🎄 KITCHEN CHRISTMAS DECOR TOUR 🎄 | Linda Vater

[Music] [Applause] [Music] well you can hear one of santa's elves in the background they're working on something i bet it's for one of the grandchildren that live next door but come on in into my back door my second family entrance we came in the first family entrance yesterday into my morning room and you guys have seen this space before this is just kind of the back stoop it's where i can store my firewood things that i need for my indoor fireplace it's great this time of year because it is shady and it's not freezing it's just cool so anything i can't fit into my refrigerator or that i need cooling like this beautiful birthday bouquet that my friend jenny brought me today i can keep that outside so come on in pretend like we're going to sit by the fire and have a cup of tea so come on in stuart can follow me and welcome to my kitchen it is not very big but i think it's pretty cozy yes i do have a fireplace which i find absolutely indispensable i've said it about a thousand times i think putting a fireplace in my kitchen and my kids education is probably the best money i've ever spent i can't tell you the number of fires we have burned in that fireplace if you follow me on instagram you know that practically every morning i have my coffee down here even before daylight and i sit down here and meditate and then just enjoy the morning before it's even light outside so let me tell you a little bit about this space um we bought the house in 1990 and we did some restoration to it one of those things was the kitchen we actually didn't do that however until 1995 and we didn't change a lot of things but here are a few things we did change number one we opened this up this used to just be a very narrow opening that went into a breakfast room and there were built-ins not unlike what i showed you yesterday in that video but we just expanded it a little bit um another thing that it was money well spent we put in this amazing palladium window that looks out into the garden so i have a pretty beautiful view even stewart just made a face because he's seen this view a lot especially when the viburnum is in bloom but i have a i have a lovely view and i never take it for granted and if you're going to stand here doing the dishes or whatever it is a nice place to be i promise and i have three pots here of some amaryllis that i'm forcing we did a video on that not too long ago and these are just all beautiful sticks from my garden i love the ones that still have some foliage suspended from them why i like this is that i can see through them i like love the architecture of the branches ultimately they will support the stems and the stalks of the amaryllis but i really love it because i can see through it so it in no way impedes or obstructs the view of the garden in the back now before we get started um i want to show you a couple of things and maybe challenge you in a couple of things since the ice storm i know you guys are tired of hearing about it but we're still recovering one of the things that got kind of messed up was my burglar alarm system and periodically it just makes these kind of beeps and it did yesterday it might today then again it might not i'm not really sure but i thought we would play a little game as an apology for how obnoxious it is during these videos and that is that the first person who tells me at the end of the video in the comments how many times it beeped or it didn't beep at all you're the winner and i'm gonna send you one of my new garden calendars that's got it's got the to do the monthly to-do list it tells you what to do when these are all images from my garden um you can buy it off of zazzle but i will send you one of these all you have to do is just instant message me or send me an email with your address and i'll put one in the mail to you again this is kind of an apology for how obnoxious that sound is the second thing that i want to do you guys yesterday i was just overwhelmed with the number of comments you made so obviously you liked my my bringing you indoors and i guess we'll do a little bit more of it now that it's cold outside if you do please comment below let me know what you like what you'd like to see make sure to subscribe put on turn on notifications give us a thumbs up or whatever it really does mean a lot to us and share with other with others if you think they would enjoy it too now i i want to do a shout out because yesterday you guys always leave wonderful messages and you send me emails and everything but yesterday believe it or not um this one came a few weeks ago but yesterday i got two more cards in the mail from viewers who just wanted to send me a nice note they took the time to literally find out what my mailing address was and write me a sweet note so i want to do a shout out there's a couple down in texas near fort bliss texas and they have just sent me some of the most inspiring supportive message of work that they're doing down there and jane beavers i i think it's beavers she and her husband have sent me such lovely lovely notes and this is one of them and i just want you to know how much i value these and cherish them this has been on my bulletin board i show it to people as a demonstrable act of kindness of unexpected kindness and something that you can do to really positively affect somebody's day so if you think about it just send somebody a pretty note today now i want to also show you just a couple of my my favorite things before i talk a little bit more about the room itself this is my favorite christmas thing ever and it is a wreath box that my son jamer my younger son who lives in denver he did this for me i don't know how many years ago and he decorated it in all look at the little snowman in all of its childlike innocence and okay he did it in 2003 in fifth grade how sweet is that and stuart if you will kind of turn around and pan around because the wreath is behind you and i keep it on my kitchen door and it's been supplemented over the years i've added some