CHRISTMAS HOME TOUR | A Glamorous Dallas Home Decorated for the Holidays

Hi, Homeworthy. It's Courtney Pettit. Welcome back to my house. I wanted to show you how we're decorating for Christmas. Come on in. This holiday season, get ready to unwrap the most magnificent holiday homes with Homeworthy's 25 Days of Christmas. For the month of December, we'll take you inside the most heartwarming houses decked out for the holidays in true festive fashion. From twinkling lights and elegantly trimmed trees to sparkling ornaments and cozy holiday charm, these homes capture the warmth, wonder, and beauty that make this season so special. So join us as Homeworthy celebrates 25 Days of Christmas. The magic starts now. Raise your glass. Cheers. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hi, my name is Courtney Pettit, and I'm an interior designer based here in Dallas, Texas. The home that I live in, the style is actually French Normandy. So white brick exterior with a turret in front of it. And sort of looks like a bit of like a Rapunzel home, maybe. Not as much French Normandy. So inside the interiors, you'll see it's really complements the exterior, which is sort of classic, timeless, and fresh. Right now, we are in Dallas, Texas, in a little enclave called Highland Park, which is within the city of Dallas, but it actually has its own public school district as well as police department. So it's sort of this like little nook of a suburb within a larger city. So welcome to the formal living room in my home, where I wanna show you where we spend Christmas as a family. This is where we open presents and spend Christmas morning together with a fire that is currently on right now. So some of you may have seen my original Homeworthy tour, and you've seen this room. Not a lot has changed since you saw it previously. When we moved into the home, all we did was really, we painted the walls. We did a fresh coat of paint. We got some new furniture in here. We got my favorite sofa that's curved from Trading Treasures in Lake Bluff, Illinois, and it's become a formal space, but again, it's comfortable, and it's where we live every day. So if we go over here, I wanna show you the tree, which is my favorite tree, and it's a little bit, this year, it's a little bit of a Charlie Brown tree. It's a little bit short. It's not as full as I'd like it to be, but that's the fun with having a real evergreen tree here in Dallas. It really gives the house a nice scent and really feels like Christmas, and this is a tree that I love the most. It's my favorite tree in the house because it's where we put our ornaments that have been passed down or our ornaments that we've given to our children over time, and it's also where I, each year, we send out a holiday card, and I like to punch holes in it and put the holiday card on the Christmas tree each year so that we have a place to look at our family photos year after year. So here you can see some of these fun ones, like this is my youngest daughter in 2015, if they would have any school photos. This is a cheer ornament that she had one year when she was on the Outlaws team at Mustang Cheer. This is my oldest daughter. This is one of my favorites. When I worked at Goldman Sachs in New York, they had a fabulous backup childcare center, and I was able to take her there. I'd be working upstairs, and she'd be in the basement at the childcare center, and they'd send pictures during the day, or they'd come home with a little, you know, nifty little art project that they were working on, and that's Victoria when she was nine months old, and she's almost 21 now. You can see some of our holiday cards over the years that are interspersed here. This is Victoria's, you know, when she was on the tennis team at Highland Park High School, and that was a Christmas gift one year that they had. We got this ornament here. This is one of my favorites, the year that we moved to Texas 11 years ago. You can see the big Texas boot. This is when Victoria gave her the ballet slippers when she did ballet that year in 2007. You can see some more holiday cards. This is one of my favorites, actually. This is me when I was, I think, maybe six years old. No, that was 1977. I was four years old. Now you know my age, but it's a little piece of holly with my picture in it, and then I've also put pictures of the girls when they were babies and put them in like little silver frames here around the tree as well, just because it just gives me joy to see that and joy for them to see it as well, and then we've collected some other ornaments over the years as some have broken here or there, and one ornament that's really special to me is one that my grandmother made. We called her Nani, and when she was sick, towards the end of her life, she was in bed a lot, but she was still very sharp, and she loved to make pin needle ornaments, and I have one on the tree here and then a bigger one that you're gonna see in the dining room in a little bit. So let me show it to you over here. So there's a couple here, actually. Here's one right here, and it would be like a styrofoam ball and she would take ribbon and yarn and then she would put different pins in it just to make them festive and pretty. There's one down here that she spent a lot of time on putting red yarn down on it, and then you can see the different pearl pins and jewels that