By Nancy
Each year, right around Thanksgiving, I begin thinking about unpacking all the Christmas decorations. Boxes and bags filled with wreaths, Santas, nativity sets, candles, beads, ornaments and strings of lights. I also wonder what I can do differently with my Christmas décor. I’m very sentimental and feel the need to put everything I own (that screams Christmas) out.
Whether it was a Santa statue you painted when you were 10 or a red felt stocking with your name written in glitter, it’s hard to let sentimental items go. Here are a handful of nifty and cost-effective ways to change things up a bit at your home this Christmas while holding on to some of your old-school decorations of yesteryear.
Themed Rooms
I decided to theme the entire dining room with Santa this year for my son. Santa ornaments and glass baubles are tied to the chandelier with ribbons. The buffet holds pictures of our son with Santa, as well as pictures of me and my husband as children sitting with Santa. Any random Santa ornament we had now hangs on the china cabinet door knobs. Santa candles and knick-knacks have become the centerpiece on the table. Needless to say, this room was a big hit with our toddler.
The guest bathroom is nothing but snowmen – which can stay out long after the 25th of December passes.
I have a small collection of nativity sets and am considering displaying all of them throughout the living room on end tables and beneath the tree.
Ribbon
I love ribbon. I buy large spools of decorative wire ribbon every year after Christmas. I also save all the ribbons from gifts throughout the year. My husband had an old gold metallic-painted pine cone wreath. It wasn’t the prettiest wreath in the house, but it’s special to him and I put it out every year. This year, however, I decided to give that old gold wreath a facelift. A simple new ribbon bow at the top replaced the old velvet one. It’s now hanging on our kitchen door. My husband even noticed.
Ribbon can tie a lot of un-related Christmas items together, too. So if you have trees or wreaths that you like, but they just don’t look good together, consider re-threading them with some new ribbon.
Christmas Cards
It seems nowadays many people are sending photograph Christmas cards. I hate stashing them all in a basket or pocket hanger because you can’t see the photos. I took an old wreath and tied ribbon in knots all over it. I then added some mini wooden clothes pins to each ribbon to attach cards. This particular wreath is hanging on my china cabinet in the “Santa” dining room, so the ribbon on the wreath coordinates with the ribbon on the chandelier. When I run out of room on the wreath, I swag ribbon on either side to hang additional cards.
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Ornaments
My husband and I collect ornaments. Whenever we go on vacation, we always bring home an ornament for the tree to remember our trip. We have quite a collection of police-related ornaments since my husband is a police officer. Our son loves trains and fire trucks. Well, you get the picture. We were running out of room on our tree for all the ornaments, so I decided to make a police tree. My husband’s old bachelor tree is now the police tree which we keep up year round in our lower level family room. I make it a point to get him a police ornament each year to add to his tree. I’m sure pretty soon we may have a lighthouse tree, a train tree and a dog tree.
Do you have any Christmas decorating tips to share? We want to hear about them!
Tags: Christmas Decorating, Christmas Decorating Tips, Ornaments, Themed Room
Wonderful ideas Nancy- I love the card wreath. My favorite cheap tip is that I take down all our framed photos and artwork- especially large pieces and wrap them like presents, then hang them back up- it’s really cute. Especially with large wire ribbon-bows.
I also like to save large boxes throughout the year, wrap them, and stack them up in random spots- very pretty in front of a fireplace. One year I strung wire ribbon along one wall, painted wooden closepins red and green and displayed our Christmas cards that way.
Filling a large glass bowl with several ball ornaments makes a nice centerpiece.
I love decorating and really appreciate the tips
Nice ideas Nancy, I like hanging the ornaments up and around, that looks pleasant and festive. I always enjoy the holiday tablecloth, it adds so much to the room. My tip is that round/small rec vinyl tablecloths make pretty and inexpensive tree skirts. I use them to wrap stuff in as I pack it all away.
Great ideas. I like the Theme room idea and hanging ornaments from the chandelier.
I love the police ornament themed tree. What a great idea! I think I will also hang some ornaments from my small chandelier this weekend, another great idea. Thanks, Nancy.
I did receive a three tier cake/candy Christmas pastry stand several years back. Since we don’t really bake or buy a lot of candy/pastries until the week of Christmas I decided to place this on my dining room table and placed large colorful Christmas tree balls on it. It really looks beautiful.
This year for our work Christmas party we wrapped empty boxes of different sizes in beautiful gold paper with red and green ribbon and bows for our centerpieces. Our party was today and afterwords those of us that helped create these centerpieces brought them home. I have mine in my bay window next to a small Christmas tree and lights and it really looks stunning. We were able to get the paper and ribbon on sale and I think we made 10 of these for around 25 dollars.
I just went to my church group’s Christmas party last night. The centerpieces were mason jars filled with glass colored marbles/stones with a tea light burning. There was also a pretty ribbon tied around the neck and/or around the base. It was stunning. I have about 6 or 8 jars somewhere in the garage. I think I”m going to steal that idea for our neighbor open house tonight!
I’ve always wanted to wrap the pictures on the wall – I always forget about it until I’m way too busy with trying to get all the real gifts wrapped.
Pam – I have one of those 3-tiered things, too. I never use it. Great idea!
Great ideas all! I started decorating early this year (which was good) but still haven’t finished (which is not so good). Hoping to finally get some outside lights up tomorrow. I’ve been hampered by rain and a broken wrist, but I’m determined!
When I was in my early 20s and living with my mom we used to buy a second, smaller tree for the kitchen, and that was our “themed” tree-we had chili pepper lights we’d string on the tree, and the ornaments we put on were all food-themed. Mostly fruit -we had a set of brilliantly painted red wooden apples, and some delicate glass plums and pears. I always loved that tree.