different ornaments that are all mostly kitchen inspired but the the little um clothes line what are those called clothesline hooks uh the word escapes me clothes pins clothes pins thank you um ornaments that they made when they were little those are all hanging on there and it just reminds me of him so i may not put out a bunch of other decorations this year but i promise you every year i put out that wreath and i savor my little fifth grade son i missed that fifth grade son though i kind of like him now too um so so come on in let me show you one of the things that we did when we redid the kitchen was obviously we painted the cabinets these are wood mode cabinets and they have an under coat of kind of a vibrant red you can see it here in this glass cabinet that's the undercoat and then i actually had some artist slash painters who did the finish these are all maple cabinets they did the finish what i love about it is it's very forgiving i also love it because it matches i think the english style of the vintage the integrity of this old house but it's very forgiving it was very um forgiving for let's say just a family of boys and my two young boys and my husband and it continues to be very forgiving and very easy to clean and wipe up so not an all-white kitchen for me you guys but i still love it i would do it again i have never once been tempted to repaint it since 1995. we put in an industrial range a wolf range it gets a ton of use i really believe in using what you have inside and out i like the fact that things get a little scuffed up and distressed because that's just the signs of a life well-lived and i kind of just don't mind that again it speaks to the english tudor nature of my house so yesterday again this is a small space so it's hard to kind of navigate i am going to shut this door because it's getting kind of chilly in here and by the way this is my my laundry room when we first moved in the washer and dryer were in the basement and the best gift my mother-in-law who just passed away in february but the best gish gift she ever gave me was to tell my young naive self to bring the washer and dryer up from the basement so we did that when we moved in now it wouldn't be a kitchen of mine if it didn't have topiary so this is that silhouette that i just so love these are my rosemary topiaries that yesterday had a holiday out on my porch because all living plants really are the kinds i grow the topiary they really want to be outside they want greater sunlight and a greater exposure to to the elements than they get inside my dry heated house so of course i have to have topiaries in here and i love them because they're fragrant i can click clip on them as i cook and i think that's kind of that's kind of nice so again here is here's my window pretty much because i've got so much wood in here i don't do a lot of decorating inside my kitchen but what i do are certain wood embellishments i find that and i think it was maybe was it janice or brenda who who was telling me in one of their comments that they find every year they use less and less material things from the store and more and more from their gardens and from nature to decorate their homes and i do that too and i do it one because it speaks to kind of a garden inspired lifestyle but also because i don't have to pack it and put it away and take it down to the basement afterwards all i have to do is compost it or put it outside for the birds or whatever and that makes it very very easy and recyclable in an earthy way so but what i do have typically are wooden things most of them were gifted to me a long time ago and i like to position things so it kind of tells a little story and i think this little wooden vignette here kind of tells a story and you can um you can compose your own ending for that story if you like some other things that are cherished to me this is another little nutcracker little woodworking guy and he sits on my knife stand and you guys i know will ask about this knife stand because you've asked about it before it has a magnet in it and so i can have all of my knives at the ready it takes up a little bit less counter space and i got this on amazon and if stuart will remind me i'll put the link below um one more thing so many of you asked me about the link to the taper candlestick that i showed you yesterday and i got them from terrain years ago and i guess they don't offer them anymore i wasn't able to find a link or even find a similar product but i will continue to look if any of you find it as you're looking then you might give me a heads up and i'll try to supply that link for you i love these little hanging peppers i have these every year these were gifted to me by my dearest friend deborah who stuart also knows their their friends as well she introduced me to my husband she brought this back recently from santa fe and it reminds me of that part of the country that i love so much santa fe and new mexico and and colorado so another kind of uh interesting thing about the format of this kitchen you'll notice on that side that the open cabinet is deep and there is enough depth in there for storage for glassware and things don't judge me if that cabinet isn't tidy this one however is symmetrical but it's not deep at all because there's a flue behind here that we had to work around so this cabinet is very very shallow and made a perfect spice cabinet the other thing is this drawer here is just a fake drawer it's not functional but again because we wanted symmetry when we did the kitchen you'll notice that this one is functional and i can keep a calendar in there or whatever it's really really handy so that way i have symmetry i have a little bit more storage in this kind of tiny kitchen and they even put in these amazing corner cabinets otherwise wouldn't be functional space so i really like the the design of that this actually looks like granite but it is marble and at that time when we installed it i thought oh i'm going to bake i'm going to do all of these things and marble is what you