she would use to make these, and they're just beautiful. I know we used to have more when I was growing up and then my sisters and I all, when my parents moved out of their home, we took them and now use them on our trees, and they bring me a lot of joy because they remind me of my grandmother who lived in Milwaukee, and I just remember as a child spending a lot of time with her when she was sick and in bed, but she, again, was very sharp and she would make these beautiful ornaments and now they're here to decorate and be with my daughters, and that makes me feel good to have her here with us. We're in a very formal room right now, but this tree, like I said, is very sort of Charlie Brown-ish. It's not full, it's not perfect. We got it around the corner at the local dealer. I think it's important to be authentic with your tree in your home. Even if you have a formal room, it doesn't mean you need a perfect tree, and this tree is far from perfect. The ornaments are sort of glopped together here on one side and they're not perfectly spaced because my daughter and her friends actually came over and they were helping us decorate the tree this year. So I like the tree decorating to be more about spending time together and having fun together rather than making it perfect, and I think it can make a formal room even more comfortable and make it feel more like home. And we also like to keep some ornaments from our previous lives. So when we were in Chicago, my husband is a Chicago Cubs fan. This ornament right here is an ornament that I made in fourth grade that I've kept lots of years. Again, you probably know my age now, but this is probably 45 years, no, 43 years old. This ornament right here, the year that I had a baby, the year I had Eliza. You can see 2012. That was an ornament that my sister gave me. Just to commemorate sort of important things that were going on in our life at the time or that are important to us, and then you can see it interspersed with our Christmas card pictures that we send out. The first year that my youngest went to school, she got a school bus ornament. So again, our ornaments are things that have meaning for us in a particular year or our Christmas cards. I like this with my oldest daughter. She goes to UT, Hook Em Horns. You can see the Hook Em Horns ornament there as well. And one of my favorite ornaments is right up here. When we got a dog, it was my first dog ever in life, and maybe you'll see later in the video. We have a Datsun, and here's the Datsun, one of our special ornaments when he became part of our life as well. So each of these ornaments, you can see when Eliza was born, this was one that was made for her, Elizabeth Grayson, 2012. Important events that happen in our lives or things that are a big deal that year for us, we'll typically get an ornament for and intersperse it with family pictures that are on the tree. So we do have some presents under the tree. As I get them now, I don't have children anymore who need to wait until December 25th. So now I can put some presents under the tree, and there's no rhyme or reason behind the wrapping. I don't use one wrapping for every one. I don't use one wrapping for a specific child. I just sort of use the wrapping paper that's there when I get something and wrap it at the time. So you can see some of the gifts are down here. I like to use colorful wrapping, or if I see wrapping that's of a dog, of a Datsun, then I will get that. So you can see right here, some of the paper, because he looks like our dog, Louie. I also love wrapping paper from the Enchanted Home, and there's topiaries and blue and white vases. But the best wrapping is when the store actually does it for free. I love those stores. And you can see, I was in Florida and went to Hive and got my husband some stuff, and not typically paper that I would choose with the gray wrap, but they do it for free. So I'm all for it. So on the fireplace over here, I wanna show you the fire's on. And actually, when we moved to this house, when we did this room, I did get some new stockings because the ones I had were red before and sort of short, and they needed to be, they needed to go. And so I had these ones made that sort of went with a little bit of the decor of the room and had our names put on them. And this year, we've got some garland up. I had some of these chocolate bows made that go right here on the end of the mantle. And these silver pine cone trees were from my mother. I took them from the house there. And you can see everyone has a stocking. So Charlie Courtney, Victoria Liza, and when we got Louie, he couldn't be left out. So Louie also gets a stocking as well, and he'll get some treats in there from Santa Claus when he comes down the chimney on Christmas morning. So now I'd like to show you the sunroom where you can see a more put-together tree. So now we're in the formal sunroom, and this room is very pink and green. So it's an homage to the town that I grew up in. And you can see for Christmas, again, I thought fake trees when I was growing up just belonged in department stores. But when I moved to Dallas, I saw that everyone had them. And this room, I thought, deserved its own Christmas tree. So I went and purchased, this is the first one, a Christmas tree that I had. A fake Christmas tree, and got these pink and green ornaments and these sort of pink