I love to decorate for the holidays, but I love it even more when it costs me absolutely nothing. One trick I’ve hit upon is to take tree ornaments and display them in other ways to create more decorations throughout the house.

I used to decorate with a winter theme after Christmas, but I soon decided it didn’t give me enough time for my Valentine’s decorations, so I stopped. All the winter decorations got put away in a box. Some of those decorations were originally snowflake Christmas ornaments. This year I found the box and rediscovered these ornaments. A few of the ornaments (handmade lace snowflakes made by my grandmother) went on my tree, but I had a collection of blue and silver snowflakes left.

I pulled out this dish I inherited from my grandmother. I love it because it is so unique, but it is often hard to find the right items to display in it. I played around with the snowflakes then remembered I had a bag of fake snow that came with a Christmas village item someone bought me. I dumped in the snow, arranged the snowflakes to stand up in it, and suddenly I had a beautiful new decoration that didn’t cost me a dime.

I love to decorate for the holidays, but I love it even more when it costs me absolutely nothing. One trick I’ve hit upon is to take tree ornaments and display them in other ways to create more decorations throughout the house. I used to decorate with a winter theme after Christmas, but I soon … Read more →

A couple of years ago I fell in love with decorating kitchen or dining room chairs after I saw it done at a holiday tour of homes. What a fun way to add some more decorations, I thought. My husband thought it was not as exciting, since I needed his help to make it happen. Last year we made an attempt at it, decorating our kitchen chairs with some blue and silver jingle bell snowflakes I found at Walmart. My charming husband wired them to some faux pine boughs from extra garland, tied a silver bow and hung them on our chairs from those 3M removable hooks. It didn’t go well. They kept falling off and falling apart.

This year, I stumbled on some cute silver wire wreaths at Hobby Lobby for $6.99 each. We bought blue ribbon. He tied the ribbon around the kitchen chair after looping it through the wreath, then tied it into a bow. No hooks, nothing that could fall off. They are fantastic and I am so thrilled with them! In fact, I’m so thrilled that my mind is already thinking about what we could use to decorate the dining room chairs next year….

A couple of years ago I fell in love with decorating kitchen or dining room chairs after I saw it done at a holiday tour of homes. What a fun way to add some more decorations, I thought. My husband thought it was not as exciting, since I needed his help to make it happen. … Read more →

Red and green definitely say Christmas, but do you have to stick with tradition? Absolutely not. In fact, choosing your own signature color for the holidays allows you to customize your decor and make it extremely personal and unique.

I come from a long line of customized Christmas color-themed households. My grandmother always had blue decorations, even in the 70s. My mom went with blue and silver for her own tree, so I grew up without a lot of the red and green that fills most households.

My mom bought me ornaments over the years as I was growing up and what I really liked was pink, so she went with it – and they looked fine on her blue and silver tree.  Pink stuck and when I had my own tree, I bought pink lights. Red looked ridiculous, so I avoided it. Fast forward 25 years and I have a house without red at Christmas. Most of my decorations are pink, blue, silver or gold. I have some cranberry colored items in the family room where they fit the decor. It’s become one of my signatures and I love adding to my collection.

There are so many colors that can work at Christmas. Purple is beautiful when paired with silver or gold and has a rich, regal feeling. Orange can be a fun color to work with and yellow is bright and welcoming. Brown offers a woodland motive. Black and white or black and silver could create an elegant decor. Don’t be held back by traditional notions of holiday colors – make the holiday your own!

Red and green definitely say Christmas, but do you have to stick with tradition? Absolutely not. In fact, choosing your own signature color for the holidays allows you to customize your decor and make it extremely personal and unique. I come from a long line of customized Christmas color-themed households. My grandmother always had blue … Read more →

I have a box of my grandmother’s old blue Christmas ornaments. For years, I’ve been displaying them in a bowl, but this year I decided to use cake pedestals. They create much more drama, and you get to see more of the ornaments. Clear pedestals will work with any ornaments, but I happened to have blue ones that were perfect for this project. Be sure to use pedestals that have a lip so your ornaments don’t roll off!

