Naomi, Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

Disclaimer: If you don’t like sarcasm, skip this post and come back on Monday. (OK, who are we kidding, we’ll probably be sarcastic on Monday, too.)

Ahh, the holiday season. Buying gifts, spending time with family in large groups, traveling, following well-trod traditions, hoping the rest of the blogosphere doesn’t notice that we’re not Christians… we love it because it is filled with joy and not at all stressful, overwhelming, or commercialized!

We especially love the explosion of beauty and simplicity that fills the blogging world at this time — particularly the ~~christmas~~ holiday decorations and home tours that prove that there are just an infinite number of ways to embrace the themes of glitter, coziness, effortlessness, and #blessed. I mean, is there anything that isn’t improved by a non-traditional color scheme? We can’t think of a single example.

This is really the time of year that we are at our happiest.

With that in mind, we each want to share a mini home tour, with a few scenes of how we’ve decorated our own homes to embrace this beautiful season.

Naomi’s Holiday Home Tour

I am thrilled to say that it is only mid-December, and my house is already fully decorated for the winter holidays! My theme for this year is “simple paper products”… as in, I have a lot of paper products involved in my decor, and simply not a lot of decorations. I think its a really fresh take on the traditional look.

For example, I’ve decorated my dining table with this sweet vignette, displaying some of my most cherished catalogs, coupons, mail that I haven’t had time to sort through, and bills that I haven’t had time to pay because I’ve been spending so much time shopping online.

The dining room is also where we’ve got most of our holiday decor, including a pretty little Christmas tree.

I particularly love how its earthy tones pop against the bright colors of the cheap paper decorations that I still have up from Brad’s birthday (which was in October).

I also love the contrast between its rustic look, and the clean, modern lines of my menorah. The great thing about decorating this year was that, although I bought this menorah last year, it sat in my “put away in basement” pile at the top of the stairs all year… so I didn’t even need to go downstairs to get it. So easy!

And here is a wider shot on that same image, where you can see all the mess that I cleared out of the frame to get that one pretty shot.

Continuing my paper theme, the living room is where I am displaying my growing collection of cardboard boxes that I haven’t bothered to recycle or carry down to the basement yet. I think that their varying heights and vaguely triangular arrangement make them a fresh and modern take on a Christmas tree.

Whenever I worry that I’ve been buying too much, I just reassure myself that this is just part of properly celebrating the changing seasons. (After all, American spend over $600 billion on the winter holidays, nearly double the amount they spend on charitable giving year round.)

And how about a closeup of that with a blurry background?

Ooo, pretty.

And that whole arrangement is even better with the warm glow of our space heater in the foreground. (We’ve been getting to enjoy that a lot because we still don’t have heat — a long story that I’ll tell another time.)

I think that shot really sums up how I’m feeling this holiday season. Now, I can’t wait to see Sage’s home!

Sage’s Holiday Home Tour

One thing I love about blogging with Naomi is that we really challenge each other to be our best, and it’s so awesome to have someone constantly inspiring me with her creativity and decorating talents. This year I’m especially feeling that — to be honest I wasn’t super energized to decorate my home for the holidays, but after seeing what Naomi did with her home I just couldn’t sit by and do nothing.

The great thing is that with just a few hours of work, I was able to strike that perfect balance between “so subtle you can’t even see it” and “actually decorated.”

Let’s start outside, shall we? Normally I don’t do much decorating outside of the house, since I’m a terrible grinch. But this year I realized I had the perfect decor already on hand:

You may recognize these from the fall crafts that Naomi and I did a few weeks ago (in preparation for Fall 2016, obviously). I was going to throw them away because I already photographed them (so who needs them in real life) plus they are sort of starting to rot, but then I thought: “no, I don’t feel like bending over to pick them up and put them in the trash can.” Since it’s been unseasonably warm here in Boston, though, I think they’re still seasonally appropriate.

Move on into the house! Right inside the door is one of my favorite holiday vignettes. I have to admit, I basically re-create the same thing every year.

Nothing says “holidays in the northeast” quite like an unruly pile of hats, mittens, and scarves reminding you of the hellish winter to come. To be fair, we usually have a large wooden chest next to this shelf that we use to store spread out and dry our large collection of winter-wear, but that is still hanging out in the bedroom where we moved as part of our Thanksgiving decorating. As much as I love decorating for Christmas, sometimes I have trouble letting go of the Thanksgiving decor.

Anyway, back to the holiday in question. Walking from the sunroom into the kitchen, you’re greeted with this sight:

I know there is a lot going on here, so below is a breakdown of all the little details I’m so excited about:

Getting this perfectly effortless look isn’t easy, but Murphy has been really helpful. Every time the blanket somehow finds its way back under the tree to act as a tree skirt, he helpfully rearranges it. And I love how pretty it looks lit up at night:

Murphy is such a little helper, he really has a way with textiles.

Lastly, I want to show you my favorite “behind the scenes” space. As we all know, the holidays are mostly about giving a lot of presents to immediate friends and family (I guess unless you’re one of the 48 million Americans living in poverty and focused on choosing between paying for food or heat in the coming months). One of my favorite ways to remind my loved ones about how amazing and crafty I am is to invest significant time in wrapping my gifts for them in thoughtful and creative ways. To do that, I put together a little holiday wrapping station!

