Our gingerbread-ified home tour for Christmas

My favorite time of the year is Christmas blog hop season and seeing what everyone else has come up with. This year I’m participating in Jennifer Rizzo’s Holiday Housewalk again and I added some gingerbread Christmas decor to our home.

I hope you have some time to check out all the tours.

Today the Housewalk is starting with Sarah of Grace in my Space. She never disappoints and that outside view!!! So festive…

Our gingerbread-ified Christmas home tour

Are you sick of seeing paper bag snowflakes all over social media and Pinterest yet? I know I have been using them for several years now and they are still my most popular Christmas post. I’m not sick of them yet because they make such a big statement. However, I wanted to change them up a bit this year and decided to gingerbread-ify them with the rest of our home. The puffy paint that I used to make my gingerbread Christmas ornaments were perfect for the paper bag snowflakes as well.

I bought a new flocked Christmas tree (check out my favorite faux Christmas trees) for the living room corner this year. Before I loved putting a real and much larger tabletop Christmas tree onto the end table but the mess has been a struggle and this year I just wanted something simpler. The needles falling into the cracks of the sofa and pillows were just too much.

You guys all know that I don’t like spending a lot of money on my seasonal decor and I like bringing back items that I collected or made in previous years. Every year I try to just buy one new item to add which was the Indian tin bells this year. They look amazing with some rust-colored ribbon to match our pillows. I also brought back my favorite glass icicles. They will come back every year because I love them so much.

The other new DIY ornaments I added were handmade and only cost me some bottles of puffy paint since the cardboard was free. I love doodling the patterns onto the cardboard gingerbread ornaments.
The plastic painted ornaments also made a comeback.

I also made new dried orange slices again in my food dehydrator.

my gingerbread Christmas decor

I love how the little flocked tree looks at night! I tucked the gingerbread ornaments into the trees instead of hanging them. I love filling gaps with them.

And you can see how I glued one of the gingerbread snowflakes onto a paper bag snowflake.

As a reminder, below you can see last year’s dried floral Christmas tree in the corner that I made entirely from dried grasses and flowers like thistles that I found on the side of the road. It was almost free. I only had time to make a small one for the fireplace this year. Same color palate but a different look regardless. Which one do you like better, last year or this year?

I also brought back my favorite German Christmas decorations (like I do every year) which are my German smokers! I know they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but I love them very much. The rest of them is sitting on my bookshelf. Every year I bring one home from Germany which I did this year again too.

I also had fun making some flat gingerbread home fronts. One of them is sitting on the side table below.

In case you are wondering if the trees make a mess? Yes, they do when setting up and you can see some flocked debris on the rug by the chair that I forgot to clean up but it’s not nearly as bad as a real tree with all the needles. And our robot vacuum easily cleans the fake snow but has issues with the tree needles.

Check out how easy it is to make my honeycomb ornament for beginners. I have a couple of them hanging on my tree below.

I mentioned above that I also made another pampas grass Christmas tree again this year for the fireplace area. I wish I could show you what it actually looks like in person because it is so much better. The Christmas tree is so bright and not that way in person. (Also check out my pampas grass garland)

If you are worried about the candles on the fireplace mantle with all the paper and cardboard, I can ease your mind because they are fake. Yup, they are my new favorite battery-operated taper candles. I also have the pilar battery-operated candles and love them too.

Below is the small pampas grass tree with the lights off so you can see it better. I just reused the floral foam cone from last year and I also saved the grasses from last year. They held up great in the attic.

Below is a photo of my original pampas grass Christmas tree. I like showing older photos as well to show you that I keep reusing the same decor items over the years and just slightly rearranging everything with bits of new pieces. I feel like social media puts so much pressure on us all to just keep getting new stuff all the time that it is beneficial to show that you really don’t have to in order to love your home and get a slightly different version so you don’t get bored.

The view from the hallway into the living room with my great-grandmother hanging above the bleached cherry wood secretary desk.

Last year right before Christmas I made this cute little macrame Christmas tree and I didn’t have much time to show it off on my blog. I loved bringing it out again this year. It’s perfect for small space living.

I love the little tree hanging in our green kitchen.

Our dining room is always the hardest to photograph with the light shining in from one direction. You can see the new dark green velvet curtains I added from Ikea. I felt like they were too dark for summer but now that it is winter, they add the perfect cozy touch and I love them so much, especially with the Christmas tree, antique velvet settee, and original oil painting. The painting is still one of my all-time favorite auction finds. I bought it 20 years ago and still love it.

Check out my DIY jute pendant light tutorial. It was so affordable.

I just wanted to show a close-up of the faux dining room Christmas tree with my German wooden Christmas ornaments, orange slices, tin bells, copper spray-painted plastic ornaments, gingerbread tree topper, and plug-in fairy lights. I like the copper wire of the fairy lights so much better than the regular Christmas lights.

Using plain brown packaging paper for gift wrap is still my favorite.

Where to get the look

And as always, I’m giving you the option to get the look if you don’t feel like DIYing the pieces yourself like I did.

And that’s it for today, my friends.

Now hop on over to Redhead Can Decorate who is up after me. Love her home. But don’t forget to check out the entire week of tours for some great inspiration.