Guys! Yesterday our blog was crashing and I kept getting booted off and content was being deleted so we decided to post-pone our giveaway for the last two Ryobi tool crates until tonight! Happy dance! Come back later today to enter to win! And if you haven’t entered to win the Christmas Crate for the DIYer, head over to Instagram because we are giving it away over there.
Okay…so today I am joining forces with five other bloggers to share with you the seldom seen views around the house during Christmas time. This is the Keeping It Real Home Tour – Christmas Edition! These are the pretty and not-so-pretty moments that you haven’t gotten to see yet! All the tours have been all-the-pretty-all-the-time (see our living room & tree HERE, and our exterior, foyer and dining room HERE and our shelves HERE), but it’s also nice to remember that a family of SIX lives in this house and these little things are the real deal…the things that make us US….and hopefully you can see this side of us and remember that we are all pretty much the same! We all have messes, christmas dilemmas, and things that we are scurrying around to finish!
So in the playroom, we did a little Christmas sprucing. All of my colorful decor gets put in here…but obviously up high so that the kids will be challenged when it comes to breaking it 🙂 Obviously…they can….but I try to make it a smidge harder 🙂
We used to have two black Ikea shelving units in here but they were replaced with these white ones and it added so much more toy storage. And also we redid the art placement in here…it’s not finished or perfect. Also – that Lion head…it has a motion sensor that makes it roar when people walk past it…but the batteries are dying so now it sounds like a whale in pain. It’s pretty startling to strangers. That’s a pretty moment. I didn’t share the floor….because it would make my mother cringe.
This past weekend we celebrated Christmas with the Bowers so this is how our living room looks now. It’s a whole bunch of everything everywhere. Toys, bags, clothing and kids are everywhere. Also it’s pretty ironic that the tv message says Bacon King. Perfect timing 🙂
The ornaments I bought for the kids…the ones I put their pictures into…they are still sitting on the countertops….without pictures. I hope I get to it before Christmas. Just cross your fingers for me. And there is randoms everywhere.
In the kitchen, we have a perpetual snack plate out. It is kept company with these chocolate-dipped marshmallows. I won’t let the kids eat them because I am fairly certain they would eat ALL OF THEM….but the adults are all on diets of some sort…so the marshmallows are just getting hard. I try to do my part…because they taste pretty epic in hot cocoa….but yeah….I should have just let the kids have them 🙂
The kids made gingerbread houses with the grandparents but they really like eating them. I told them to stop chewing on the house itself because we reinforced them with hot glue…so now all the candy is slowly disappearing instead 🙂 You should totally pin this. I would laugh if I saw this on Pinterest.
And none of the counters are clean in here either. Literally every outlet has some sort of remote control truck or car charger.
Or a drone. Drones are important too 🙂
The microwave is now home to the ‘presents from the kids to the other kids that were accidentally opened prematurely’. Premature cow evacuations happen people. Sorry Max.
Another really fun thing that hasn’t been seen on the blog yet is ALL THE CHRISTMAS ART! So each day the kids make artwork and hang it all over the house! It’s like little love notes to Christmas 🙂 They are adorable and all about three feet off the ground 🙂
And in the spirit of keeping it real, I had to share that not all my decor is flawless….or even close. These trees that are center stage in my foyer….all the stuff keeps falling off! Every year I have to spend all this time glueing these tiny birch shards back on. Or the pine cone things! I gave up and now I have a little pile in the dining room….Jeremy keeps on thinking it is trash…so I have to dig all my birch pieces out of the can. It’s pretty awesome.
I haven’t wrapped any presents yet. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I mean…if I were to wrap them, the kids probably would figure out a way to unwrap them….so yeah. Not gonna happen. I am ready though. I have all my stuff just waiting in the sitting room….staring at me.
Also…there is a giant blow up dog in our driveway. But it’s not inflated. So we have a flat piece of polyester in our yard. It’s pretty noteworthy. But as much as I would love to complain about how the house is less than Pinterest perfect….or that my kids still wear shoes on the furniture….or that I’m behind on all things Christmas….the simple fact is…Christmas this year is already pretty much everything I really want. I mean…my kids are at this really exciting age where even dollar items make them happy….and they ask constantly to be with us….and they fight over who gets to be Baby Jesus when we reenact the Christmas Story. Can you even!? I mean….how did I get this lucky!?
