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It turns out I am not the only one whose house doesn’t look like a magazine. My friend Katie writes short book reviews that don’t pull any punches over at Brass Knuckle Book Reviews. She decided to do a Christmas House tour too. Check it out! 

I love drooling over the beautiful Christmas house tours that are on Pinterest and some of my favourite blogs at this time of year. But, like Dana, my house looks nothing like that. There are not even small sections of my house that look like that.

Unlike Dana, I don’t have the excuse of being 9 months pregnant. I’m just an average mom, and I think my house looks like an average mom’s house at Christmas. It’s not messier than everyone else’s, right??

Here’s my Christmas tour!

This is our tree. I may have over-estimated the space we had available in that corner. It’s also about to fall over because my husband did not anchor it to the wall like I asked him to. It’s totally blocking our access to toy storage in the corner, but I still love it.

In this shot, you can see the tree encroaching on our couch like a triffid. We also have another festive pile of Christmas stuff here. And one of the kids has added some joyful red marker to the couch, clearly to add to the Christmas spirit of our home. There’s also an ornament on the couch. The kids and the cats keep taking them off, which is making me crazy.

On the couch, we have a festive assortment of Christmas stuffies. They have clearly been arranged with special care.

Just above the stuffies, I have some unopened shipments of Christmas presents on display. I haven’t managed to get them down to the basement yet, much less wrap them.

We got some tiny lights and a teeny fire pit for the dollhouse this year, which I think looks insanely cute. You can also see the wreaths and garland sitting on the table here, because the sticky stuff that I used to put them on the house was not sticky ENOUGH. I’ve been meaning to find an alternative, but I’m really busy watching the tree slowly tip over.

We also have some festive Christmas penguins. These are flanking the focal point of our living room, our TV.

Here is our Christmas mantle. I shoved our regular mantle things to the sides, and then put some of my Christmas toys up there. I bought the garland this year, and I meant to put it ON the mantle, but I can’t figure out how to make it stick. This is a recurring issue with me, apparently. So instead, the garland is hanging right on top of my “Merry Christmas” banner from Target.

You may have noticed that we don’t have stockings. My daughter is four this year, so I think she’s finally old enough to notice. I need to buy some. It’s the 21st of December, and I still haven’t gotten around to this.

In this shot, you can see the giant silver bin where I keep our Christmas books. I always have books readily accessible for the kids, because I’m a librarian like that.

You can also see some additional mess here. I cleaned yesterday, so this is at least 75% less messy than usual. But you can still see the white paper stuck to the floor where the kids spilled something on a colouring book.

I made this tree out of felt, and then I made felt ornaments to stick to it. The kids actually never play with this incredibly thoughtful DIY project, because the ornaments don’t stick as WELL as they want. I put it up anyhow because I am proud that I actually MADE something that I saw on Pinterest.

This is a shot of our exterior Christmas lights. As you can see, they are still sitting in a Tupperware bin by the front door. Again, today is December 21st. I would like to get them up before Christmas, but it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t happen this year.

My husband bought this Christmas penguin from Earl’s 20 years ago. It’s paper mache, and it was made by someone who doesn’t know what a penguin beak looks like. But I still love it. We put candy canes in his Santa sack every year. We then find small pieces of candy cane stuck to furniture and floors for the rest of the season.

I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to ways to creatively display your kids’ art work. But I still just tape it to the wall.

Our Santa photos are on the fridge, because… what do you do with Santa photos? I have never been able to figure this out.

Here’s a shot of our kitchen, where the décor includes some festive Christmas treats lovingly tossed on the counter for people to snack on. You have to search through the rest of the mess though, so it’s a fun challenge.

This is our Christmas card display, and I actually love it. I just took put of those stick-on Command hooks on either side of the window, and tied a couple of long ribbons to them. Then I used small binder clips to attach the cards. For the rest of the year, I hang some of the kids’ art here too.

That’s it! If you don’t have any lights up, or don’t own stockings, you are not alone. And I’m pretty sure our kids won’t be irreparably harmed. Messy Christmas! I mean Merry.

I don’t know if you are familiar with a Home Tour. I didn’t know anything about them until recently when I fell into a bad crowd. Of design bloggers. Honestly, they are lovely people. Many of these design bloggers do gorgeous home tours that showcase their beautiful homes that look straight out of a magazine, like my friend Jo-anna.