fillers to fill it in, and thought, wouldn't it be fun to have a really whimsical pink and green Christmas tree to go in this very whimsical pink and green room? When we moved into the house and renovated, this room actually originally was a patio, a brick patio. So if you look on the floor, you can see that it is still brick, and we painted over it white. And we turned this room into what was previously a bar area right here where the Christmas tree was. And it was really used as a family room by the previous family. We wanted to make it more of a sunroom. So we took the bar out. We put some new windows in. We put trellis all over around the room and did a lot of millwork and molding in here, and used and repurposed a lot of furniture that was at my mom's house and my parents' house growing up. So the sofa that you'll see here in a little bit, I recovered it and then a shoemaker to make it a little bit fresh. And again, whimsical, kind of an old-fashioned 1970s print, and took some French chairs, painted them white, and also put the shoemaker fabric on it. You'll see in a little bit, I have a game table and that I had made. I do like to, if I can't find something I like, I like to have something custom made. And so I had the table made in a Greek key pattern to pay homage to my culture. My mother is Greek, and you'll see that sort of throughout the house. So the tree, there's not much to it, I have to tell you. I went to a wholesaler and got a bunch of pink and green filler. I bought this white flock tree. Again, this is something that I thought that was only in department stores, and apparently now they're in homes, my home, and just got a bunch of pink and green ornaments and stuffed them in. I got various sizes, large, medium, small, to give it some dimension and some depth. The one thing that I did wanna have some more oversight on was the skirt for the tree. I went and got some green buffalo check fabric, some fun pink trim, and had a seamstress make this for me and put it around because I thought it really needed, this tree needed a strong base. And I thought, I don't know, kind of went well together and went with the pink and green theme of the room. So here's the game table in the room. And you can see right now there is a Santa Claus that was actually, or is actually a punch bowl that I've repurposed and used to put a evergreen, mini evergreen tree in from Trader Joe's. He's a great tree. I have a bunch of them around the house. I think they're like $14, and they're a fun way to spruce the house up and make it really festive for Christmas without spending a ton of money. And I just put a little pink bow in there to match with the rest of the room. This is the table I was talking about that I had made. I had the green made to sort of match the green that was in the sofa fabric. I got these chairs. I thought they were really fun off of Facebook Marketplace here in Dallas, and then had them recovered with a green seersucker silk brunch wig chair cover. On the other side of the room from my game table, this is where I work and where I have my desk. This is actually my father's desk. It's an old pine desk, and this is where he would work from home. And he had it in our sunroom in our house growing up. So it's found a place in my home, in the sunroom today, which I love reusing. And on here, again, you just can see another shot of the lattice that we have in the room. And then I've just got some samples here for a project that I'm working on actually in Chicago. I've got some rug samples and some trim samples that I'm looking at. And again, I like to be inspired by nature in here. You're gonna see a lot of animals. I like frogs a lot. I have a ladybug on the table here as well. You can see a lot of elephants in the room as well that I use as side tables. I love whimsical ceramics and I love incorporating them into the rooms. I think they're fun. I think they make for good conversation and they just make me happy. My style is probably more traditional, a little bit more classic. I like to use color. I like things to be happy. I like things to flow from room to room so you don't walk into a room and think, oh my gosh, where does this fit into the rest of the house? I really like it to flow. I tend to lean on the side of more formal. However, it has to be comfortable. Every chair has to be able to be sat on. The tables have to be able to have feet on them because that's when family is comfortable and that's where they like to relax. Okay, now I'll show you to the dining room. So welcome to the dining room. I'm gonna show you how we host for a holiday party that we're about to have and I'll show you some little tricks that I have in the room. But what I wanna start with first is a centerpiece. As I talked about in the formal living room, my grandmother had put together these pin cushion ornaments and there was one that she made that was bigger and that I had in my house growing up. At the Christmas time, we'd always put it in the front hallway and hang it from the chandelier. But at my house, I don't have a chandelier in the hallway to hang it from because it's a lantern. So what I do is typically we'll put it on the center table in the dining room so that everyone can enjoy it and we can enjoy it for the month of December and really take a look at it. So over here, it's sort of a big gold one and I love