowning glory of this home tour is the kitchen area. I don’t photograph the kitchen very often because of the dated green vinyl tile. (I challenge anyone to make those look cool.) Let’s warm up with a reminder of how this corner looks in a blog world.

Sadly… that corner hasn’t looked that way since this photo was taken.

‘But surely you’re making this up and that area isn’t always that bad,’ you mutter to yourself through clenched teeth. #sorry

1. Oliver has learned to use our mini screw driver. Which means he pretty much goes through life replacing all the batteries in his toys. There’s a reason that firetruck no longer has a battery, kid.

2. That vintage thermos was too cute to pass up at the flea market. Do I have a clue where it can go? Nope. Not a one.

3. I’m pretty sure I mentioned that green chevron thing as a way to wrangle clutter in one of my more popular organizing posts. Say it with me… lies. All lies.

Wanna detail? Sher you do!

1. Thanksgiving. That’s how long those brushes have been ‘soaking.’

2. Not just one but TWO spoons left over from the kids giving the dog his wet food.

3. If I just leave the plants in the sink, they’re much easier to clean up when I inevitably kill them. #protip

Last and definitely least… I have no excuse. Again, not staged. Not unusual.

It’s a little better right now as I sit and type, but that counter is the Bermuda triangle of clutter. Which actually doesn’t make any sense because that would mean there’s NO clutter… so I take that back. That counter is like a flashmob of clutter.

1. Nothing gets a gal to take down her Fall tablescape like a Christmas tablescape.

2. Those stumps are the kids’ Christmas presents. Sort of. It always seems like such a nice idea to have the kids make something for folks and then I do the math… five kids-grandparents, teachers… adds up fast!

3. More harvest decor. Don’t worry… it’s working its way up to the attic. Baby steps.

4. In the whole vein of the out with Autumn and in with Christmas… that trash bag is filled with old pumpkins. The rest of the trashcan is just plain overflowing. One of those things I’m blind to until I see a picture like this. Grrrrr.

And there you have it. I’ve come clean. This is allllll the lies I’ve thrown your way in the last week. Forgive me. It comes with lots of love! (To see previous lies… click here.)

Unfortunately… my friends are liars too:

Chelsea from Two Twenty One

Jenna from Rain on a Tin Roof

Chelsea from Making Home Base

Taryn from Design, Dining, & Diapers

Katie from Bower Power

You KNOW you want to PIN IT for later –>