🎄Living Room Holiday Home Decor🎄 | Linda Vater

[Music] merry christmas [Music] well i want to continue with my holiday home tour and show you my living room but i thought it might be kind of fun if i revealed it to you from the same perspective that my boys when they were little and i guess even now that they're big would see it for the first time on christmas morning so they'd come down these stairs in the past it would be festooned in greenery and all sorts of different ornamentation but this year i'm being a little bit more simplified in my holiday decor it's just my husband and myself staying home and being safe so i streamlined it a little bit but i want you to come with me and i'll show you what is revealed to them after santa came to town and so here we are in front of my fireplace the stockings are hung with great care because i've got lots of candles lit and i try to make it as magical as possible i'm sure you do too let me give you a little bit of detail about my holiday decor a little bit of how christmas unfolds at my house and some of my favorite things starting with the music that you're hearing this is my favorite cd of all time it was gifted to me by my friend gayla and at the time she said it was her favorite cd if you've watched my videos for any length of time you know i have a real fondness for piano music and this and i'll make sure to put a link below but this is danny wright's christmas that's w-r-i-g-h-t i love his piano music if you want to treat yourself then make a station on pandora called danny wright holiday because it's absolutely beautiful it's all piano music it's quiet it's lovely i can work to it and it really sets i think a beautiful beautiful tone so that is number one number two this is my 1935 house all of this woodwork is original and this year i decided pretty much just to go with natural elements i normally do but this year i am especially being vigilant about that you won't see lots of metallic glittery baubles i personally find that a little bit garish for my home for my home in particular not necessarily yours i like to have lots of candles lit it's candlelight is one of the most indispensable things to me for the holidays and i keep lots of trader joe's dripless candles on hand at all times because i really love the way they light and the way they burn and they're inexpensive so you can see that the mantel is just decorated with greenery with arbor vita and some juniper that's all cut from my garden i love showing not only the greenery but part of the limbs themselves and i like the way that they kind of frame whatever it is i'm trying to highlight i have a whole collection of pine cones again pine cones are one of the indispensable things to me over christmas time i have a couple of tubs filled with them of all different sizes these long large sugar pine cones i actually got in lake tahoe 100 years ago and all of these uh dried pomegranates i've had for years i save them from one year to the next sometimes they come out at thanksgiving and sometimes they come out at christmas time now one of the magical things that happens on christmas eve is that these pretty stockings these twill stockings that i have here will be switched out with my kids traditional stockings that i have needle pointed or that they think of as their very own that way they're kind of not tempted these are just the pretty ones i like to fill them with pine cones and greenery a little bit later on i'll show you that i also like to wrap tiny little gifts in whatever my thematic gift wrap is for the season and tuck them in there along with candy canes and things i'm dispensing with some of the candy and things this year because for well for obvious reasons one thing that's very traditional at my house that always gets wrapped as if it's a real gift and tucked inside their stockings are those old lifesaver books that you used to get when you were a kid remember when you would do the classroom exchange stuart's nodding his head and that was always the best gift that you could get were those lifesaver books so as a nod to the past both my own and my boys i always get them a lifesaver book even now as adults and wrap them and stick them in their stockings so i one another thing that i find indispensable are these little battery operated tea lights i have them everywhere in my living room i'll try to put a link to le below i buy them off of amazon they actually have a remote control that goes along with them so it makes them very easy to turn them on and off especially because i've got them tucked into all sorts of of tight little spaces so that's basically my mantle i do want to tell you something very special as one of my most prized possessions and that's this shapiro oil painting and let me give you a little story about this it's actually been restored when my husband and i i think two or three weeks after we met someone broke into his home and torched it they stole all of his electronics stole all of his valuables and then they torched his home and i was actually babysitting his cat i went over to feed his cat and there was a fireman standing in the front yard and i had to call him in austin to tell him that his uh his home had not burnt to the ground but it had suffered a lot of damage it was the first time i talked to his dad on the phone and so every time and he also was so calm when i told him so whenever i look at this painting i'm so pleased that we were able to restore it it reminds me of how calm my husband is in a crisis and the loving way that his father responded to me from the very beginning so i just wanted to share that little story with you because it really means something to me so come over here with me now first of all you can see my kind of out of place tv i'm very much uh in sapotico with brian branton who did his home tour yesterday because in these older homes there's just not really a lot of good places to put your your tv and they kind of stick out like a sore thumb for years i resisted having a tv in my living room and then i realized that what that did was just relegate my living room to wasted space and that is just not that doesn't make sense all rooms of your home should be lived in so i put a tv in here um and now we can lounge on the couch it's fun it's a gathering place old homes in general are not good for tv viewing especially with a crowd but we go to my friends with more modern homes for that kind of activity anyway but it's kind of cozy to sit here in front of the fireplace and watch a movie oh one other thing let me backtrack this is a gas burning little furnace it is an antique that came with a house it sets into the inset of where the fireplace would be in these 1930s houses they didn't have wood-burning fireplaces the one that i have in my kitchen we actually installed ourselves but this gives us great heat it has saved us through multiple ice storms when our power went out it creates a really nice a nice warm atmosphere i think that's very very cozy it's a great source of comfort to us now