Hi guys! Have you had a nice holiday? We took a break from blogging (and work) over Christmas to enjoy some much-needed rest and relaxation with friends and family. Now, we’re back to work, but thankful for another holiday later this week to help us ease back into the habit of getting things done.

We have so much to share about the kitchen’s transformation over the last few weeks, but for today, we just wanted to catch up and share a little bit about our holidays.

For starters, I wanted to share a few images from our Christmas-decorated home. Because we were still buried in kitchen and remodeling mess for the majority of the holiday season, we got a pretty late start to decorating, but we still went ahead and added some festive touches where we could.

In the entryway, I taped up all our Christmas cards like I always do. It’s a fun tradition.

This is also a great excuse to show you a few sneak peeks, like of the new built in bookshelves over where the stair railing used to be!

I mean, come on…just look at those awesome bad boys!

The tree is always a favorite of mine because it just adds such Christmas cheer to the room when the lights are on. I’m a sucker for Christmas lights, guys.

I made the ruffled burlap tree skirt a couple years ago.

Oh, and our couches were also festive with their Christmas pillows and the wonderful Christmas quilt from Wyatt’s mom. You saw it a few photos up.

I went super simple with the chalkboard this year, but I added two red metal houses I snagged from a thrift store a few months back. They were brand new from Target but less than half the price of retail. Score!

And of course, our touch of real greenery on the mantle helps balance out that we have an artificial tree. I like the idea of real ones, but the mess and hassle from arranging the greenery on the mantle is enough to convince me to stick to the pre-lit fake one we got as a hand-me-down from my parents when they upgraded.

The hearth is home to all my Christmas books.

Plus, we also had some Christmas cheer on the new shelves in the kitchen since I haven’t gotten out all my dishes that were packed away for the remodel. I’m excited to move into these shelves for real, but have been enjoying the simple festive touches for the holidays.

Of course, all of this is a little worse for the wear after the holidays have mostly come and gone. We still have a few Christmas celebrations (we try to spread them out a little so as not to be too overwhelming all at once) but most our gifts have been opened and stashed in piles behind the couch, mixed with various holiday snacks and treats that have been given to us over the last few weeks.

I’m in the mood for spring cleaning now to get rid of all this clutter and get things back to normal. Of course, we still have some final projects for the kitchen to tackle after the new year, but we’re mostly ready to take a step back from the major renovation projects and enjoy some smaller stuff we’ve been putting off. (Things like organizing our monster-mess of a garage.)

I’ll probably leave the Christmas stuff out another week or so because we got such a late start to the season that I want to enjoy the lights a little longer before packing everything up for another year.

How did you decorate for Christmas? Have you gotten everything put away yet? How long do you leave your tree up into the new year?