We are back again for the last installment of the Christmas decorating season! If you missed the last few posts in the series you can see them all by clicking through the links:

Christmas Entryway / Christmas Sunroom /  Christmas Kitchen

Like I mentioned in the beginning post – I was so happy to have actually taken the time to really decorate this year after I have had a couple of years to accumulate new decor for my new home. It has really been a process. I don’t feel like I am completely done but I am finally satisfied enough to share it all! I also mentioned that furniture and decor are ever-evolving in a home, and that’s a good thing! If you aren’t completely satisfied with something, change it, or get rid of it. There aren’t any set rules when it comes to your home – do what you love.

Below is my family room. When you first walk in the front door you see the entryway and stairway, when you turn immediately to your left – that is the family room. Obviously the TV room and where we spend a lot of time for movie nights, Sunday football games as well as just enjoying that wood fireplace.

Like I mentioned before, I don’t think I have actually shared this room since it was bare when we moved in! Since it is in the very front of our house, we did actually add fairly sheer curtains in here to cut down on the busy-ness outside. Each window also has some fabulous black out blinds on them, but we rarely put them down as we prefer tons of light in our home.

As we have the chimney and fireplace in this room – this is where Santa comes down to visit us on Christmas Eve. This tree has some of the first ornaments I made and bought on it and is frequently filling up with those homemade family ornaments as well. I love that – that is how I grew up and I am happy to share those special homemade ornaments with my own small family. This tree is a nice flocked one we got many years ago. The lights just went out on it unfortunately, but we added some string lights to it for this year. I think eventually I will get a super nice one from Balsam Hill in the future. I love the look of flocked trees – but boy are they messy – especially with little toddlers who love to knock around the branches!

Below are a couple other views of the family room. The couch is centered as best as we can get between the two front windows, with my antique stove board over it flanked by hanging lanterns. Again – those two plaid pillows were made by Vicki a couple of years ago. I definitely prefer more unique fabrics or patterns in my pillows than something at a big box store. It matches the embroidery hoop ornaments on the tree too!

 

And below is the view from standing next to the fireplace. You can see the doorway over there that goes into the dining room/kitchen area beyond. That TV buffet actually used to be white in my old home! But I removed the drawers, added shelves and painted it in Fusion’s  “Ash” to change it up for this home.

And here is where I want to introduce my new project that I hope to accomplish over the holidays. I have wanted to change the brick look of this fireplace for a long time. I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I went back and forth with painting it total opaque white, then thought about a white wash look too. I decided to just wait and think about it for a while until I for sure what I wanted to do…

The brick is in wonderful shape and is laid out in a lovely pattern, I just am not totally happy with the color. Again, with all the oak around the house this brick is along the same tones and I feel like it is all so monotone. So, while painting and whitewashing brick are both fabulous ideas, I have decided to go a different route and do a technique that is called a “German Schmear”. It’s basically adding Mortar into the grout lines and then spreading excess around over the top of the bricks so you they look fairly white, but you have spots of the brick still showing through. Below are some inspiration photos!

I have always admired this look, and have thought long and hard on which route I wanted to take to change up my own fireplace. Being pregnant and having the twins definitely pro-longed the “thinking” stage of this project as I just haven’t had the time to do any home projects! But I am now ready! Luckily we are able to close this room off completely with the help of a pocket door and some baby gates where I should be able to complete this project in just a couple days with *hopefully* no issues. (Cross your fingers for me).

 

The current mantle will be staying for now. It is a nice oak mantle with an outlet on top. I am just not ready to tackle a larger project that I can’t do myself. I hope to get this complete while we have some time off in between Christmas and New Years, but we will see. Then I will, of course, be sharing a full tutorial and “after” post to share it all with you! I already have all the supplies, but I’ve just been waiting for the busyness of the Holidays to settle just a bit.

So again, stay tuned with us at Timeless Creations to see how this all turns out!