I’m sharing our home tour over on Jennifer Rizzo’s link party too, fingers crossed I’ll be in the 2018’s holiday housewalk! You can see my link up here. If you’d like to enter head on over! xo

Today it’s our turn to show you our version of the,  Canadian Christmas home tour – Vinyet Etc style! And what style is that exactly? Well around here we LOVE anything with a good story, things with sentimental meaning, anything with wonderful memories attached is kind of our jam – so, that usually ends up being a mix of rustic, some vintage pieces and family heirlooms, we layer all of that with cozy and there you have our style – in a nut shell.

But before we really start the tour I would like to send some love to two amazingly generous and giving people, they volunteer their time over and over to organize and create such wonderful opportunities for the #CDNblogsquad (I can only imagine it’s like herding cats getting everyone on the same page- haha) many thanks to you as always, Shannon from AKA Design and Christina from The DIY Mommy – you can see both of their beautiful tours at the end of this post!

Welcome friends…

Our home IS not perfect, there will be unfinished baseboards, flecks of dust and smudges… we are so okay with that because we are very far from perfect ourselves. Life is way too short to be “perfect” wouldn’t you say?!  What we strive to create in our home is a welcoming place where you can relax with lots of love and laughter! Laughing is one of our favourite past times! xo

Our entrance is a tricky one… my brain is working on how I can make this space more mudroom like (I still miss our old entrance),  in the mean time I love the way she’s dressed for the holidays, sparkly and full of light – thanks to all of the mirrors.

Come on in to our kitchen…

Like I stated above, we really are all about cozy and comfort around here, if it doesn’t pass Bud’s “function test” (something that annoys the daylights right out of me) it doesn’t usually stick around for very long – I swear if it’s the least bit too decorative… it’s like there’s a bullseye on it and it gets knocked off, tilted and or broken somehow, it just makes everyone’s lives easier to simplify and “Bud proof” – haha don’t tell him I said that! 😉 For those of you that follow our silliness on Instagram, you know that we LOVE to poke fun at each other, in all seriousness though,  this tour, my creativity our creations would not happen the way they do without my rock, he’s my world and I’m so very blessed he puts up with my wild ideas! <3

While our kitchen is the hub of our home it’s far from being done the way we would like it to be. But we do have a vision and we are picking away at what we can when we can, still we’ve managed to make it cozy and welcoming. For now… just pretend there is no pink laminate, the ceiling is perfectly bead-boarded and the cabinets aren’t thermal-foil, okay? 😉

Our little white cabinet Ikea hack, still works perfectly, see how we hacked it here.

Serious business – coffee station. Our Christmas decor is very simplified this year, I’m all about natural elements and comfort – and a slight obsession with bottle brush trees!

I’m so delirious about our new pantry door though, like beside myself happy! OH my goodness you guys! I have been searching since the beginning of time (not really – added for drama) for the perfect door and I found this one on Facebook of all places! Bud was out of town with our vehicle, I made my BIL go get it! haha They basically preserved this gorgeous door with layers of paint for me. I bought it and a matching screen door for a steal!  I asked for it to be refinished for Christmas (as a gift) and my Santa came through, like he always does.  I can’t even believe it’s in my house, I may have to put that as a condition if we ever sell, “door does not stay”. HA. I love the happy accident white fuzzy wreath too, she’s lovely on that door. I bought 3 dollar store fuzzy dusters and was going to put them on our mantel, fluffy snow was the concept but it didn’t quite look right… and the boys made serious fun of me. 😉 So I took them off and plopped them on the table and instantly saw a wreath! The middle has bendy wire,  I just hot glued the ends together and used some black and white ribbon… I think it’s one of my favourite wreaths and hello three dollars, you can’t beat that!

Our living room…

Simplifying is actually an art in of it’s self… I’m a huge design geek and adore many different styles, modern, minimal, eclectic, rustic, farmhouse, industrial, feminine – squirrel! HA, consistently though the style we keep coming back to is cozy and lived in – with heavy vintage overtones – aged in oak… I think I’ve had too many coffees today.

Our Christmas topiaries and some twinkle lights… sigh! Simple decor you can move around at will, I LOVE that. See how I made the Christmas topiaries here. 

One of the best things about this house is the fireplace! The mantel is a temporary thing until we design and build our “dream mantel”, even thought this one isn’t THE one it’s so much better than what it was! You can see some before shots here.

Our little tree is filled with sentimental ornaments, gifts from friends, special keepsakes that our Son made for us. I love the glow the tree and fire cast over our space.

I really wanted to challenge myself this year and use what we have on hand, shop our home type of idea and I added some fresh greenery with my bottle brush trees – our Christmas look this year will carry us deep into winter – I love that idea. I do adore popping into the stores to buy new Christmas decor every year,  but this year I decided a more frugal approach was going to work better for our family and I’m pretty happy with our simple vintage Christmas. And of course that church window has my heart, that window was from my Dad’s church in Botwood, NL. When they replaced all of the windows in the church, my Mom and Dad casually asked, “are you even interested in them, they will just be throwing them out”! I could not get them fast enough and now of course they mean the world to me, precious memories.

But I was “shopping” online one day when I came across this poster!!!! It was a scroll stopper for sure! Kristine from The Painted Hive offers so many amazing and FREE printables. I downloaded the whole series of these posters, but only printed this one (at Staples). It’s the perfect addition for our living room. I added some barn board cast offs from our shop – at the top and bottom (I love the imperfect piece at the bottom) and used some heavy duty bakers twine to hang it. It’s perfectly rustic and I’m madly in love – so simple. You have to pop over and visit, Kristine’s blog (once you are done here first of course) she has so many cool printables that she offers and I have a bit of a crush on her style!

Some Christmas vignettes…

I gave some love to Bud’s Charlie Brown tree.

That chippy bowl is one of my favourites!

I still love these sheet music pine cones, you can see the tutorial to those here.

A mixture of my Nan’s wedding dishes and my Mother-in-law’s gold dishes… I love these treasures!

I obviously took way too many photos… I’ll have to share some more vignettes with you over on Instagram, I hope you’ll join me there! That wraps up our tour… we still have a bunch of things to take care of, our porch isn’t done and I have gifts to get and wrap and baking, goodness I’m giving myself anxiety – I need to learn to enjoy the little moments, I mean the house is decorated for Christmas, right?! I hope your Christmas prep is well on it’s way to being all done and you are able to take in the special moments of this holiday season.

Thank you so much for taking our tour, I hope you found it cozy and inviting?! Please continue on this Canadian Christmas home tour and pop in to visit my very talented friends below. I personally can’t wait to take in all of the Christmaspiration!

And…

Follow along with the #CDNblogsquad all year round too, on Instagram – you won’t be sorry, I pinky swear! 

Monday

The DIY Mommy | The Creek Line House | Woman in Real Life | Life is a Party | Lemon Thistle | The Learner Observer

Tuesday

PMQ for two | Amidst the Chaos | Clean and Scentsible | A Burst of Beautiful | Rambling Renovators

Wednesday

Satori Design for Living | Love Create Celebrate | The Happy Housie | Craftberry Bush | Sustain My Craft Habit | House by the Bay

Thursday

VinYet Etc. | A Pretty Life | Home to Heather | So Much Better with Age | This Little Estate

Friday

AKA Design | Kim Power Style | Elliven Studio | A Pop of Pretty | The Sweetest Digs