I had Christmas in mind when making many of my decisions while designing our house and I don’t regret a single one of them. It is nearly like our house was built for Christmas. Most of the Christmas decor remains the same through the years, with just a little tweaking, but some things have been fun to tweak or edit (a few out of necessity as I cannot find some of my Christmas decorations, oddly).
While I have great appreciation for so many types of design, my house is a Georgian Revival Revival (yes, that’s a thing), and, as such, I love to keep most of my decor very traditional and some of it very authentic.
That said, I do believe many of the design elements would, or could, be at home in lots of your homes, too. No matter the style, a little traditional design never hurt anyone and, dare I say, it often really helps. I find that traditional design and decor really grounds a structure and it has a longer lifespan since it isn’t based on a passing trend.
I try pretty hard in many facets of my life to not support Made in China when I can, so my aesthetic lends itself well to handcrafted. I prefer that anyway. But, we do definitely have a few things from Hobby Lobby and Amazon in the mix. The key is to blend well, and find the best made you can, so there is longevity and money better spent.
Let’s take a little tour of some of my favorite Christmas decor.
I keep my kitchen fairly simple. I tie some Swiss red velvet ribbons on my chandelier, my dried orange slice wreath remains until all the Christmas decor comes down, and I make a traditional Colonial Williamsburg style centerpiece for my kitchen table. This year, I put it on top of a silver plate urn I use for a number of different things throughout the year.
When I moved in to this house, this centerpiece frame was one of the first things I purchased. I nearly always top it with a pineapple, because: obviously, and then I fill it in with whatever fruit I have. I’ve done pomander oranges, red apples, a mix of fruits, and then fill in with pine branches I snip from our trees. Though I thought it looked pretty on this urn, I think I prefer it on the table directly, so I’ll do it that way from now on.
It is not hard to make my family room dress for the occasion because I have two bright red sofas. A tree and our collection of nutcrackers mostly do the trick, along with a few red tassels to dress up my Chinese urns.
The keeping room is also not hard to make festive because it is wearing green all year round. I used to have a great collection of bottle brush trees and mini barren trees, but I cannot find them. So, I have been using fresh pine roping and a few dried orange slices, along with these battery-operated taper candles, which are new to my house this year. I love them! I am obviously partial to real candles (and please do check them out here), but I don’t make taper candles and don’t always have time to go all over the house and remember to extinguish tall tapers I can’t easily reach.
Last year, for my husband’s big-number birthday, I surprised him with a little getaway to Amish country, where I bought this sweet little corded candle. I love it on this very old family heirloom table, where I permanently display my grandfather’s childhood thrush seat chair with chippy paint. At Christmas time I also display this wool mini tree I bought from a local craftsman. I love this so, so much, and find the old wooden block base really cute. I wish I could buy more, but I don’t have the contact information of the maker.
I’ll save the dining room decor for another year’s post because I’m not fully sold on how I’ve dressed it for this year.
My foyer’s Christmas decor is set and I don’t foresee changing it any time soon. I have new bows this year out of necessity. Like the bottle brush trees, I can’t find my red and green plaid bows, so now there are new red bows and their tails are much longer.
My garland is old and on its last legs, cracking and separating all over the place. I don’t think any amount of floral tape will lengthen their lives, so I basically assume some will just fall down in the middle of the night and then I will have to figure out a temporary fix. But, I love them, so they are up until they fully die. I think the reason for their condition is that I was storing them folded in half in large plastic trash bags in my attic each year. Obviously, this was not ideal. A few years ago my daughter (who is an amazing gift-giver), gave me two of these garland storage bags and they are SO handy.
I have a little tree on my antique round table and it’s the only time of year that table looks appropriate because I can’t find something else that looks good on it during the other seasons. Email me if you have suggestions….I’m all ears! But, my favorite thing about this little tree is my brass Victorian tinsel that I was gifted from a friend of my mother. I LOVE this tinsel and put it on our big tree, too. Plastic silver tinsel, while beautiful in some applications, is really not my style. But this stuff, I just adore it.
Our basement fireplace mantel is begging for some greenery, so I add real pine boughs and more of these tapers.
For two years in a row, I have handmade these urn fillers which flank our front door. This year I bought one bundle of fresh pine greenery from Costco, unwound the entire thing (it has a thin wire holding it all together) and I just basically stabbed it into the dirt that was already there from my summer plantings. I had a few wooden picks from old vase fillers from years’ past, and I added those. Clearly, these are all approved by our curious canine.
Last year I bought the greenery through a school donation sale and I liked it much better as it also came with gorgeous juniper sprigs and berries, but that wasn’t an option this time.
I love to create little vignettes in corners and on counters in my house. Here are a few.
A beautiful soap next to the sink can bring in a lot of cheer and elevate your powder room. I loved making this limited-edition Christmas soap this year.