Modern Traditional Christmas Home Tour

A classic Christmas home tour with a modern edge for the 2020 Jennifer Rizzo Holiday Housewalk featuring 30 bloggers’ styled homes.

Help yourself to some hot cocoa and come on in because it’s Holiday Housewalk day!

If you’re new around these parts or haven’t hung around the “blogosphere” that often, each year the talented Jennifer Rizzo pulls together an incredible group of bloggers to share their homes all decked out for Christmas. If you’ve missed all the fun this week, you can start the tour here from Day 1 to see the full line-up.

I am truly honored that ours is among so many beautiful homes for our third year in a row. (You can visit my past Holiday Housewalks here.)

Today is Day 3 of the tour, and I am the first stop. If you’re visiting from Duke Manor Farm yesterday, welcome! And if you want to see the tour from the very beginning, you can start here.

The Foyer

Whew. Inhale, exhale. Walking through our home all decked out in twinkle lights always makes me reflect on the year. I turn on Michael Buble and take a moment to just absorb- the stress, the lessons, the blessings. All of it.

This year, more than ever, I am so thankful for home and for family.

I wanted to spread every bit of joy I could throughout these rooms using decor from Bed Bath and Beyond in celebration of that.

To avoid contact with any big shopping crowds and eliminate any shipping hiccups, I picked out a few things on the Bed Bath and Beyond website and just used their curbside pickup service instead.

Then, Robert, Olivia, and I had a blast decking out the trees and stringing up the garlands while Regan napped.

Our foyer is one of the rooms that made me fall in love with this house 3+ years ago when we moved in, and I decided to keep it simple this year with just a bowl of preserved boxwood clippings, a candle on our secondhand Eastlake chest, and classic mixed pine garland with burgundy velvet ribbon on the railing.

I think this one might be my favorite look ever in this space. No fuss. Just minimal and timeless.

The Breakfast Nook

Our little kitchen table we call “the breakfast nook” is always the most challenging for me to decorate. It gets the most traffic than any other room and is also the smallest.

So I kept the table decor on the minimal side with a round tray, a burgundy vase with 1 little pine branch, and a couple of candle holders.

I found this modern light-up Christmas tree terrarium that ended up being so cute on our console table!

And I just flanked it with some simple wood beads, a bowl full of bells (that our 2 year-old loves to play with), a pair of dollar store mini houses I already had, and this mini tree that looks so real in its basket base.

Christmas brunch is a big deal for us, so I can’t wait to plop our pajama-clad selves around this little table to stuff our faces with cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.

The Living Room

This space is by far where we spend the most time as a family, sprawled out on the floor with blankets or curled up on the couch together to watch Elf for the thousandth time. So I went completely crazy in here, Buddy style. Haha!

This artificial tree is the most realistic looking one we’ve ever owned.

Olivia helped me make these cinnamon salt dough ornaments the other week to look like gingerbread, and I dried orange slices to make it feel extra nostalgic.

I crumpled up some burgundy velvet ribbon to make it look antique, and these wood bead garlands almost have an antique popcorn garland effect. A few of these will definitely be staying out of the Christmas storage bins permanently so I can use them year-round on tabletops and with spring/summer/fall greenery.

For the rest of the tree, I used these burgundy and gold shatterproof ornaments (life with a toddler) and these black and gold ornaments for a little touch of modern.

Those Dala horse prints I found on clearance last year were the jumping off point for our entire house this season with its modern/traditional/Scandinavian vibes.

For the mantel, I hung up this garland and added bits of preserved clippings with more dried orange slices, burgundy ribbon, and fairy lights.

It is so totally NOT minimalist, and I absolutely love it!

I reused my DIY stocking tags from last year and strung up more wood bead garland.

And even though I did the TV art trick for pictures, I don’t really leave it on all the time since the image looks so bright on our non-Frame TV. (That thing is definitely on the wish list though.)

I topped it off with a cozy basket full of throws.

For some extra glow, I incorporated this pretty mauve candle…

…and this black tobacco & amber candle that makes the entire room smell amazing!

These candles are totally battery operated, but they are the most realistic fake candles I’ve ever seen. The flame flickers and you can set them on a timer, so as soon as it gets dark outside, our candles turn on like clockwork.

On our window seat and on all of our seating, I didn’t hold back at all with pillows. These moss green velvet ones are SO squishy and soft. And they will be perfect to leave out all winter long and even reuse in the fall.

This cream block pillow will be a good year-round one too, and this corduroy pillow brought out the exact rusty/burgundy tones in our rug.

Olivia has already claimed this faux fur throw and has dubbed it the cloud blanket because it’s so heavenly soft.

I tossed on a couple of these gray and cream check pillows that I fully plan to keep out all winter too.

I know I say this every year, but I really do think this is my favorite Christmas decor ever!

If you want to know any of the sources, you can find them all here:

***Room Makeover Sources & Paint Colors

I’m so impressed with the quality of all of our decor from Bed Bath and Beyond and how convenient it was for us in the midst of everything right now.

No matter where you are or how different this season looks for you right now, I hope you know you are so loved and wish you the happiest Christmas. I’m so SO hopeful for what’s to come next year. Good things are just around the corner.

The next stop on the Holiday Housewalk is my sweet friend Lucy at Craftberry Bush. If you’ve never visited her before, you are in for the most gorgeous tour ever!

Merry Christmas, y’all!