It has wrapping paper, scissors, tape, tissue paper…all the things I’ll need to wrap presents as soon as I finally get around to buying them. The best part about this room is that it has no heat or overhead lighting — I’m already looking forward to crouching on the hardwood floors wrapping presents by the dim light of a lamp in the freezing cold. I’m just so excited that it’s that time of year again!

Free Holiday Printable

Now, because we want to give back to all of our lovely readers this holiday season, and because we have a lot of time on our hands and clearly nothing better to do, we made you a free printable. Feel free to grab it to infuse some holiday cheer into your own homes!

We loved having you be our “virtual guests!” Thanks for taking this journey through our homes in this most magical of seasons.

(Sharing at The Creative Gallery, Link Party Palooza, and Create Link Inspire)

Sometimes I fancy myself a writer. I read articles about creative writing, sign up for evening classes, scribble story ideas in little notebooks, and plug dutifully away at the novel I’ve been ~~butchering~~ working on for about three years now.

This novel idea came to me insistently, and I just poured words out for a few days. Then I signed up for NaNoWriMo, wrote for a month, re-read my work with despair, and vowed to trash the whole thing. But I didn’t, and I keep coming back, cutting like mad, and plowing on. I tell myself that writing is a hard habit to sustain, but, like any skill, it gets better the more you practice.

However, I don’t pretend to be that good or well-practiced at writing a DIY/home improvement blog. In some ways, it is easy because the content is clear. Tutorials pretty much write themselves! But it can be challenging to share yourself, your voice, and your story while giving step by step instructions.

But it is important. I read a lot of blogs, and some have such a distinctive style that I could tell the writer without the branding or photos. Others don’t, and I usually stop reading those after a little while. Time is always scarce, and I want to spend my blog reading minutes with ~~my friends~~ the people I can actually tell apart. The three that I want to point out today are three of my favorites because of the way they tell their stories. They are all really big names, but maybe not everyone here knows them because they are from different “genres” than DIY/home improvement. They have a lot to teach me about writing a blog!

Smitten Kitchen

Smitten Kitchen’s Pull Apart Rugelach

Deb Perelman writes Smitten Kitchen, one of the top food blogs (for good reason, in my opinion). I enjoy cooking, but I don’t read any food blogs except this one, and I have no intention of making any of the dishes that I see there. No matter how good that rugelach looks.

But I read every Smitten Kitchen recipe because I am constantly in awe of her post introductions. She always tells a brief story or provides a few reflections on life or cooking, and then quickly brings it around to the recipe at hand. The openings are tight, well written, and personal.

When she shared a recipe for baked ziti, she talked about how that dish helped her son maintain some normalcy when they had their second child. Her recipe for caponata also provided a glimpse into her neighborhood and life with a newborn, and her recipe for raw tomato sauce talked about the interesting way she finds the best recipes. Her introduction is always interesting, and before I know it I actually care how she made baked ziti. (This is something that is very easy not to care about.) She really demonstrates the power of a good introduction.

The Bloggess

Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess) wrote the only blog post that I have read out loud, multiple times, to pretty much anyone who would listen to me: Her story about a giant metal chicken is possibly the funniest thing I have ever read. If you haven’t already come across it, go read it now. I’ll wait…

Right?! I laugh every time I read that post. For me, the comedy is so successful because she is clearly a biased/unreliable narrator, but the reader can also totally understand Victor’s point of view. It is perceptive and genius and full of whimsy.

She writes comedy (obviously) but she also writes about her life in general, and her struggles with mental illness. She takes on depression with as much honesty as her comedic stories. And sometimes, her honesty, anecdotes, and personal reflections combine to be really positive and uplifting.

She also has a book out about living with mental illness (affiliate link – read our policies), which is apparently hilarious and touching and is hanging out on the best seller list, because she is awesome.

Matthew Berry

I am also pretty into fantasy football, which isn’t something that I talk about on the blog because it is pretty unrelated to DIY home improvement. It just hasn’t come up. I am currently in two leagues, the playoff brackets are about to be finalized, and to be honest I don’t really want to talk about them now, either, thank you.

Despite how I might be feeling about this at the moment, I do like a whole lot of things about fantasy football. I like making my rankings (statistics!), drafting players, and seeing the points come in every Sunday.

I also like reading Matthew Berry’s columns on ESPN. He is funny, honest, and helps me think about fantasy football in the non-intuitive-but-correct ways. Unlike Smitten Kitchen, I actually put what I learn from his column into practice. But that isn’t why I read him. I read him because, like Smitten Kitchen, his introductions are killer. He opens most of his columns, and his legendary annual Draft Day Manifesto, with a long, revealing, personal story from his own life.

Take his 2014 manifesto for example, which starts with the story about how he bought his home well below asking price, and leads you to understand why the common assumption behind how you draft players is totally wrong. Another good example is this recent Love/Hate list, which opens for no apparent reason with a story about pool noodles longer than this post. (The story, not the pool noodles.)

But the other reason that I like his column is how fanatical he is about pointing out things that he got wrong. Like that pool noodle story? Very controversial. So in his next colum, he discussed this and what he did wrong in great detail. Nearly 2000 words worth of funny, revealing detail.

What unites all of these writers is that they get personal quickly in their posts, unabashedly sharing their milestones, anecdotes, and opinions. Even when just sharing a recipe or fantasy football stats, it is clear that you’re hearing from a person. If I came across any of these posts without the identifying marks I would still know exactly who wrote it.

It is a good reminder for me that, regardless how simple the content might seem, good writers push the envelope on personal detail and honesty.