this growing up because it just was so sparkly to me. And you can see it's really just, it's faded quite a bit over the years. This is probably almost 50 years old. But it's a really beautiful one where she had taken this gold styrofoam ball, painted it and put all of the pearl and sort of fake little crystal pin cushions in here and really made something so pretty. She had such an intricate eye and such attention for detail. I wish it was better intact. It's, you know, it does need some TLC, but it does get this one place and it doesn't get moved a lot in the holidays because it is so fragile and very precious to me because my grandmother made it. So the table's a little bit whimsical. We are gonna have some friends over for dinner. And on this one, what I've done is taken some clementines, which I love, and we'll use that to pour champagne in them and people will typically eat them. So it's a fun little treat that I like to do around Christmas time. And then I just scatter the rest of the clementines and use it as the base of the centerpiece. And obviously we'll reuse those because we'll eat them. What I think is really important to do when entertaining, whether it's during the holidays or not during the holidays, is to get as much done in advance that you possibly can so that the night of you're relaxed and you are enjoying your guests as much as possible. So that means getting everything out, doing a meal that is easy for you and is easy for people is very different. I can only do really like one course. I can do a lasagna. I have my husband help with a salad. And then typically I just need, for dessert, I can only handle as much as like ice cream and a hot fudge sundae. That is not my forte. I enjoy the setting the table and I enjoy the cleaning up as well. So we'll get as much done as we can. I wanna show you a little bit of detail of the table on the table. The tablecloth is beautiful. The linen one is from Marigold Living. She makes beautiful, beautiful pieces. And this one is a little bit more formal, which I like to use around Christmas time with the ivy and the vertical line that you can see going along the table. I then have these little bit Christmasy Fenwick and Fields placemats. And you can see that they have little oranges on them or clementines, I'm not sure which, but they go with the theme of having the clementines at the center of the table. I have Heron dinner plates. These are Rothschild Bird. I actually got them at an estate sale here in Dallas. And the silver is something I registered for when I got married and was lucky enough to collect them. And then these little whimsical, I like having fun napkin ring holders. There are these silver plate ones. These are old now. They don't make them anymore. They're old Reed and Barton, but there's one here that's a sort of fun frog that's hanging to his side. And he's got a peacock you'll see over here and you'll see a bear trying to get some honey. But I love using whimsical napkin ring holders because I think they're a fun conversation piece when people are sitting at the table and tying them and then sitting down, it makes them feel welcome at the table. On the napkins, I actually had these made. I did capo table scapes earlier this year and so set a formal table and I had these napkins made and designed to actually match the plate. So you can see there's a bird here on a branch that's matching the motif that you can see in the dinner plate. The rest of the table, very relaxed. You can see some of the silver pieces I'll use, again, more formal because it's Christmas time. Very simple flowers. Doesn't need a lot right now because it's a more formal table. I've just got some tulips in a vase right here and a mini old champagne bucket from France. And then just use some carnations. I think they're the most underrated flower because you can just, they're really cost-effective and you can just sort of smoosh them out and get a lot of surface area space from them. And they add just the right amount of pink to the table. For the wine glasses, I have these are etched glass. Those are vintage. And then I have these little compotes. So little champagne glasses where champagne will go and again, where the clementines are. So really like the table to be fun, festive. This one is a little bit more formal, but it's holidays. So we do go a little bit more formal at the holidays. And the point is just to make it fun. And again, get as much done as advanced as you can when you are entertaining at the table. Let me talk a little bit about the chandelier. It has traveled to many different states. When I moved to Chicago, my mother had gotten me the chandelier. I moved into, finally had like a larger space. I wasn't living in a New York City small apartment anymore and had a formal dining room when I moved to Chicago. And she said, you need a proper chandelier. And so she purchased this chandelier for me and it made two moves in Chicago with me. Then it made the move down to Dallas. And this is the third home in Dallas that we've lived in. So in a period of about 12 years, the chandelier has seen about six dining rooms and hopefully it's the last dining room that it will be in. So the chandelier, it's antique, it's vintage. It's meaningful to me because my mother bought it for me and it's something that she wanted. It was, I think, her way of saying, I want