Now I know their homes don’t look exactly like that all the time. I know the pictures were taken just after the house was cleaned and all the dishes and kids toys have been put away. I know that there are rooms that don’t get photographed at all. But my house has never ever looked even remotely like one of those houses.

Now that I am preparing for Christmas while 9 months pregnant with a 2 and 5 year old my house looks even less similar. I have actually managed to  put up all the decorations already this year. But that’s because I started really early because everything seems to take me forever right now. I wrapped all the presents over 3 days. And it’s not like I did any fancy wrapping either. I literally wrote on the wrapping paper with jiffy marker. By the time I got to the presents from Santa… Well, let’s just say that Santa should fire the elf that wrapped those presents. I’ve also reduced the number of decorations I’ve put up this year. In part because I’m having a baby in early January so everything needs to get put away right after Christmas and mostly because I can’t manage to get some of the areas that I would put the decorations clean.

I thought doing a home tour of our home would provide a refreshing contrast to many of the Christmas home tours out there right now.

So come on in!

I actually really like our Christmas lights, but we’re redoing the area in front of our window so right now instead of  a dying bush with pretty coloured lights on it like we had last year, we have a stump, a dirt pile and pots with dead flowers.

One of my favorite Christmas decorations is our felt Christmas Stockings from Etsy. We don’t have a mantel on our fireplace and I have struggled every year with how to hang them up. I think this year I finally figured it out.

I attached hooks onto the wall on each side of the fireplace and hung the stockings up with clothes pins along a string. The fireplace itself has never actually been used. We currently have it blocked off with a piece of wood held in place with duck tape because it was so drafty. Classy I know.

Our tree is beautiful and this picture really doesn’t do it justice. We carefully placed it in the centre of the room because there wasn’t any other place we could put it this year without blocking the TV. And we just can’t have that. We have high ceilings so bought a tall tree. Two things to note: everything looks smaller in Costco and if you are ever buying a tall tree think about how wide the base is. We have tall ceilings but a small house!

My son begged me to build a gingerbread house this year. I have no problem getting them to stay together but do not have much skill with using the icing for decoration.

We are currently lovingly displaying it on our kitchen table amongst the mess which we can’t seem to actually clear off this year.

We tend to get a little something new each year for Christmas and this year’s edition is a wooden nativity.

Which is basically lost in the clutter that is all over our bookcase.

In the kitchen you’ll find our little Christmas whisk.

And typically a huge mess.

I decided to extend the string and clothes pin idea to our Christmas cards and I really love how it turned out.

It’s conveniently located across from the bathroom and above the overflowing laundry baskets. This is also the same space that I display the kids’ artwork.

Inside the bathroom is our fancy Christmas themed soap dispenser.

And clutter that I should really put away. And a lot of toothpaste and soap residue. I love this sink but kids sure make a mess of it in a hurry.  I have tried to take as-is pictures of our house for this home tour, but I really debated whether anyone actually needed to see this. I’m pretty sure the answer is no, but it saved me from having to clean it up right now. I”ll get to it. Eventually.

We have a second small tree from our first house that we let the kids decorate this year.

It was pretty adorable to see how they put the ornaments on. There is a ring right at 2 year old height where you can find all the pink ornaments.

Below the tree we have a Lego Train set up. We have a Lego Christmas train for it too, but my husband’s nerves can’t handle the kids playing with it without supervision and I am way too tired to do that job so it only comes out when he’s able to watch them with it.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the Danish kravlenisser or Crawling Elves (we just call them Nisse). This are a little bit similar to elf on the shelf. They are paper elves that pop up around your house and move around at night. For some reason one year I decided that we should have a new one come out each day in December until Christmas and that they should all move around each night. I have no idea why I set the bar so high. This year, the Nisser are much more likely to hang out in groups so I don’t have to find new places to put them.

The Nisse also bring the kids candy for their advent calendar. Which this year is located on the floor next to their dresser full of dress up clothes.

The presents that don’t fit under the tree are stuck on a table in our back bedroom. surrounded by more mess.

So that’s our house this year. Yes, there are some rooms I’ve skipped. All you will find there is more mess and no Christmas decorations of any kind. Even though our house is far from perfect this year (not that it is anywhere near perfect other years) and I am exhausted, our kids are still enjoying our decorations and loving our Christmas traditions. I’ve found that letting go of some of the expectations I have for myself is making me happier too. Christmas dinner this year is going to be a no cook, order in pizza dinner. It’ll be different, but I think it’s going to be great just the same.

Merry Christmas!