Our First Christmas at Cloverhill Farmhouse

When we first put an offer on the farmhouse back in March of this year, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to spend our first Christmas in our own home. By Christmas Eve, we will have lived here for seven months already. I can hardly believe it’s been that much time and yet it feels like we’ve lived here forever. We’re still working away on a number of house projects, so I kept the Christmas decor simple this year, with little touches here and there.

There is still plenty of work to do next spring on the porch with the post trim, a new ceiling, repairing the concrete floor, a new fascia board, painting the steps and floor and lots of landscaping, but it feels like we’ve come a long way so far!

I tried to catch a photo at twilight to show you how the house looks at night. I kept the outdoor Christmas decorations simple this year with the new DIY Holiday Planters and my favourite wreath on the porch. I put our old tabletop Christmas tree from the apartment in the center window upstairs and a single candle in the other front windows.

When I was younger, we used to drive by an old farmhouse that had a candle in each window at Christmastime and I always loved how cozy it looked. I was lucky to find these LED ones that are really easy to use and automatically come on in the evening for 6 hours.

In the kitchen, I had some fun decorating our open shelves with a few little festive touches.

This corner became the baking/coffee station and it’s been working hard the past week!

Finally a shelf to display my favourite reindeer side plates…and a few containers of chocolate (although they will probably be gone by the time this post goes live.)

On the dining room sideboard, I decorated a little tree with silver light balls and some of our mercury glass collection from our wedding.

The living room got a few touches too, including a new red throw.

This tin lantern is a gift from Garrett’s parents a couple of years ago and it fits right in with our farmhouse now. I love the warm glow it gives off and the patterns lighting up the wall.

I whipped up this arrangement using some leftover greens from the DIY Holiday Planters and a few flowers my mother had from making her own arrangements this week. (Tips on making your own Holiday Arrangement)

Another one for our coffee table too, with red carnations, white alstroemeria and little gold pinecones.

The tin is a garage sale find from my mother-in-law. I used a small drinking glass inside to hold the oasis and flowers, then lowered it into the tin.

The big star of the living room is our Christmas tree! We bought this tall skinny one last year for the apartment (video here) and thankfully it worked out well for our new living room as well.

There is nothing quite like the glow of a Christmas tree at night. I often find Cola or Whiskey snuggled up in the armchair beside it, which makes this pregnant lady’s heart completely melt. Don’t even get me started on Christmas commercials right now. I’m a total sap.

I could hardly wait to add a garland to our front hall stairs. This hallway (and what I envision it will look like someday when we restore it), is one of the things I fell in love with most at this house. I used a store bought garland that already had pinecones on it, adding red ornaments and red velvet ribbon. It’s simple, but it really makes the staircase look festive!

The garland continues along the banister in the upstairs hallways too.

The tabletop tree was the one I bought for my first apartment and continued to use at our last apartment. I stacked up some vintage fruit crates to get it the right height to see it in the window at night. The vintage red car was restored by my dad when I was a baby and I can’t wait to push our own little one around in it someday. I’m getting awfully excited thinking about what Christmas will be like with a baby around next year.

After years of dreaming of having our own home for Christmas, I’m looking forward to crawling into bed on Christmas Eve and thinking of our good fortune that we get to be a part of this house’s history not just at Christmastime, but all year round. We love this big old house and all the memories that we’ve yet to make in it.

Merry Christmas!