you to have an elevated dining room. I want you to have a formal dining room and make sure you use it. So right now we're at the banquette and on here, what I have is a formal silver tea set. I just, I love the way this looks year round, even at Christmas. Maybe I'll put some greenery in some in a little bit, but there is a teapot, there's a coffee pot, creamer, sugar, and we will use this when if people do want coffee, we'll usually get the vat from Starbucks and pour it in to make it easier, but it looks a little bit better. I just love the way silver looks against the table. I have a Santa on here. I actually got him fairly recently. He's a new acquisition. Whenever I get my Christmas gear, I always go after Christmas to buy for the following year if I want to add anything, because that's when you can get it 50 to 75% off. Don't tell anyone my secret, but I don't believe in paying retail price for Christmas goodies, so buy after the holidays for the following year. I just love this one. He was white, he's happy, and I wanted him in here this year. You can see there's another Santa Claus to the right of the banquette right here. He's, again, he's a different look, but he's happy, and I love these Santas that are, you know, come bearing gifts and just look like they're happy and they're fun and festive at the table. I have some antique fruits here that I got at auction. I like to mix in birds and fruit with silver and just make it fun. So the mirror above the banquette was actually gifted to me by the children of the previous owner, so we were fortunate enough to buy this home about six years ago, and there were five children that grew up in the house at the time. They were the second owners of this house and lived here for almost 65 years, and one of the daughters, one of the five daughters or five children had gotten this mirror from her grandmother who actually lived around the corner, and she said, we don't have a place for it in our home. We would love for you to keep the mirror and hang it in the house in Dallas. I should say, hang the mirror in the dining room, and so I really felt like I was the steward of that mirror and wanted to put it up in the dining room as thanks to the previous family who were stewards of this home and took such exceptional care of the home for when we bought it six years ago. I've really been decorating probably since I've had children, so my oldest is now almost 21 years old, so I really started when I was 21, and it started from when I lived in New York City with her and getting a very small little tree on the street corner to when I moved to Chicago and had a little bit more space and more ornaments to put on the tree, and it's really something I've built over time, the collection that I have, which is ornaments and Santas and different decorations that you'll see in a little bit around the house. I guess when I've gone into each house, it's become a little bit different, like which room do I wanna decorate? Where do I wanna place something? In the house that we've been in now, that we've been in for almost six years now, you'll see that it started with just one tree, but then as I came to Dallas and saw there were all these beautiful fake trees around, I was like, gosh, they are beautiful ornaments. I have more rooms. Why don't I get a couple of fake trees and use these colorful Jim Marvin ornaments? So you'll see in this house now, my style for decorating for Christmas has really evolved over time based on the space that I'm in and the city that I'm in, but it's always grounded in using family treasures that have been passed down. So now I'll take you to the entryway and show you some updates that we made to the house since the last tour. So welcome to the entryway, and I wanna show you some updates that we made to this space since the last time you guys were here. So I'm gonna start with the table. I got a new tablecloth. Doesn't mean a lot, but I love blue and white and wanted to make it a little bit more festive when you walk into the room, and you can see that the holiday's in full spirit in here. I've got various Santas lined up on this round table to sort of greet people as they're walking in the door. I also use this old silver plate bowl to hold our holiday cards. It's a little early in the season, so we're a bit dry on them, but you can see this is where they are going to be housed. So as people are walking in or the kids are coming in, they love to see what holiday cards came in the mail that day, and they love to take a look at all of them. As you come through here, one of the things that we really wanted to do with the entryway was make it a bit more welcoming. When you came in previously, there were flat lines. There wasn't any molding. So we engaged the help of Wilson Fuqua, who's an architect here in Dallas, Texas. He's really a specialist in helping to preserve historical homes. So we had him come in, do some drawings for us, and then we executed them and wanted to get some pizzazz into the entryway. Originally, this home was built in 1934 as a spec house. And so you can tell sometimes with spec homes when they sell it or it's sold that the builder can sometimes lose some gasoline, so to speak, when it comes to really being particular about the fine details. And that's what had happened in the entryway. And so what we did is spent a lot of time. You'll