Old World European Inspired Christmas Home Tour

I’m thrilled to share with you our Old World European Inspired Christmas home tour. I hope you enjoy touring and come away with ideas for European Christmas decorations in your home.

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I love room tours for the photography I get to take! I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures as well as the fun video tour. Each is a unique experience to see the room! Enjoy!

European Christmas Decorations

Here is our living room decked for the holiday season!

You may already know, we are in our new pole barn home that we built ourselves and are still making our way through the home to finish all the spaces!

Yes, even a year later we are not done, but we are doing our best to make progress as time and money allow.

I wanted to keep Christmas decor really simple this year, so I could reserve our time and money towards finishing our home.

Turns out, I just love the simplicity of our Christmas decor this year, and I’m glad we were able to still cozy up this space and make it feel festive.

I did have plans to decorate the kitchen and our finished bathrooms, and even our front porch… but when we got sick a couple of weeks back with a virus that you may have heard about (wink), it really shifted my priorities as we focused on just getting better, resting and doing the bare minimum.  

So, all that to say, a living room tour it is, and I hope you enjoy it! Welcome to our home!

Our living room is a wide open space with antique or thrifted furniture pieces to add some character.

Bookshelf

You may remember when I painted this shelving unit I purchased on Facebook Marketplace. I could have added seasonal decor on each shelf, but instead, I opted to keep it simple.

I just add a beautiful fresh cedar wreath with a splash of my black cherry linen ribbon that I make and sell in my linen Etsy shop.  I also created a vintage bell swag to hang from the center.  

You’ll notice my use of this deep red burgundy color throughout the room.  I’m calling it my color of the year for Christmas.

My family really wanted more of a traditional Christmas look and red is not usually a color I feel super comfortable with within my home.

But by using this deep, almost neutral red, we all are very happy with the results.

I also added a fresh cedar wreath to our side door, with some black linen ribbon and a brass horn.

While wreaths are very nice outside, I was feeling a little selfish and just wanted to enjoy the smell and pretty greens from the inside.

Christmas Tree

Let’s take a look at our Christmas tree! We cut this beautiful tree from the mountains, as we always do. It is our favorite tradition.

This is one of the prettiest trees we have ever found. I love the height and disbursement of the branches. I pulled out the dehydrated orange slices that we have now had for 2 years! They have lasted so well.

I also draped our dehydrated cranberry garland around the tree, which has also lasted beautifully for 2 years. They are the perfect shade of burgundy and look so natural and pretty.

I made this cranberry garland by drying them in a food dehydrator. I will warn you, these juicy little fruits do take days in the dehydrator, but they are so worth it!

We also sprinkled some pinecones around the tree. I tied sweet little linen ribbon bows with long tails around the branches.

Then I bought a couple of types of burgundy ornament balls (matte round and diamond drop) to add to the natural ornaments. I had a few brass bells to hang here and there, and I made some brass stars.

For the lighting, we love to use these battery operated candle lights on sparse mountain trees.

I find the stringed lights don’t work well for a sparse tree, as you can see too much of the strings. But these candle lights are so easy to maintain, easy to hang, easy to replace, and they just look so charming.

Under the tree, I have some re-usable black present boxes, tied with some pretty linen ribbon and topped with the fresh greenery or other things that coordinate with the tree.

I love using these boxes, and will just add my kids’ gifts inside them as they come, and tie them back up. It saves us a lot on wrapping paper, and they feel so special to open on Christmas morning.

That’s really it for the tree. We really love how it turned out this year with its splashes of burgundy, natural elements, and loads of texture.

Mantel

Over on the mantel, I hung some fresh cedar garland, which is actually now very crispy, but still pretty and will rest there until after Christmas.

I placed my thrifted brass candlesticks on the mantel and I tucked some oranges inside the garland. It’s not a perfectly styled placement, but I find it charming nonetheless.  

I’ve mixed in a variety of velvet stockings. I have hopes to make a few more out of velvet fabric I have, and hope I can get to that before Christmas for our family of 6!

But that might be one of those little details that get dropped in light of just enjoying the time with my family. I have plenty of others to pull out if needed, they just won’t coordinate, but my kids won’t care.

Inside our faux fireplace, I’ve kept the cozy stack of wood that I added for our Fall decor.

Coffee Table

On our round coffee table, I added this burgundy vase I thrifted and simply placed inside of it some fresh greenery.

I purchased a few winter art pieces for our Frame TV. We like to switch them out.

Side Table

I love this side table! I can remember my grandma always having a bowl of shelled nuts on her side tables around Christmas time, and I wanted to carry that tradition on.

As a child, I preferred her stash of trail mix so I could pick out the M&M’s. But I now see why the shelled nuts were more endearing at Christmas.

To spruce it up, I added a fresh wreath to the table and placed the bowl of nuts in the center.  

On the other side table, I just place a vase with greenery and some Christmas magazines and books to look at.

I found this sweet little vintage train at an antique store, and placed it inside the window sill.

Finally, I’ll show you the linens I swapped out on our couches. I bought some green velvet fabric and made a cover for our long lumbar pillow which I love to have on this small couch. 

I love the mix of green with this black muslin throw.

On the other couch, I found some velvet burgundy pillows. I mixed them with some off white pillows and a pretty neutral throw blanket.

On our rocking chair, I placed another splash of burgundy red here with a throw blanket. I kept my leather pillow to add that mix of texture.

I love how it all came together. The only thing that has me sad about it all is that we could not find the pieces to our olive wood nativity set.

We still have a lot of boxes in storage and have somehow lost them in the piles. But hopefully, next year that will come out and take its rightful place in our Christmas home.

I’ll be mostly signing off on work to enjoy the season with my family, or using my time to promote my TIDBITS Planners.

But I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

I hope your season is filled with the much needed peace that comes through our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Have a wonderful new year, and I’ll be back, for more inspiration for do it yourself living.

Check out these Christmas decorating ideas on Pinterest:

• Styled Christmas Trees
• Christmas Vintage themes
• Christmas Farmhouse Ideas
• Scandinavian Christmas themes

If you enjoy this home tour of European Christmas Decorations, I have other home tours too!

• Cottage Christmas Home Tour
• Colorful Christmas Home Tour
• Victorian Farmhouse Christmas Tour
• Natural Christmas Decor
• Classic Red and Green Christmas