It’s so easy to forget….with the distractions of the season….the flashing lights….the idea of perfection….it’s all just fiction. Just like the idea of Santa. But the FEELING of Christmas….the idea of BEING a Santa even for a moment….the giving of yourself or a kind word or a hearty belly laugh….the moments where you give up the idea of the world’s perfection….and you realize that it’s just about the birthday of a really special baby….that celebrating life and love and family and friends is so ridiculously sweet….that is reality. That is the moment that we all hold dear. And that is the real version of Christmas. I hope you all have that this year.
And to see more of the REAL Christmas Tours – check out these other bloggers homes….it should be ridiculously entertaining to see what is the real real this week!
Chelsea from Two Twenty One
Jenna from Rain on a Tin Roof
Chelsea from Making Home Base
Charlotte from Ciburbanity
Taryn from Design, Dining, & Diapers
p.s. SHOUTOUT to Leslie Wagner and Kimberly Prouty-Bauer for actually pinning those gingerbread houses. I laughed for a solid three and a half minutes 🙂 Y’all are hilarious.
What color are the walls in your living room? They’re such a calming neutral color.
Love your “keeping it real” post!
Just what I needed this morning to feel like I wasn’t alone with chaos in corners! Love this idea; thanks!!
They are called Stingray by Benjamin Moore 🙂
xo – kb
I try to keep it in check and realize that Christmas is what I make it for my kids. I don’t need to compare what we do versus what others do. And that they don’t care exactly what they get. The gifts my daughter seems to love are those last minute things I pick up this week. And it’s the magic of it all that makes it bigger and better. And also teach the spirit of giving – I still have more work to do there. She wanted to get her dad a board game for Christmas so she could play it. Lol, it would be an activity together but that was more for her. I’m glad I’m not the only one who hasn’t wrapped anything.
Love that you kept it real instead of picture perfect. Much preferred!
Love this post! Thanks for sharing what a beautiful Christmas really looks like!
Thank you for this post. I keep looking around my house and getting mildly depressed. We just moved and we don’t have the icicle lights hung outside (somehow they got thrown away while packing?), the tree hasn’t been decorated completely because I have a 1.5 year old terror in boy form (the garland and bead strings were partly torn off and are pooling under the tree), and I keep wanting to make cookies with the kids (because ya know…memories) but I take a look at my kitchen counters and give up and go back to purusing Pinterest. So thank you. Its nice to know others don’t have it all together at the holidays either.
And I’m totally going to make those cookies. Once I can pull myself away from the computer. 😉
I had trouble reading past the part where those marshmallows weren’t being eaten. I’m LITERALLY reading this with one of those 2 lb containers of cookie dough in front of me. Lunch. Have a wonderful holiday, Bowers! May your remote control cars be fast and your cow presents plentiful.xx
I still cannot believe you have white couches with 4 boys!
For all the moms of messy high energy kids; if you can still tell what color your floor or carpet is, your house is clean (ish) enough. If everyone has clothes on and got fed recently (and pizza two nights in a row is legit), you score bonus points.
I figure I win Christmas by using gift bags for just about everything.
This is exactly what I needed to read today. I’m pregnant and so sick and tired, and feeling lousy about my minimally-decorated house (which we just moved in to this fall, so it’s not even put together for every-day life yet, let alone Christmas). We’re not going to make gorgeous cookie plates for the neighbors, I haven’t even pulled out half of my Christmas decorations, and, oh yeah, there are toys and cracker crumbs all over my living room floor. BUT, my two year old loves that we have been listening to “lots of any Chrimis songs!” on the radio all day long, and has been asking me to tell him “the baby Jesus one” as his bedtime story, and we’ve gone on many requested “Chrimis lights” drives around our little town, and we decorated a small batch of ugly sugar cookies, and he’s been playing with his daddy in the snow every weekend. I hope he won’t remember that his mama was a total hot mess this season, but he will remember the love and togetherness and joy we’ve felt celebrating the birth of Christ this year. Even if Santa does have to clean up the living room floor before he can leave anything under our tree this year
Hahahahaha! Thank you Charlotte.
xo – kb
Yay for messy rooms and dirty dishes because that means you’re doing it right! I’d rather see imperfect perfection like this than staged magic any day. Thanks for keeping it real!
i LOL’ed at the flat piece of polyester in your yard! thanks for sharing real life! merry christmas!
Where did you get the key shaped key rack?
It’s from Target!
xo – kb