 

I have a box of my grandmother’s old blue Christmas ornaments. For years, I’ve been displaying them in a bowl, but this year I decided to use cake pedestals. They create much more drama, and you get to see more of the ornaments. Clear pedestals will work with any ornaments, but I happened to have … Read more →

In addition to the new decorations, which I shared earlier, my existing collections have undergone some changes, mostly because last year I received some new items for them as gifts and did not display them until this year.

In case you haven’t gotten the hint, I’ve got a thing for trees, and I’ve also got a thing for pink. I’ve been working hard to update my collections to reflect those obsessions!

We have a huge mantel to decorate for the holidays, and I used to struggle because it needed height. My collection of tree toppers has solved that problem. They look wonderful grouped in front of the mirror. Last year we added some new pre-lit garland and I found two boxes of this amazing pink garland at an antique store that has made it gorgeous. This year I added some clip-on pink roses that have shiny ice or dewdrops on them. I think the mantel is looking fabulous. I would like to add a few more pink tree toppers to complete the collection.

I have a wonderful little collection of trees that sits on my grandmother’s chest in my dining room. That collection has been expanding as well and I received some beautiful ones to add to it last year. At this point, the chest is full, so unless I find something fabulous, I will need to put the brakes on this collection!

In my quest to update the dining room, I created this little display on a side chest as well. And my teacup collection has been changing as well. My grandmother bought me one teacup each year for my December birthday. When I was a child, it was a pretty horrible gift. I didn’t drink tea, I didn’t like them and didn’t care. As an adult, I still don’t really drink a lot of tea (and when I do, I prefer a mug to a tiny cup!), but I do like having a collection she started for me. One problem is most Christmas china tea cups are red. And, as I mentioned, I don’t do red, I do pink (I do have red in the kitchen, where it looks fine with the blue theme, and I have cranberry in the family room). My challenge in recent years has been to find cups that are Christmas, but are pink (or at least not red). My mom had a couple handpainted for me, which added to the collection. As you can see, I’m still working on getting the red out (so to speak!).

In addition to the new decorations, which I shared earlier, my existing collections have undergone some changes, mostly because last year I received some new items for them as gifts and did not display them until this year. In case you haven’t gotten the hint, I’ve got a thing for trees, and I’ve also got … Read more →

I’ve added a few new decorations this year that I’m excited to share!

While we were staying on Amelia Island, FL this past winter, we bought this gorgeous blue glass tree. Here’s the dirty little secret: it is made out of a gin bottle! The artist was minding the store when we went in and told us much more than we wanted to know, actually. It almost took away from the beauty of the item, but I’m so glad I bought it. And we miraculously got it home without breaking! It’s about 18 inches long and is really a beautiful piece of art.

I stumbled upon this cute little tree made out of magazine pages and had to have it for my office! It’s from Home Goods and I paid $12.99 for it. The secret was I got there the day they were putting out the Christmas decorations. Things tend to get a bit battered and bruised at Home Goods and TJ Maxx I think, but this made it into my cart right after it hit the shelves. I’m worried about how I will store it without bending the branches (that are rolled pieces of magazine pages).

The big new addition this year is the kitchen decorations! Last year I added a small tree to the kitchen and decorated it with food and cooking items. The room was still feeling sparse though. Last year my daughter and I went to a Christmas tour of homes and in one house they had beautiful decorations on the backs of their kitchen chairs. So this year, we’ve added that! My husband did all the work on this – I just gave direction. We bought silver ribbon (9 feet per chair) and he made them into bows (he watched a YouTube video to learn how). Then we attached a blue snowflake ornament to each (I can’t believe it, but I found these at Walmart – and they are jingle bells too which is kind of fun) and we added some faux evergreen (cut off from some extra garland). He attached it to the chair with 3M removable hooks. It looks amazing!

Next up, the kitchen chandelier. I originally planned to just put some garland on it, but then I found cute blue and silver star ornaments to attach. It has really dressed the space up.

