Tour a (Very) Merry and Bright 1920’s Christmas Kitchen Inspired by Greenery, Seasonal Fruits, and Vintage-Traditional Christmas Treasures

 Merry Christmas everyone and welcome!!!! I’m super excited to be joining 35 talented bloggers this week for the annual “Bloggers’ Best Home Tours” hosted by my sweet friend Kelly of The Tattered Pew. You will find links to each amazing tour at the end of my post. If you are coming over from My Family Thyme or if you are just visiting today, I am so happy to have you “home for the holidays!” *This post contains affiliate links!”

 

 

 

Because I am a traditionalist and wait to decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, I am just now in the middle of decking the halls of our 101 year-old Kentucky home, and even the tree is still in progress.  

 

 

Here is a shot of last year’s tree. Honestly, it will look very similar, since it’s our main family tree decorated with traditional red, green, plaid, gold and copper and our family keepsake ornaments. I am excited to share that this tree and my full 100 year-old Christmas home tour from last year made it’s way onto the pages of The Cottage Journal Magazine’s special publication, Country Cottage Christmas that recently just came out!  

 

 

 

 

 

This is truly a dream come true for me! You can read more about my feature and find a link to last year’s Christmas Home Tour in this post. It certainly takes me all season long to really decorate our home and I enjoy the authentic process of letting the decorating unfold, so I am nowhere near ready for a full home tour today. However, I did finish my kitchen in time for this week’s tours!  Since the kitchen is the heart of the home, especially at Christmas, it seemed like the perfect place to start. Come on in!  

 

When I woke up the morning after I had started decorating, I had nearly forgotten it was Christmastime until I came down the stairs and turned to look into the kitchen to see a merry and VERY bright Christmas kitchen!  I quickly grabbed my phone and snapped a couple of pictures while the sun was out because I wasn’t sure how long it would last.   

 

 

As it turned out, the sunshine lasted all day, so I was able to take plenty of pictures with my actual camera to share with your for today’s tour!

 

 

A Virtual Stroll Around Our Merry and Bright Vintage Christmas Kitchen

When we redid our kitchen three years ago, I totally had vintage Christmas in mind. The 1920’s style built-ins with wavy glass cabinets are perfect for displaying Christmas treasures, and the corner nook is a great spot to sit and enjoy coffee and other Christmas treats. Of course the brick floors just give the kitchen an old world feel year-round. Before talking about each area of the kitchen and styling in detail, let’s take a quick look around:    

 

 

The view straight into the kitchen from the living room and mudroom entry with the 1920’s style built-in cabinets filled with Christmas treasures…    

 

 

View from the dining room  entry across the island and over to the sink area…  

 

 

Just to the left of the dining room entry and tucked in beside the fridge is the cozy and vintage-kitschy Christmas coffee station….  

 

 

Across the island and over to the stove area…(my favorite view right now!)  

 

 

Looking across the pretty European pastry table style island  (new this Christmas!) and on over to everyone’s favorite spot… the breakfast nook window seat, where we will start today’s tour! Grab a cuppa your favorite winter beverage and enjoy!  

 

 

 

Christmas Kitchen Window Nook

The window nook is bright and festive with a citrus cone topiary as the bistro table centerpiece, coordinating beautifully with the dried orange slices on the Norfolk pine garland adorning the windows. I think the orange slices are like nature’s stained glass with the sun streaming through them!    

 

 

 

I have also cozied up the window benches with my Christmas go-to plaid flannel and green velvet pillows.  

 

  I simply changed up the look this year with this colorful French vintage Christmas graphic lumbar pillow.  

 

 

The dried orange slices and citrus topiary are part of this year’s theme of creating a simple and elegant, old-world inspired Christmas, using natural elements such as colorful fruits, nuts, and lots of greenery along with vintage treasures.   

 

 

Every year I stick with vintage-traditional holiday decorating, but there is usually a found object from thrifting  over the summer or even just a beautiful ribbon color that inspires a new direction for my Christmas decor. When I found two rather plain (but with potential) clementine cones on clearance at Joann back in July, I immediately knew I wanted to “upcycle” them to use as Christmas decor.    

 

 

Cloved clementine topiary cones truly have that old-world English or even colonial vibe that I have been “feeling” these past few Christmases.

 

 

My clementines are obviously faux, but I dressed them up by punching holes with a toothpick and adding cloves and realistic faux cypress, then placing the cone in a beautiful vintage green transferware tureen. On Sunday I will be sharing a post all about how I did it and how you can make your own old world Christmas fruit cone using fresh or faux fruits.  

