Christmas already in November

Last weekend, I went on our second annual Holly and Ivy Tour with my Mother-in-law and sister-in-law. I loved it last year and was really looking forward to it again this year. Pretty much, you get to tour all these beautiful houses that have been decorated by various designers and so forth. . .to give you some Christmas ideas and to cause you to covet. :) I wish I could give credit to where it was due, but I don't have names and not really permission to post pictures on my blog, but they did invite us to take pictures at each place, so that is kinda like permission, right? (Don't sue me--its not worth it anyway. I have nothing. That is why I was coveting!)
We went to one place that really stole the show for our groupie--the Sweet Dreams Luxury Inn. This was a gorgeous B&B that I wish I had known about before! Here are a few pictures from there. (I do have to admit, that my pictures don't even do justice to the place--I was just snapping ideas for Christmas decorating, not the vast beauty the place held!)

Plum as a decorating colour--this was one of the mantels in one of the rooms available.

Here is another mantel--very pearl-y and ice-y against a bold background of room colour

This wow-ed me because I love the look of country Christmas. As a qualifier, some country Christmas can be quite tacky. This one wasn't. Its setting was a rec room. I've seen something like this before in a children's playroom--where each child in the family could decorate their own Christmas tree and then the family still had their fancy big one in the main room. (As a side note--we have all on one tree. Tacky and beautiful!)

This was a table setting. (One of them. I don't know why I didn't take pictures of more of them!) My picture cut it off somewhat, but the "favour" was a Christmas ornament. We saw lots of this lime or apple green colour in Christmas decorating this year. . .along with feathers and birds.

And this final picture was just tacky (in my humble opinion!)! Come on--so the one store in the local mall did an upside down Christmas tree one year. . .a few years ago. . .how many of you out there actually do this in your home? Come on!!!

Sorry to ruin the ending! I regret not taking more pictures. We were in a time crunch and wanted to get through as many houses as possible. And some decorating was pretty typical anyway. One more thing that stood out to my little groupie was the stockings. last year we saw a bunch of stockings on the mantel or on the banisters or somewhere hanging up in family groups. This year there were very few stockings. The one house that did host stockings had each stocking in the child's bedroom, hung on a chair or at the end of their bed--and colour coordinated with the room colours. I thought that was a neat way to incorporate Christmas decorating into each room of the house. (You have to understand that on these tours, the bathrooms and laundry rooms are decorated for Christmas as well--and not just with a towel set or soap dish. Most, I have to say are done well, but I wouldn't take Christmas decorating that far in my own home.)