I also decided the dining room needed some work. We have an old (as in rusted on the back side) wreath we usually hang on the wall in there and it has seen better days. I ordered two small preserved boxwood wreaths which we’ve hung on the sliding glass doors. We used ribbon to hang them (looped through the wire on the back) and velcroed them (with removable 3M sticky stuff) to the top of the molding above the doors.

So these are my new additions, all of which I’m quite pleased with. Have you added any new decorations this year?

I’ve added a few new decorations this year that I’m excited to share! While we were staying on Amelia Island, FL this past winter, we bought this gorgeous blue glass tree. Here’s the dirty little secret: it is made out of a gin bottle! The artist was minding the store when we went in and … Read more →

We always put our holiday decorations up the weekend after Thanksgiving. I was really looking forward to it this since I have been slowly replacing old ugly decorations with new ones I like, so I finally feel as though it’s looking nice around here.

Of course I was overly optimistic. We put up the tree in the living room and about 40% of it wouldn’t light. This is the second artificial tree we’ve owned for that room in 12 years. They really should last longer than this. When we moved to this house in 2000, we decided to switch from a real tree to an artificial. I remember buying the pre-lit artificial tree at Kmart for a great price (I think it was $100 or something). That lasted 2 years. We replaced it with another tree that cost a lot more from Michael’s. That one has lasted about 10 years. I had a premonition about this – for weeks before Christmas I had a feeling there was going to be a problem, and I was right. Yes, we could just string lights on it on top of the ones that don’t work, but we already add a long string of pink lights to that tree and I don’t want any more wires. So off we went to the stores. Ugh.

It seems that they’ve changed the shape of trees since we bought last. First of all, we could not

find the height we needed – 6.5 feet. We ended up with a 7.5 foot tree from Lowe’s for much more than I wanted to spend. The tree is taller than what we had, but narrower and instead of being a triangle shape it kind of flares out at the bottom, is straight in the middle, then flares in at the top. Different, but I don’t mind it. Since our ceilings are 7.5 feet high, we couldn’t put the wooden box my husband built years ago under the tree (I like some space between branches and floor for presents).

We also had a crisis with our tree topper. We bought this topper on Valentine’s weekend the first year we were married when we were on a getaway to Corning, NY (for our first Christmas, we used a big bow that was on a wedding gift). The tree topper MUST go on the tree, but it wouldn’t fit! Terry ended up snipping off the top little branches and cleaning off the top of the center pipe to get it to fit on top. It fits, but the only way to get it on and off is to tip the entire tree sideways!

I think the tree looks nice and every year I love hanging the ornaments and remembering where I bought them or who gave them to me. I think I need to take photos of them and label them so my kids will know the meaning behind each on, but that is a giant task. I have ornaments from both grandmothers and I buy ornaments on our trips (I have ornaments from Italy, Scotland, Maine, Hawaii, Bahamas, Arizona, California gold country, Saint Saveur Quebec, Florida, and Ocean City, Maryland among other places).. My mother-in-law bought us the first Christmas and baby’s first year ornaments. My mother has bought me a lot of ornaments and started my collection when I was a teenager. There’s an ornament that reminds me of our first dog (there used to be two of this ornament, but she ate the other one, so I always think of the remaining one as her ornament). There is the bird’s nest with 2 big birds and a baby bird that Terry bought for me the year I was pregnant with our first child.  There is even an ornament that one of Terry’s past bosses bought him – the man was a kind of mentor to him, so I always think of him when I hang it.

In the coming days I’ll share some of my new decorations with you and show you some of my Christmas collections that have expanded nicely.

Do you have ornaments that are meaningful to you? How long do your pre-lit artificial trees last?

We always put our holiday decorations up the weekend after Thanksgiving. I was really looking forward to it this since I have been slowly replacing old ugly decorations with new ones I like, so I finally feel as though it’s looking nice around here. Of course I was overly optimistic. We put up the tree … Read more →