Christmas Decorating Ideas For Your Home

Simple ideas for decorating your home during the Christmas season. 

I’m so excited to welcome you into our home this holiday and share a few easy ideas for decorating your own home for the season. If you’re coming from Maison de Cinq’s home, welcome, we’re so happy to have you. We hope you’ll stick around and take a few minutes to learn more about us, visit a few of our favourite Christmas posts and maybe even sign up for our weekly newsletter. 

We’ve shared a few looks at our home on Instagram already, and you may have noticed we tried a little something different this year. Past Christmases I’ve always decorated our home in neutrals, but I think we were all craving a change this year. I’m not sure why, but colour always intimidates me. It’s something I’m trying to get past, and I have to admit I have more fun when I’m decorating our home with a hint of colour. So this year, with a little encouragement from Nick and Zoe, I added a few fun details that add colour and personality to our home.  

Our house is very bright and light and most of our holiday decor is in neutral shades, like white, silver and gold, so adding a few new ornaments and accessories in soft shades of lavender, blush and baby blue was easy and inexpensive. 

As you walk through our front door you’re greeted by our pretty Christmas tree in shades of pastels. Our tree is definitely the way I added most of the colour to our home this year. I was so unsure about the look of our tree as I was decorating it and I kept second-guessing the colour, but it’s quickly become my favourite tree so far. We have this gorgeous 7.5 snowy flocked fir (you can shop it here) and in my opinion, it’s so beautiful, it doesn’t even need decorations. But with two little kiddos in our home, we decked out our tree. 

I started by hanging all of our neutral ornaments first. We have a mix of ornaments in different sizes and shapes, including this beautiful set mercury glass set (you can shop it here), which really helps to add interest to our tree. I hung them from top to bottom, tucking a few into the branches to create a full look. Next, I added a few fun ornaments in pastel shades, like these adorable hot air balloons and pink doughnuts. And finally, I wound this gorgeous lavender ribbon around the tree. It didn’t take much to add a pop of colour once all of our neutral decorations were hung. 

The rest of our living room is decorated very simply. Our Christmas tree is the focal point, so I wanted the living room to feel calm and uncluttered. We hung a simple homemade garland on the fireplace, along with four knit stockings adorned with an adorable plush ornament for Zoe and Ella. It’s a cute detail that keeps our holiday decor feeling playful and fun. Nick built this fireplace for us last year (you can see the plans here), and because we open and close these doors on a daily basis in order to watch TV we needed to keep the mantel bare. 

A vintage brass bell, bottlebrush tree, and fresh seeded eucalyptus are the only other hints of Christmas in this room. 

My focus this year was to add simple holiday touches to our existing decor. I wanted our home to feel festive, but not too busy or cluttered. I also wanted to avoid moving or rearranging a lot of furniture or accessories. I added a glass cloche with two tiny evergreen trees perched on a bit of “snow” and a small bowl of blush mercury ornaments both of which mix perfectly with the pieces that live on our sideboard year-round. 

And a big vase of seeded eucalyptus is an easy and inexpensive centerpiece for our dining table. But with holiday entertaining in mind, we also shared our five easy steps for setting the perfect holiday table, so if you want to see more of this space decked out for Christmas dinner you can see the details here. 

Adding greenery is one of my favourite ways to decorate our home for the holidays. We always hang a garland along our banister, some years we adorn it with ornaments or stockings and other years we leave it plain. This year I added in a few extra branches, both real and faux, to really fill it out. Of course, don’t forget the twinkle lights, they’re definitely the best part of any holiday decor. 

Another garland is draped above our kitchen window, an easy and inexpensive festive touch. 

I had a lot of fun decorating our kitchen shelves for the holidays. Again, I kept pretty much everything that was already on our shelves but mixed in tiny ceramic houses, a bunch of Christmas trees in different shapes and materials and a few faux pine boughs to give our kitchen a happy and festive feeling. I can’t wait to spend some time in here with Zoe baking our favourite Christmas treats, like our melt-in-your-mouth shortbread and our pecan chocolate dipped shortbread. Can you tell shortbread is a favourite around here?

And we can’t forget about our family room and playroom (see the full renovation we recently did here). We spend a lot of time down here, so I wanted to make sure it felt just as festive and happy as the rest of our house. Again, I wanted to keep it simple and easy so that once the Christmas season is over we aren’t spending hours rearranging and packing up holiday decor. So, our built-in shelves stayed mostly the same with just a couple of changes. These brass and glass vases usually hold succulents, but I swapped them for faux snow and green bottle brush trees. I also added this vintage brass bell I found a few years ago.  

I changed the art in the frames above the girls writing nook (you can find the free plans for it here), and I think it looks so sweet. Originally I was planning on incorporating Christmas art, but I found these two prints (one and two) from one of my very favourite artists and thought they were perfect. And I love that I don’t have to change them once the season is over. I set up a little village using two small houses and a bunch of colourful trees made from yarn. 

Next year we might do a bit more down here for Christmas, but for now, these simple touches were all it needed. 

We hope you enjoyed your time here and are leaving with a few ideas to decorate your own home. Please don’t forget to visit the rest of our friends on this tour, next up is House by Hoff. Happy holiday decorating!