see in a little bit, we punched through the turret to make the second floor feel a little bit more spacious. So we got some more ceiling height. And in the entryway, we put a lot of plaster molding in. Let me show you. So before I go into the modifications that we made into the entryway, I want to play homage to what was original. And so the stairs we kept intact. We have the original iron molding, and then you can see the detail underneath the stairs that we also kept. It was a really awkward space right here in the staircase. And so what I did is had my upholster just make a backboard with some fabric and left it as a bench to sit on. And because it's Christmas and the holiday season, again, I had these bows made that were fun to tie in the blue from the table. And they've got some birds on them. You can tell, again, I like whimsical things. I like things with animals. And we've got Garland going all the way up the staircase with the blue bows. So that's what's sort of original to the house and what was here and what we've updated is everything that you can see with the crown molding. We also took, which was a very sort of square and short entryway into this other space. We punched it open and made an archway and then put all of the plaster in just to really make it a more inviting space, give it more of a wow factor as before it was just painted and we had some mirrors in it and it wasn't very exciting. So we wanted it to feel more open, more bright, bring more light in, and hopefully we've accomplished that. The other thing that we've done, I'm gonna show you as we go up the stairs because the entryway really leads up to the second floor. Now we're on the second floor and I can show you some of the modifications that we made up here. Previously, if you saw on the home tour, it was a flat sort of eight foot ceiling that was up here on the second floor and you really couldn't put anything up here because it's a very tight space. If you look at the outside of the house, we do have a turret. And so what we did with Wilson is we punched open the turret and used some very specific molding that we studied. We looked at Dillbeck, we looked at lots of different moldings and decided that we wanted to do something leafy that was reminiscent of Dillbeck who also worked on the house. So again, we wanted to pay homage to the house and the original architects of the home. We put in a lot of the plasters here. You can see with the window frame molding and got three greasy panels that we framed out to really give it some more whimsical, you can see here, birds, flowers, make it a happy space, one that felt a little bit more welcoming. And then you can see we got a French light fixture to again, pay homage to relate to the architecture of the home, which is French Normandy. So do I follow a specific theme or does it change year to year? I really don't have a theme. I sort of put stuff where I think it belongs. The one exception to that would be the two fake trees that I purchased when I moved to Dallas. And when I grew up, fake trees were something you really saw in department stores. You didn't have them in the home, but in Dallas where it's a little bit warmer, it's harder for real evergreen trees to thrive. Fake trees are really more commonplace. And I got into the Dallas movement, went in Rome and purchased two trees. And one really goes thematically with the color of the room. So I have the trees really to blend in with the color theme within that room. So you'll see those in a little bit. Oh, now we're gonna go into my daughter's room where you can see how she decorates for the holidays. So now we're in my daughter's room and she just turned 12. And I wanna show you how she decorated her room for the holidays. She got really into the spirit this year and took one of her most prized pieces of furniture, which is her new little makeup station. We, much to my chagrin, got her one for her birthday and got it off of Amazon, actually. I think for like a hundred dollars, but it's her most prized possession and the place that she seems to spend most of her time. So if you go over here, you can see this lovely piece of furniture. It's her makeup station where she keeps her makeup, all that type of stuff, her potions, her perfumes, things that she likes to collect, what 12-year-old girls love to do. She spends a lot of time here and she put little pink bows all over the bulbs. I tried to dress the piece up a little bit as much as I could. My husband and I were traveling and I got her this stool and we recovered it in this green fabric so I could make it a little bit more elevated than the plastic little seat that was there previously. She has a Christmas tree up next to her bed. She has taken our elf on the shelf, who no longer comes and does surprise visits anymore, but just sort of stays here, his name's Rumpelstiltskin, and put him up on her lamp, as you can see over there. And she has a pink tree that she actually decorates every year and normally there are just bows on it, but this year she took her favorite ornaments from the tree downstairs and put them up here on her tree, probably because they obviously bring her joy and it's something that she wanted to look at every day. So we'll take a look at her tree. So some of her favorite ornaments that she took was baby's first Christmas. So this is one of the