i have this lit for you right now but that's only because this is special i also have my concrete santa over here that was given to me by a client years ago with another candle in real life i would not have this furnace lit with any of this in front of it because for obvious reasons i'm we're pretty scared of fire around here one other thing that might be fun for you to know i think this is a wonderful idea if any of you have really old magazines um or new magazines that will become old and you're trying to kind of clear some things out of your house and gift them to someone else this is a great idea my husband visited a childhood friend of his in colorado not too long ago who has a huge inventory of these old life magazines that are just really too precious to discard offhandedly i think so whenever anyone comes to visit him he asks them what their birth year is in their birth month and if he has an issue that relates to that or his that his birth year then he will give them that or the issue that is closest to their birth date and i think it's just a wonderful nod to history and a great way to kind of share your things with others that you find valuable and my husband looked through the whole thing he got a dose of history and also a little flashback in time now let me show you this this is the vestibule this is actually my front door all of these rounded architectural detail details are original to the house and it's a little vestibule even though we don't use our front yard a lot or our front door a lot i'm going to show you a couple of things number one this is kind of exciting don't tell but i've got a tub in here that contains wrapped up very carefully um jamie's my husband hubs mother's china that we're gonna gift to my son and his fiance for christmas time they have always loved it and i've got it kind of stored in here and here's my old-fashioned mail slot and then this is kind of a fun little detail this is a little window peak so you could see what guests were at your door before you opened the door itself and look at that isn't that magical it's actually snowing outside stuart see if you can pan over from my perspective i love being able to look outside and seeing my neighbor's holiday decorations and when the tulips are in bloom i sometimes come to this front door and just peek through this little window i find it absolutely charming it's one of my favorite things in the house now if you come this way you can kind of see a vantage point of the steps again and how my boys would come down the steps now come this way and let me talk to you a little bit about these bookshelves now these are actually reproductions but they hold some of mine and my husband's very favorite books um they're just prized this is where i keep all of my children's favorite books from when they were little if you give a moosa muffin that way i know which ones i want to save for them when they're older there that's very christmassy and when they were here when they were little then i would pull out all of the holiday ones whatever the season was and i'd put them on my coffee table let me show you something else this is my favorite picture of myself and my boys when they were little right in front of our enormous oak tree in the front so you can see another reason why when anything happens to that oak tree i get so upset it's not a very pretty picture frame i need to change that out but these are just some things that are really valuable to me another thing that they house my son has a degree in literary translation and he speaks fluent hindi and some russian and a lot of his prized texts that are in hindi and are in russian we keep in here and just our most valuable some of our most valuable possessions some of my husbands he's he's got a degree in anthropology so some of his artifacts we keep in here and then again i like to use a lot of these little tea lights and i like the way that just a few of them scattered in here kind of illuminate the space now i'm not gonna lie i i didn't spend as much time as i normally spend decorating my living room but i'm not going to pretend that creating something like this doesn't take some time it does and i do it over a period of days i do a little bit every day partly because i have to fit in some work in there but also because i find that like my garden it's an organic process and i kind of come up with an idea and then i enjoy that thematic kind of just um revealing itself to me over time so this year my initial point of inspiration was some gift wrap that i saw and i'll show it to you and actually also the storm damage from my tree it reminded me of how precious our woodlands are and and so i used some of things that were precious to me in my christmas decor so you can kind of see over here the woodland theme that i've got this is normally my book table if you want to go back in time you can see the video that i did where i found this broken pot and i loved its kind of oh it looked like ruins and i loved the way it looked so i filled it with some wonderful amaryllis from color blends you can see that they are just about this is one of the most magical things at christmas time for me are these big fat voluptuous buds and these are going to be absolutely gorgeous i believe these are double delicious i got these from color blends and then i've just festooned the entire arrangement with some eucalyptus branching that dries beautifully lots of my prized pine cones i've top dressed it in some sheet moss that i got from my florist and then because i always like things to have a little bit more stature i elevate it on a plant stand on a metal plant stand which also provides a support to wrap some of the greenery and the little fairy lights that i like so much and then i think also that kind of speaks to this woodland theme are these large antlers this is kind of a fun way to reuse and repurpose something this is a little salt or excuse me cream and sugar set that was given to me by my sister-in-law it's an antique and i've just placed some votive candles in here and i am using it to hold some tea lights here are some of those paper white nice narcissus that i forced and i'll put a link below to these wonderful little supports that you can get off of amazon they're very inexpensive i think i got about six of them for just under five dollars and they are a wonderful support for all of my bulbs you can see the other pot of bulbs i did over here and then stuart if you can show in the back there's one of my free topiaries of just a laurel that i dug up from my yard you've seen them before outside in my garden and i top dressed it with some sheet moss and here is the wonderful gift wrap that i got that looks like like a deer fur and i like it to wrap my gifts and have them be part of the decor itself i've got little bits and bobbles and twigs and things that i decorate the package with and it kind of again just serve to inspire the rest of what's going on here now this is definitely a gardener's tableau this christmas tree i think