I’ve been thinking about how much holiday decorating I want to incorporate in my house this year because we leave for Palm Springs on Christmas Day for 5 weeks. Every year Terreeia talks about leaving the dark and the rain in January, so this year it’s finally happening.
We have lived in three homes since I started this blog in 2008. The first two were rentals and until we moved to the townhouse where I bought all new furniture, I was embarrassed to show my house.
We loved the location of our first house. It was built in the 60’s and it had sweeping views of the North Shore and Vancouver from the top of Lonsdale. But it was OLD. The kitchen laminate doors were peeling, there was nothing much to show.
After I’d been blogging for about a year, my readers started asking what my house looked like so I gave you a glimpse of my tree in 2009:
Christmas 2009 (see more of this house here)
Then the owners of the first house decided it was time to tear it down and build their retirement home so we had to move.
We really wanted a house with three bedrooms this time so we could have an office for each of us since we both worked from home. But the rent for three bedroom homes was more than we could afford in Vancouver so we found this townhouse.
The only one they had available was north facing and dark! I don’t know how we lived there even two years but we were building our business back then and we worked a lot!
Christmas 2010 (see the full tour here)
When we first moved into this townhouse with our old furniture, I was so depressed looking at the backs of my faded slipcovers, I barely went into the living room until my yellow sofa arrived 3 months later.
Christmas 2011 (Tour of my House)
By this Christmas tour, my styling had improved as well as my wrapped gifts under the tree (compared to the previous years).
Then, the Spring of 2012 we bought our bungalow out in the country and I was missing drapery for this years tour:
Christmas 2012 (see the tour here)
When I watch my progress over the years, I think it’s funny that I was quite convinced that that my photos, taken with a point and shoot camera, were perfectly acceptable. Also, I think it’s even more funny that I thought it was totally fine to take this picture with the sun slanting on the tree from the other room!!
My best tip for those of you starting out right now would be to buy a decent camera and learn how to use it, take lessons if necessary. With the arrival of Pinterest and Instagram the bar for magazine worthy photos has been raised. As designers, we simply can’t get away with bad images anymore. Now, more than ever, they have to be pinnable and repostable.
Christmas 2013
In 2013 I had the house photographed by Tracey Ayton and the following year they appeared in Canadian Living so I only showed you a sneak peak this year.
Christmas 2014 (see the full tour here)
My skills wrapping and coordinating gifts for decoration had improved again ; )
Christmas 2015 (see the full tour here)
I had to do something different this year so I bought white flocked trees from the nursery. Wow did they ever transform the look of my decorations.
In Vancouver we just get rain, it’s rare that we see any snow, I loved the white trees so much that after I took all the decorations off the tree in the family room, I moved it into the family room for a couple more weeks.
Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers! I am so grateful to you all for your love and support over the past 8 years. Your comments and emails mean so much to me and I really appreciate them!
If you’re hanging today and need something to do, I would love if if you’d post a review on Houzz if you’ve worked with me. You can post one here.
Related posts:
Do you Dream about Decorating your House?
