How I Made My House Feel More Festive for the Holidays

One of the movies I watch every year at Christmas time is Home Alone, and the main thing I love about it is the setting. The McAllister’s house is just so festive, and while I wouldn’t want to live with red and green everything all year long, the way that every detail in that house sticks with that color palette makes it look like the perfect place to spend Christmas. 

Because of this, I was super excited when FLOR Squares reached out offering to help me level up my holiday decorating this year. They provided the carpet squares needed to create my dream rug to enhance the holiday theme. I am a massive fan of FLOR and recommend their carpet squares to every client. Their rugs are insanely durable and easy to clean, and because they come in separate approximately 20” x 20” squares, there’s no stressing about stains. If something extra stubborn refuses to come out of the rug, you only have to replace a square or two, not an entire rug. It has been a game changer for me with kids and a dog. 

Arriving in separate tiles also makes FLOR rugs easy and fun to customize. For this project, I decided to build on one of the FLOR rugs I already have, the one in my living room. I ordered the original squares for this rug when we first moved into the house and didn’t get enough for the size of the room. So, expanding the rug size has been on my to-do list but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. It is amazing how much bigger my living room feels now that I have added on to my rug with more of the same color and pattern (Vintage Vibe, color: Cream). It is something I tell clients all the time, that the room will only feel as big as the rug, and mine is definitely feeling bigger. A huge bonus was that it was so much easier to shift the furniture around to make room for the Christmas tree now that things weren’t falling off the edges of the rug. 

I didn’t want to stop there though- I kept thinking about the things I love about the Home Alone house, and what makes it so memorable, is how the Christmas décor extends to permanent features of the house- places you would not normally include in your holiday decorating. So, I created a green border all the way around my living room rug using FLOR’s Made You Look squares in the color “Forest”. The border was easy to add- FLOR cut the squares in half for me (they do custom cuts) then I just attached them all the way around the current rug using these big stickers that come with the rug squares. The stickers adhere to the underside of the rug and attach the squares to each other, not to the floor. 

Because of the placement of a floor outlet and the current rug already having a cutout for it, I didn’t want to shift the rug at all when I added the extra pieces to it. It was nice that it was also easy to cut a couple of the border pieces so that they would fit around the fireplace.

Now with the addition of the green rug border, my living room is giving me Home Alone vibes without needing red and green floral wallpaper. And really that’s the best part- that I get the festive holiday feeling I want but in a more restrained way that fits in with my normal home décor. 

Here are some more ways I made my house feel extra festive for the holidays this year:

HOLIDAY DÉCOR THAT REPEATS SHAPES AND COLORS ALREADY FOUND IN MY HOME

I chose a green border for the rug because my dining room chairs are green. Having this connection through color makes the chairs feel like they are also part of the Christmas décor, even though throughout the year they don’t feel Christmassy at all. The stockings on the mantel have pink as one of the colors, and that color is already on several of the pillows on my sofa, which now makes them feel like they could be part of the holiday décor. I repeated the metal finishes normally found around my home by using ornaments on the tree in the same colors. 

I also repeated shapes- the Vintage Vibe FLOR Squares have a pattern that looks like stars, so I have repeated almost the exact star shape with ornaments on the tree, as well as with a star print on the tree skirt. Several light fixtures in this room have a ball shape to either the base or the shade, so I have stockings with that shape on them. Finding ways to connect my holiday décor to my regular décor blurs the line between what is an everyday item and what is specifically for Christmas, and the result is that everything feels like it is contributing to the holiday feeling. 

HOLIDAY DÉCOR THAT CAN BE INTERACTED WITH

You know which throwback holiday décor makes me feel insanely nostalgic? Those metal containers filled with butter cookies or popcorn, that have some kind of old-fashioned holiday scene printed on the container. It’s not really about the look of them though, it’s about the feeling I got when I would pry open the lid and eat a bunch of wreath shaped cookies. So, to get that same feeling now, I added several bowls of holiday themed candy around the living room so that the Christmas décor isn’t just for looking at. I also added holiday themed books. The only thing that feels more festive than sitting by the fireplace next to a twinkling Christmas tree is doing that while sipping hot chocolate and reading A Christmas Carol. 

HOLIDAY DÉCOR IN AN UNEXPECTED PLACE

Unless it’s a doormat with poinsettias print, you really don’t expect a rug to be part of the holiday décor. Especially a large sized area rug. So, making it part of my Christmas decorating has really taken things to the next level. I am happy that this border is easy to remove and store since it comes in multiple pieces, so I can use it year after year to make my home look more festive for the holidays. 

Thank you so much to FLOR for making this project come to life and helping me to get my home ready for the holidays!