I have been dying to decorate for Christmas since last Christmas. Since we moved the week before Christmas in 2013, all I had was a little tabletop tree, some stockings and a few decorations. I had no time or energy to put into going all out like I usually do. So this year, I really went all out. Every room downstairs has a tree and either a theme or color scheme. I’m a bit obsessive. I started decorating the week of Thanksgiving and I’ve been slowly adding to it since then. We got our real tree for the living room this past weekend and that really just brought everything together and made it really start to feel like the holidays. So, without further ado, I present part one of the Styling Harvard Christmas Home Tour!
Let’s start with the office. Since the office has a window that faces the street, and I knew our main Christmas tree wasn’t going to be so visible from the road, I wanted to display one in the front office window. The office is definitely very feminine with light blush colored walls, a gallery wall of all my Etsy prints, and lots of girly accents. I decided to do a vintage, shabby chic theme for this tree. I strung some pearls here and there as garland and made these silhouettes to scatter around the tree. The girl is actually me. My parents had them done of the 3 of us when they took to me Disney when I was 5. I wish I knew where there’s were too because they would have look cute in the tree as well. The doily garland I made by simply folding them in half and running a ribbon through them to string it all together. The best part? They were only $1 from Dollar Tree!
I made the fans from an old book that I frequently tear pages from when decorating.
I also made these sheet music cones (which you’ll also see in the living room) from an image on Pinterest. I printed them 2 sided and just rolled them. That lace fan hanging from the tree was made by me when I was 9. I used to go to a craft class a couple of times a week. It wasn’t until I found the ornament when unpacking that I realized how long I’ve been into crafting!
All in all, this tree only cost me less than $2 to decorate since I made most of the items on the tree or used previous ornaments.
To continue the music theme, I made this papier-mâché hat that I picked up at Michaels and used my extra sheet music to create this. It’s my vintage take on the Bling Beanie, haha!
I displayed it on the dress form that holds my reception dress. The weather was terrible the day I took these so my apologies for the poor lighting. 
Just outside the office in the hall is this skinny little tree. I bought it a few years ago after Christmas for $5! I’d never used it until now because it didn’t have legs…now I know why it was $5. Jamie built me some wooden legs and off I went to decorate it. The hall is neutral with tan walls (Benjamin Moore’s King Arthur’s Court – also currently in the living room and our bedroom) with a brown rug so I wanted to keep the same color scheme. I already had the “presents” wrapped from a few years ago so they were the perfect compliment to the tree. 
Everything on the tree, aside from the pearlescent garland which was old, was bought last year on clearance at Michaels and Target after Christmas for pennies. Literally, pennies. Again, the hall is dark and doesn’t really get any natural light so excuse the dark pictures. 
This post is getting long so I’ll stop here for today and pick up again tomorrow.
XO,