i told you i was inspired by a very tall slim cylindrical shape this year and so that is the shape that i adopted for my christmas tree this is a frasier fur and at the end of this video i'll put a practical it'll be kind of a double feature i'll put a practical edition here where you can see how i set up my christmas tree the christmas tree stand i used so that i could place it in a basket because i wanted that organic feel not a lot of christmas decorations this year they're all pine cones a few lights some cotton bowls these are all rose hips that actually came out of a birthday arrangement that my friend jenny gave to me and i've repurposed them here and then i've got just a very few ornaments on here that look kind of like snowy deer and lots and lots of pine cones so this year i was very simple i also tucked in here some of i told you another indispensable thing to me is spray paint during the holidays so some of the leaves and things that i've spray painted some of which i saved from year to year i tucked into the foliage it looks almost as if it's blown in there and i like the way that that looks periodically also if i want it to look as if it's a bit snow kissed i'll tuck some cotton and things into the pine cones to make it look as if they are just there's a whisper of snow on them so back in here i've got some more evergreens that is an arizona cypress that i got at whole foods this year that will later be relegated to the outdoors a lemon cypress this area in here because it's close to the window stays very cool i make sure to keep them watered it gets bright light because this is a southern exposure so i can keep these in here for a couple of weeks before they have to go outside and show any signs of distress again i've got some battery operated lanterns and things that are back in here i also love magnolia pods so i have some magnolia pods that i use to decorate my packages and here's some little acorn tops that have been spray painted that's that wonderful dragon prince kryptomeria from southern living i'm actually that's part of a gift and i'm going to do a video to show you how i sometimes gift plants in baskets and things this is a really fun idea this is a another amaryllis with one of those stands or supports on it and then this is a little seed starter that i've put some snips in from bridgetown tools i'll put links below but this is part of a gift that i'm going to give to my kids and i'm going to fill it with succulents and i think they'll really they'll really like that because they're very they're very young and hip and and so many of you young viewers are really into succulents and things and things like that here's another one of my free topiaries that i dug up from outside i think i have about five of these there are cherry laurels that just the birds planted and this is a little juniper with some tiny little pine cones and then in keeping with the packages being part of the decor you can see how i've got another giant pine cone on there with some more of that eucalyptus foliage so also let me point out to you my dining room that's not yet decorated and if you guys like these kinds of videos i'm outside of my comfort zone a little bit coming inside um stuart does the best he can with lighting and everything in my old house with its mahogany woodwork but if you like these kind of videos please subscribe comment share it with your friends let me know what you think and more importantly i love it when you share i can't always respond to every comment but i promise you i do read them please let me know some of your very favorite things your very favorite christmas music um one of your very favorite christmas memories one very special tradition that may not be the norm you know something other than just making cookies or whatever but some tradition that's really special to you and your family because it's those kinds of things that i think make the holidays in some ways for some people the best time of the year i i really think it creates kind of a beautiful tableau a couple of other things before i sign off um stuart if you could just point to that map that's in the corner over there and the arrangement of different natural oh biblows that i've got up there those are all spray painted treasures that i've had for years i spray painted them in gold and over the years they've aged and gotten more burnished and i love the way they almost look like carved wood such an easy thing to do these are treasures that i put in this same place every year and i love the way they look and again all of that was just a gift of mother nature they were just all forged items that i found and tried to kind of transform in some some kind of magical way i leave them up all through january because i think they look so beautiful and then in the spirit of christmas i want to close um just showing you a couple more practical practical things and and treasures that i have uh number one you may be wondering pragmatically how i can keep all of that watered without disturbing the entire tableau and look at how beautiful it looks with that snow in the background i planned that i planned that just for you guys so i want to show you this this is a christmas tree funnel a christmas tree watering device and all you have to do is just stick it through the foliage of the christmas tree down into the christmas tree holder and you can water it and i can water all of these things without disturbing the entire tableau it works brilliantly i'll try to put a link below and then i want to show you one other thing that's really special to me and i was going to put some greenery on these portraits this morning to finish this room but then it snowed and i didn't and i didn't get out there but i want to show you two images that i think are are they're special to me and i think they're very it's very serendipitous this is my husband's father bud budvatter a really handsome man he was a b-17 bomber pilot in world war ii as was my father coincidentally also another handsome man and they were in the same training location unbeknownst to them this oklahoman and this indiana hoosier they trained in the same area in texas literally within weeks of one another and we discovered that a little bit later um after my husband and i got engaged and we were just talking about our family histories they're both gone right now but i love these these old-fashioned portraits here they're really special to me as are you so thank you for coming into my home um into my little world i hope you enjoyed it it's not the garden but it definitely has the feel and the flavor of a garden home at christmas time thank you all merry christmas

Channel: Linda Vater

Views: 105,813

Keywords: potagerblog, Linda Vader, garden life, garden designer, garden landscape design, garden design, garden media, gardening, Linda Vater, southern gardening, Holiday house tours, Christmas home tour, Christmas decorations

Id: -kSOPxcH9kI

Length: 27min 32sec (1652 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020