Pineapple House | Christmas Tour 2021

Welcome to my 13th annual Christmas home tour! 

{All of my Christmas house tours can be found ~ here ~.}

Yes, it's been that long! It's always a joy to invite people into my home, whether in person or online. But, I almost didn't do a tour here on the blog this year because so much is the same! This is our sixth year at Pineapple House and Christmas decorating has fallen into a comfortable rhythm. As a matter of fact, I pulled up photos from last year as I did this year's decorating because we were expecting a guest and I needed to expedite the process! 

So, there are a few changes, including our new kitchen table and chairs and a new chest in the living room . . . both of which are new spaces to decorate! But much is repeated and familiar and I'm fine with that. 

If you're fine with that too,  

then come on in and have a look around!

(Maybe you'd like to listen to some music while you tour? Click ~ here ~ for one of my favorites.)

I don't know how you're spending your holidays this year. Maybe you're sick. Maybe someone you love is sick. Maybe you're alone. Maybe you're grieving. Maybe you're longing for some "normal" in this ever-changing world. 

Whatever your circumstances, I pray that you are able to find JOY. As the angel of the Lord told the shepherds, 

I bring you good tidings of great joy!

Not the joy of warm fuzzies or perfect holiday celebrations. Not the joy of an untroubled life.

But the joy of a Savior who came to save His people from their sins! 

The joy of   Emmanuel - "God With Us." 

Merry Christmas to you and yours, my dear blog friends! 

Christmas Gift Wrapping

Yesterday was a big wrapping day here!

Bekah had the day off and so we made an occasion out of it. We cleared the dining room table and piled it with all of our gift-wrapping supplies. Then we played Christmas music, drank coffee, and wrapped, tied, and tagged well into the evening. 

Each year, I choose a wrapping theme. I don't necessarily wrap everything the same, but I like for my gifts to coordinate.

The first step is getting out all of my wrapping paper rolls. I have some leftover from past years, some that I have bought at after-Christmas sales, and rolls that I have purchased this season. I put it all together in one place and choose which designs I will use for the current year. 

Here is an assortment from a few years ago.
You can see how I have divided it into "themes."

This is the group of papers that I chose for that year. 

And this is how it came together.

For the past several years, I have made my own gift tags. Yesterday, I ran out of them and had to make up some more. 

Past years' wrapping themes . . . 

And this year's . . . 

Even though I had FIVE rolls of the red ticking paper in my stash (oops), I decided to give that a rest this year and use only two papers: a red plaid and navy ticking. I had found some lovely navy ribbon at Target and wanted to highlight that color. I also had picked up a roll of olive green ribbon and I thought that looked so nice with the navy ticking. I went back several times to look for more of the olive ribbon, but I never saw it again, so I used navy or plaid ribbon on some of those packages. 

There is more wrapping to do (honestly, I have a bit more shopping to do!), but the bulk of it is finished.

I love wrapping gifts! I find it more enjoyable than shopping! 

What about you? Do you enjoy wrapping? 

Pineapple House | Adding Curb Appeal

During the early days of quarantine when we were in the house for days on end, we often broke the monotony with a Sunday afternoon drive. 

On one of those drives, Ron said that he thought that there were things that we could do to our house exterior to give it more visual appeal. Boom! No sooner were those words uttered than ideas started flying around the car! 

Pineapple House: Before
Like most of the "befores" of Pineapple House, it certainly wasn't bad!
This house was loved and well cared for by the former owners.
But there were things we wanted to change to fit our own personal style and desires. 

As we were taking frequent drives, we had many opportunities to gather inspiration for our exterior changes. We took lots of photographs which I gathered into a photo file on my laptop. Here are a few . . . 

We settled on six elements in our plans to add curb appeal. 

1. Full-view storm doors, front and back
2. New roof
3. Chippendale rails
4. Louvered basement window covers
5. Outdoor wall sconces 
6. New lamp post and light

It seemed like a lot of changes, a daunting list. But we just started, took one step at a time, looked for bargains, and we Ron did most of the work ourselves himself. 

ELEMENT #1: FULL-VIEW STORM DOORS

The original storm doors had two panels that could raise and lower, allowing for fresh air to come through the screen when the weather was nice. We liked that when we first moved in, but over time we realized that we really didn't use that feature very often. Aesthetically, we preferred a full-view door. Our front door is a lovely old paneled wood door and a full view would show it to better advantage. 

So Ron bought a Larson storm door and installed it himself in a half a day. 

We think it looks so much better without a bar across the middle. And there is a side benefit. The old storm door had a screen in the top half, but the new one is all glass which allows more unfiltered natural light inside. (We open the wooden door on all but the hottest and coldest days to enjoy that natural light.)

We were off and running with our plans to update the exterior! 

Ron installed the new storm door on the front of the house in September 2020. 

The back door was installed in June 2021. 

ELEMENT #2: NEW ROOF

We put a new roof on this project list, but this was something that needed to be done regardless of curb appeal. We knew when we bought the house that it would need a new roof in a few years, and this was the time. This is also the one project on the list that Ron did not do himself. 

What a job! 

Believe it or not, the roof had once been white, but had come to be a (dirty) gray. We chose a charcoal color for our new roof. Yes, this project needed to be done for practical reasons, but it sure did make an improvement in the appearance of our house.

ELEMENT #3: CHIPPENDALE RAILS

While the roof was priority as far as practicality, new Chippendale rails was priority as far as my excitement level! We knew that replacing the wrought iron railing with colonial style rails would go a long way toward giving the house the feel we wanted. 

We took multiple photos, searched the internet, went to see houses that friends told us about, and finally settled on a style. (Before our research, I had no idea that there were so many variations!) 

~ Pinterest ~

Whew! It was a process!

Ron began by taking down the wrought iron rail in October 2020 . . . 

 . . . and then there was a lot of math and cutting and waiting for the pressure treated lumber to cure and waiting for days to work on it and priming and painting. 

Rails completed: October 2021 ! 

ELEMENT #4: LOUVERED BASEMENT WINDOW COVERS

You probably can't see them in the "before" photo, but our basement window wells had plastic covers that had clouded with age. Ron made these louvered covers which I think are so much prettier! 

ELEMENT #5: OUTDOOR WALL SCONCES

We took to the Internet to search for outdoor wall sconces. The existing wiring was placed a little high on the wall, so I looked for something that would hang below. I was looking for something with a colonial vibe that was also within budget. 

We made a selection, but then I had second thoughts and started searching again! We ended up with these sconces by Livex. They fit my criteria, and I'm not sure if you can see it, but they have beveled glass. (They are now discontinued so I can't share a link.)

We purchased a third sconce for the garage. 

ELEMENT #6: NEW LAMP POST and LIGHT 

When we ordered the outdoor wall sconces, we also ordered a post light  Ron had planned to adapt the existing post, but . . . oops . . . he discovered that it was beginning to rot at the base so he started from scratch. 

This is the project I referred to in this post. 

Although it sometimes seemed like the projects were moving at a snail's pace, I think we accomplished a lot in the space of 18 months! 

I said at the beginning of this post that Pineapple House had been well-loved. We feel like we have simply added our own brand of love to its history and we are happy with these exterior updates to Pineapple House!