ornaments that she received when she was obviously born. You can see it says Eliza in 2012. She's a Starbucks fanatic. I don't know if any other tweens out there are like my daughter is. I try and cut it back, but she put the, there's a Starbucks ornament. She likes ice cream, she likes macaroons, and her favorite ornament is, there's another Datsun. You can see there's Datsuns everywhere. We have like what is akin to our little Louie in the tree here as well. Eliza likes to go to the beach. She likes to collect seashells. So that's a seashell she has. And then another pink drink over there. So some of the things that bring her joy that she likes to wake up and look at every morning are right here in her room. So one of the enhancements that we've made to the house since moving in is remodeling this bathroom. So it's a tween bathroom. And what was in here before was a square old dingy tub that really needed to go. So we took out that square tub that was original to the house and put in a proper shower, which I think every tween girl needs a proper shower. We put some penny tile on the floor, put some white, bright, whimsical wallpaper while covering up from Schumacher and did this sort of white feathery mirror to give my daughter some more space to put some of her beauty potions on. So this has been a fun project that we did last summer to enhance the space, because I'm finding she spends a lot more time in the bathroom now than she ever did before. My inspiration for decorating for Christmas comes from what I was used to growing up. So what did my grandmother do? What did my mother do? What do my sisters do? What do I see in their homes? I also like to take inspiration from things that I see on Instagram or in magazines. People do such a beautiful job today putting things together in such unique, elegant ways. I think there's a little pieces to take really from anywhere, from the past, from the present, and to really put it all together and make it comfortable and make it home. So now we're in the green room. We're gonna show you how we decorate for holiday in here. This is a place where we really hang out, where we watch TV, where we sit and chat, where we go on the laptop, do work, sit on our computers. It's a comfortable, it's a really homey place. It's a cozy place, and one of my favorite rooms in the house. So you can see here, we have the mantle decorated. I remember earlier I had said that real trees and sort of themes for me were really just found in apartment stores. Well, I did bring that to the green room as well, and you can see I've got some of the lavender and green and chocolate brown, which are the colors that are reminiscent in this room. I brought them into the Christmas decor as well. And see, I had bows made that were put on. The lamps right here, and the same sort of ribbon is going through the garland that's around the fireplace. The fireplace is original. We didn't change that when we moved into the house. I love the blue and white Delft tile. I just added some andirons there, and you can see it's flanked by some copper pots. And my favorite way to decorate around the house is to use the Trader Joe evergreen trees for $12.99 and put them in copper pots, or whatever vessels really make sense, and they really make a room festive, and it's an inexpensive way to bring some holiday cheer to really any room. So the fire is something I love to have on as much as we can, as much as weather allows in Dallas, as long as it's not too hot. But if it gets below 50 degrees, we will absolutely have the fireplace on. Now we'll go see the tree. So this is a second faux Christmas tree that I purchased for the home, and the final one I will not purchase anymore. But again, I wanted to keep the theme of this tree with the colors in the room. And with this one, it's not flocked, it's just a green tree, and bought a lot of these Jim Marvin ornaments that really look like, I don't know, they look like bubble gum to me. They're just really fun looking and really shine nicely through the light, but got purple, greens, chartreuse, and different shades of brown. And you can see that the ribbon that was on the fireplace is woven in throughout the tree. We used sort of goldy little branches to fill in and stuff the tree where there was some empty space to make it really like a fluffy, full, proper Christmas tree. Again, something that you see in the department store that I brought into the house. So while the first tree that you saw, the original one, is sort of that imperfect Charlie Brown homemade tree that has gaps in it and was really lopsided. Even last night I had to prop it up so it didn't fall over. This is the more perfected tree that in Dallas you actually do see a lot of because the weather here is so warm and temperate during the holiday season. It just makes a lot of sense to have a faux tree. Growing up in Chicago, that's not something that I was not able to part with, not having a live tree in the house. So I thought I'd make the best of, marry the best of both worlds and have the one original tree and then put the two faux trees up in the two rooms and match the colorway to those specific rooms. So this has become a favorite tree. No gifts under it. It's strictly just decor for the holidays. So as I mentioned, we are in the green room and it's a color that makes me feel cozy. It brings the outside