 

  Merry and Bright Built-In Christmas Cabinets 

I always say a bit of Christmas magic kicks in when I start decorating, as colors and themes seem to just come together as I go. I shop my home looking for trinkets and treasures that coordinate in some way, and things turn out so much better than if I had gone shopping for new items.     

 

 

 I also have plenty of vintage or vintage-style Christmas decorations to choose from, so no need to buy a lot of new decor each year. 

 

 

 I shop my home looking for trinkets and treasures that coordinate with my Christmas decorations in some way, and things turn out so much better than if I had gone shopping for new items. Even though I am purging a lot of old store bought Christmas decorations, I will certainly be keeping my collection of beautiful vintage style Belsnickel (Belsnickle) Santas.

 

 

Rather than buy new wreaths for my cabinet doors, I simply added a few smaller orange slices to them. What do you think?   

 

I love using nostalgic candies in vintage dishes as Christmas decor. My grandmother always had this kind of colorful candy in her red glass candy dishes at Christmastime, and the little vintage tree in the cloche is just like the one she had on display in her foyer. These kinds of memories always inspire my Christmas decorating.  

 

 

The candy is actually several years old. It’s hard as a rock, but I guess there are enough preservatives it will never really deteriorate!  After the holidays I just bag it up in a plastic bag and store it in a Christmas tin to use as decor the next year. Saves a buck! Make that two bucks…the peppermint sticks in the tea cups are old too, ha!    

 

This year I am not unpacking all the totes and decorating every nook and cranny, but I decided to go ahead and pull out my Putz houses (similar) since I haven’t decorated with them for about three years. For now I am enjoying them behind the glass cabinets here in the kitchen, but I plan to put them in the dining room corner cabinet for the rest of the season. I will share the cabinet in a week or so when I post my Christmas dining room.       

 

 

Overall I do plan to stick to my down-scaled holiday decorating with simple elegance…but we all know what happens when those tote lids come off and all the glittery bits, baubles and treasures  are just there for the picking!  

 

 

How could I resist creating a sweet winter scene cloche with my little glittery snowmen, vintage tiny ornaments and vintage ceramic tree?  

 

 

Kitschy Christmas Coffee Station 

I also couldn’t resist adding a bit of retro-vintage Christmas kitsch! The little coffee nook is the perfect place to play around with some of my more kitschy Christmas treasures.  

  Although I rarely buy Rae Dunn pottery these days, there are some pieces I just can’t part with. I think the pottery is super fun to style in holiday displays. This coffee station is a blog post in and of itself and I still have some tweaking to do, so I will be sharing more details about this fun area on Saturday.  

 

 

The Island and Stove

 

 

 

 

I worked to create a pleasing continuity of colors and style with all the various herbs, greens and copper here that is old world and hints at my vvintage cottage-garden inspired lifestyle. The preserved boxwood wreath on the copper range hood, the simple and natural stove top vignette, and the pine garland with dried orange slices along the in the windows is giving me all those English cottagey Christmas feels (or what I imagine them to be!)  

 

 

The only new Christmas decor I purchased this year is the AMAZING real touch Norfolk Pine garland draped along the top of the windows and a couple of little Norfolk pine trees and picks. Isn’t it just so pretty? The bright green foliage inspired my to pull out the lime green velvet ribbon from my craft stash to make a bow for the boxwood wreath.   

 

 

The box was a last minute touch, or should I say “the bow on top!” If you have been a reader for any amount of time then you know that green is my favorite color (any and every shade!)  I love long flowing streamers on ribbon, so I just tuck them up when it’s time to cook.  

 

 

I used the same ribbon to make my primitive “Christmas goose” look more festive in my Christmas corner basket vignette.  I like mixing a bit of country primitive styling in with vintage cottage-farmhouse Christmas.  

 

 

(Okay, okay, so it’s a duck…but let’s just use some of that Christmas imagination!)   

 

 

 

I love and collect all styles of Christmas from vintage kitsch, to Victorian, European-inspired, old world or colonial to rustic farmhouse Christmas, but I still love homespun country-primitive decor for the holidays too.  

 

 

With years of practice and a little creativity I have learned to to mix all of these styles seamlessly, and since it’s all vintage it seems to work.  

 

 

 

I have been displaying this pretty farmhouse paperwhites sign from Christmas through spring for the past couple of years and I am am still loving it. It’s a reader favorite too! I especially love Decorating with Paperwhites for the holidays and winter.     

 

If you don’t like the smell of paperwhites, there are some beautiful faux paperwhites to choose from these days. The Christmas goose seems to like my faux ones at least.(Okay, so it’s a duck…but let’s just use some of that Christmas imagination and call it a goose!)     