supposedly were were it was the optimum thing to have to roll out pastry dough well do i bake no i don't but do i still love this marble yes i do i really like it and i repeated the tile detailing from the area around the sink over here on the opposite side so just like i have like to have stone steps with brick under risers i like to have these risers underneath my steps or underneath my kitchen counter did that make any sense kind of okay stewart's nodding his head kind of it did in a convoluted way okay so so this is where we spend i would say 75 of our time especially in the winter and i think that's pretty obvious why we love this wood burning fireplace it does have a gas jet and i showed you that our firewood is just right outside the door but i want to show you something else so if you look out here you can see what a wonderful view my husband has the this room used to stop right here we bumped this out just subtly and put in some french doors and some steps and let me get out of the way so stuart can show you what a beautiful vista what a beautiful view my husband has because this is his chair right here so when we've got lights outside um when we've got a little fire in my fire great outside we can come and go from this french doors we from these french doors we can open them up we can get a breeze it's great for entertaining and these spaces are tight but i think they're still cozy so i'm kind of embarrassed to say that most of the time it's at this little table in front of our mom and dad chairs that uh we eat dinner and breakfast at it's pretty handy and when the fireplace is lit we just don't want to get too far away from the fireplace most of the time in fact when i'm sitting in this room i'm sitting on the hearth because i just really like the cozy feel of having the warmth on my back so that is a just a seasonal indulgence that i just find absolutely delightful just delightful so um usually there's a topiary or something here now i want to i want to do a shout out because stuart i and i haven't touched this and stuart does have on a mask you guys um this is a croissant that my friend deborah when she bought me brought me my birthday gift because today's my birthday she baked these croissants and i've saved one for stewart right here and this is my favorite piece of spode it's the og dish why it's called that i have no idea it's my favorite piece of spode and usually there's some kind of little goodie on my table for hubs or for stuart to indulge in um here is stuart's laughing but he knows i do i take care of you stewart at different times i've had different things as a fireplace holder in the past i have a metal one i have an um anyhow just different ways that i hold my firewood i just really like the look of a basket and this is a plastic truck that i got from gardner supply i'll try to put a link below and it kind of protects the basket because i like the earthy way it looks now something else that i'm kind of funny about um i've already spoken of my affection for fairy lights and someone asked me what color i like and i like the warm white so these are the warm white fairy lights i get them off of amazon and i'll put a link below every year i have to decorate with citrus and i haven't yet made my clove clove pomanders which i will do a little bit later but i have dried some of this citrus and when i do a video on the cloved spiked citrus i will talk about how i i dry that i love it because they kind of look like stained glass i love taper candles i've spoken about that before and this time of year i burn them a lot i burn them all over my house but i only burn them where i am and as soon as i leave that location i never leave them unattended and i always blow them out because i use so many of them i like to have them at the ready and so i keep a picture of them on my mantel these i get from trader joe's i really like them they're for the most part dripless and because i don't like the looks of those plastic fire clickers i like to use long fireplace matches so i get these off of amazon i like the way they look in this little peter dish that belonged to my mom and what i did was just cut off the strike pad and put it on the bottom so then when i light the gas jet i can use the fireplace matches my husband laughed at me because i i even saved the fireplace match after it's used because i can use it again just by lighting it on one of the candles that i always have lit so he was making fun of me he said you are so much one of 10 children because you save everything and yes that's true i guess i do just make sure that it's really blown out before you put it back in with the other matches or you can have some fireworks going i do different things on this mantle every year i have to kind of be careful because it is a very drying atmosphere here because of the fireplace but i do want to show you these beautiful paper white narcissus um i did a video on that not long ago stuart please put a link to this video about forcing paper whites and i demonstrated my magical elixir to keep them short instead of stubby so that they don't flop over and you can see these already have buds on them and they're just that tall and i anticipate that before long these will be in bloom and hopefully short enough so they don't flop over i've got them growing in gravel mulched with moss and then top dressed and adorned with little tiny clementines and more dried oranges and then the dried wreaths these are boxwood wreaths i got these at trader joe's sometimes i will spray wreaths with wilt proof or something to keep them fresh but i kind of like the look of these preserved and dried and i don't i don't worry about that i i i still find them beautiful and attractive in that state so uh so this is this area um over here this is still kind of a work in progress i'm decorating this spot but this is our table decor here and just like outside i try to continue a theme or a decor element throughout the space and obviously that is citrus so i've mulched these pots these were just some laurel