in because you can see some of the greenery when you look outside. I like green, I like blue. Color makes me happy. And whatever colors I think make you happy, you bring into your home as well in different ways that really uplift your spirits. So what is my favorite part about the Christmas decorating process? I don't know that there is one because it's a big job. It's taking things down from the attic and pulling it out and making sure that nothing's broken year over year. It's actually quite an undertaking, but through it, what I do like doing is over Thanksgiving with my two daughters and with my husband. So as a family, we will put it all together. And it's that time spent together and looking at old ornaments together that's fun. So there's typically a story with each one and we'll get a laugh out of it or we'll see the elf on the shelf come out and say, remember when. So although it can be a real pain in the neck to take it all out and to put everything up, it's the family memories that are made while we're putting it up. So that's it for the green room. Now we are going to go into the solarium where you can see where I'm planting a couple of things for Christmas. So now we're in the solarium, which is a room that previously didn't exist. The previous owners put it in really as a planting area and the side part was a greenhouse, which when we moved in, we enclosed it because I'm not much of a green thumb. And we really wanted this place, which was really a connector from the garage to the main part of the house, to be a room that could be used for entertaining, for eating, for dining, for cooking, for planting, whatever we wanted it for. And so what we've done is put in a marble floor, which I love, I love black and white. It reminds me of, I don't know, houses growing up and it's something that I enjoy. Put a black and white marble floor and painted the whole room white and incorporated a lot of blue and white elements in here. I got a lot of blue and white vases and vessels from my mom. And so you'll see a lot of them in the planting area that's over here. And I'm gonna show you what I'm planning for Christmas. So the space we're in right now was a former greenhouse, which we enclosed because I really don't have much of a green thumb. We kept the original shelving that was in here and there was a sink that was previously there that we remodeled and just put in a new sink that we use for planting or whatever we're doing around the house. And you can see it's sort of a storage area for me. It's a place where I'll put different vessels, I'll keep different plants. So we're in the greenhouse and this has become a space where I'm able to use storage to put all the pots that I have. And I'll also plant some things for Christmas as well. I like to plant with the girls so they can get their hands dirty and they can plant some paper whites or amaryllis bulbs, which you'll see sit in the sun and cook in here before they're ready for prime time for the living room or for the green room or other areas of the house. So this again, originally was the greenhouse. It was dilapidated, it was falling apart. So we enclosed it with windows but kept the original white shelving that was in here. I liked it. I liked the authenticity of it. And I just thought it was a great shelving unit to house all of these vessels that I have. I'll use them sporadically throughout the house depending on what I'm doing. I'll swap them in and swap them out. Some people will tell me, it looks like a store, put it away. It does, but it's the stuff that I have and it's a nice storage for it. And it brings me joy to look at because it reminds me of my mother. And I do have some new ones interspersed with some antique ones. I really just grab whatever I need to grab given whatever I'm using it for for the time. So as you saw in the sunroom, one of the things I like to do is have a dog bed in the various rooms for our dog. And just like in the sunroom, I've got some blue and white fabric made into a dog pillow for Louie in a white wicker basket. This is a space that we love being in. It's very bright in here. My husband will work a lot in here. I'll do a lot of work in here. We'll eat dinner in here. We also entertain in here. It's just a fun space that goes into the outdoors and makes us really happy. So this is a space that brings us a lot of joy. My husband will sometimes work in here. It's an office for him. I will sometimes work in here. It was a school for my youngest daughter during COVID. There were six girls that would come here and we would teach them every day. So this space has gotten a lot of use and has a lot of different purposes. It goes right into the outdoors. It goes to the pool, to the outside. It is a space that brings us a lot of joy for originally starting really as a connector from the main house to the garage. So what does home mean to me? Pretty simple. I think home means family to me. And now that I have a daughter who's not at home all the time, she's at university, home really becomes a place where family is, where they come to visit on holidays or we come together and have friends over. It's a place to feel comfortable. It's a place to feel safe. It's a place to seek refuge from the outside world when you need it. And it's a place where you can be yourself. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.