 

 

The Island and Stove

Back over around the island and stove area I feel like I totally captured the aesthetic I was hoping to create throughout our home this holiday season. I am so in love with the beauty of all the copper, citrus and greenery around the kitchen. There is certainly a nod to my vintage-cottage- garden-inspired lifestyle, and my love of all things green.  Oh, I added a candle to the center of the wreath too and it’s so perfect!  

 

 

This is the first Christmas having an island, so I wasn’t sure how to style it for the holidays, especially since it is used daily for meal prep. I rememebered how much I loved my simple summer styling with the vintage green dish in the center filled with lemons, and the tall faux topiaries on each end of the island, so I just decided to revisit that look.    

 

 

I got creative and changed that look up a bit by adding red berries and red velvet ribbon to the topiaries, and filling the green dish with mixed nuts, bright, fragrant apples and clementines.  

 

 

This thrifted vintage green glass dish is one of my favorite “shop my home” finds to use in Christmas decorating.   

 

 

 

 

 

    What’s a Christmas kitchen without the wonderful scents and aromas? Even though there are no cookies in the oven yet, the apples, oranges, clementines, fresh herbs from the garden and cinnamon sticks make everything smell fresh and delicious!  

 

 

I created a little “Stove Top Still Life” by placing a vintage frame behind a vignette composed of vintage treasures and edible goodies. (*I always remove the frame before cooking!)    

 

 

 

This grouping includes items that can be used to make a fragrant stove top simmer: Orange peels, a few apple slices, a handful of fresh cranberries, several  cinnamon and cloves and a couple of fresh rosemary sprigs from the garden.  Just add the ingredients to small pot of water and simmer on low. Add a tsp of vanilla for extra good measure. YUM! I also used fresh boxwood clippings and rosemary to make the real touch Norfolk Pine in the antique blue transferware pitcher look more realistic.   

 

 

 

Merry and Bright Sink Area

I love this view in from the dining room to the kitchen at Christmas with my DIY red ticking stripe napkin cafe curtains. It’s so vintage-cottage-farmhouse-festive!  

 

 

Easiest cafe curtains ever and so cute too! I also dressed my window sill with two thrifted topiaries tied up with little red ribbon.      

 

 

 

The sink corner is styled simply with a pomegrante on a stack of vintage green and red ironstone dishes on the old scale, and a thrifted Santa toile vase holding a tiny faux Norfolk Pine tree. This Christmas Norfolk pine is really trending, and it’s sold out most places. Imagine my surprise finding this little tree for  only 7.99 last week at Joann!     

 

 

We ran out of hand soap and I didn’t have any pretty Christmas soap to style up for today’s tour, but I came up something anyway…  

 

 

It wouldn’t be Christmas at our house without a nod or two to Ralphie Parker, and my favorite movie ever, A Christmas Story! I haven’t watched it yet this year, but it’s on the holiday agenda! By the way, Santa is watching, so mind your language and “Be sure to drink your O-val-tine!” In other words, be good, and have a very Merry Christmas!    

 

 

 

   

 

 

Well dear friends, I certainly hoped my very merry and bright Christmas kitchen has brightened your holiday spirits and given you some inspiration too! I will be sharing more of the kitchen and and a full home tour later this month, so be sure to visit often and subscribe by email if you haven’t already so you won’t miss a post!  Speaking of inspiration, the Bloggers’ Best Home Tours continue tomorrow beginning  at Southern Crush at Home. If you missed any of the other tours this week you can visit them now via the links below.

Thanks for visiting and Merry Christmas

Amber

 

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Bloggers’ Best Holiday Home Tours

Monday’s Tours

The Tattered Pew // Cottage On Bunker Hill // StoneGable // My Wee Abode

Open Doors Open Hearts // Cottage In The Mitten // My Thrift Store Addiction

 

Tuesday’s Tours

Midwest Life & Style // She Gave It a Go // Sand Dollar Lane // Bricks n’ Blooms

Pasha Is Home // Robyn’s French Nest // The Ponds Farmhouse

 

Wednesday’s Tours

Shiplap and Shells // White Arrows Home // This Is Simplicite // White Lilac Farmhouse

Peacock Ridge Farm // Cloches and Lavender // Simply2Moms

 

Thursday’s Tours

County Road 407 // Country Peony // Eleanor Rose Home // Le Cultivateur

Thistle Key Lane // My Family Thyme // Follow The Yellow Brick Home

 

Friday’s Tours

Southern Crush At Home // A Life Unfolding // Southern Home and Hospitality // WM Design House

Dabbling and Decorating // Lora Bloomquist // Vintage and Grace Living