topiaries that are laurel plants that volunteered in my garden i think i did a video in a previous youtube and you can look that up but i just put them in a topiary form i've had these for a couple of years there are a few more of them that are outside but they kind of look like bay trees i like the way they look i've got some big fat amaryllis buds getting ready to come into bloom and then these are kind of fun i told you that i love spray paint and these look like look like little stone acorns and these are acorns that i just spray painted with a stone spray i have a whole bunch of those and i like the way they look now this is something very very special to me over the years i have worked with garden gate magazine quite a bit uh kristen bean sullivan the editor there i consider a dear friend we became friends when garden gate came out here for their first magazine shoot and she and i have remained very close and she sent me these wonderful woodwork hand woodworked ornaments this year and you guys there's a special deal right now and i'll put the link below there's a few sets of these left if you use the code lv holiday you can get them at 99 for a set they come packaged in this sweet box with these wood shavings they're normally 129 dollars so you can get a really good deal i ordered these for my friend debra and i just love them and look look at this one it's a topiary and i think these are so so sweet so kristen thank you and i'll tag you and i'll put a link below if you want these you guys you really need to get on it right away and and and go to it because they will be gone soon they're a limited they're a limited edition um just to demonstrate it really is my birthday look at this cute little ensemble of birthday gifts for my friend deborah my friend who introduced me to my husband who's been my best friend forever and then some of you were asking me and i'll i may or may not do a video but if not if you don't follow me on instagram follow me on instagram because in my stories i've started to put all of my favorite things and readers favorite things that i get from trader joe's this holiday and one of them these are absolutely marvelous you guys these are brilliant they're little chocolate covered fig bonbons oh my gosh they are individually wrapped stuart just made a face like i am so gonna so gonna have one of those after we finish shooting and i love in the afternoon to have a cup of tea and a little treat and sometimes this is that treat um here is a little glimpse we'll save this for another room this at one time had a door on it but when we bought the house this door into the dining room was missing some of you commented on my squeaky floors so if you liked those in the morning room you're going to like them here my kids used to complain however when they were teenagers that it was impossible to sneak out of our house because all of the wood floor squeaked but there was not a door here when we bought the house but i like the intimacy of that so we replaced it there was a spot for the door even though there wasn't a door there and we put in i love beveled glass and we put in a beveled glass paned door and i'll try to put a link to the online source for glass panes that does bevel glass at a fabulous fabulous price i think i mentioned yesterday in the previous video that my brother-in-law um was a naturalist he collected butterflies and this is a part of his butterfly collection this is very near and dear we lost his brother years ago and this is very near and dear to my husband's heart so i love having these kind of treasured things treasured things around now again we're navigating a tight space so so this is an area i have not decorated yet and i will get to it when i can and maybe on instagram or something i'll show a video of how i decide to do it so this is my plate rack when we moved in i had this plate rack custom made by a woodworker in gore oklahoma and had it stained and so just depending on the season i kind of decorated in different ways now this is so fun you guys these gifts are the these little matching christmas trees these were a gift from my dad my friend deborah who bought them back from sweden so when i got these other ones as a gift from my friend kristen i thought oh i'm going to do some kind of display in my plate rack with those as the primary stars and the primary elements i do like to have candles burning in here but obviously that's not safe so i typically use battery operated ones i've got some real ones in here now just for storage because i wanted to remind you that this is another thing i really like to get at trader joe's are there pillar candlesticks and typically i like candles to be in white or natural colors i'm not generally a big fan of colored candles so when this is all decked out and decorated i will make sure to show you i promise sometimes in the chandelier i might put some greeny greenery but not this year it's just a little bit more simple so i promise you if you guys were here i would so invite you to sit by the fire we could have um tea and maybe one of those chocolate covered fig bon bons and we could talk gardening and wouldn't it be lovely so consider this your virtual invitation to come sit by the fire with me i hope you guys have a wonderful sunday a wonderful beginning of december and enjoy continuing to decorate your home over time happy holidays happy birthday linda thank you stuart

Channel: Linda Vater

Views: 146,909

Keywords: potagerblog, Linda Vader, garden landscape design, Linda Vater, garden inspired living, kitchen christmas decor, kitchen christmas decorating ideas, decorating my kitchen for christmas, kitchen tour small, christmas kitchen tour, christmas decoration ideas, christmas decorations, christmas decorations house tour, christmas decorations diy, natural christmas decorations, garden christmas decoration, garden christmas decorations diy, linda vater home tour, linda vater christmas

Id: PO9eu9d4plc

Length: 30min 58sec (1858 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020