Tips to Make Your Holiday Festive
Magic touch dazzles!!!
Imagination, simple items transform abodeBy: CELESTE BUSK, Homelife Reporter
'Tis the season for homeowners to deck their halls with yuletide cheer, and gone are the days of run-of-the-mill holiday decorating, says interior design expert Michele Evanger.
This year, it's all about imaginative projects around the house, said Evanger, founder and president of Designs of the Interior.
One of Evanger's easy tips is to take a glass vase and fill it with ornaments of varying sizes. "This makes a quick and attractive centerpiece," she said.
Libby Langdon of HGTV's "Small Space, Big Style" says there are plenty of ways to dress up your home for the holidays with chic, quick and easy decorating ideas.
For example, Langdon said a simple way for instant yuletide ambiance is to target the back of the dining-room chairs. "Why not decorate this often-ignored space? This can be done easily with a variety of materials."
Langdon said to start with whatever greenery might be in your backyard and use some decorative wide red ribbon to tie some sprigs of greenery to the chair back.
"You can also take some plaid ribbon and tie candy canes and herb sprigs together. Create interesting hangings with sprigs of holly, brown twigs and gold ribbon," Langdon said.
Tips for getting started:
To help you get started, here are some tips from Evanger and Langdon for sprucing up your home with some holiday spirit:
Tie generous ribbons to chair backs, candlesticks, picks in plants, wreaths, garlands, basket handles, drapery tie-backs, stair railings and doorknobs. Ribbon colors don't need to be red and green. Colors should tie together with the rest of your home decor.
Sparingly sprinkle artificial snow across the dinning-room table, buffet or coffee table. Also, add the snow to houseplants to dress them up for the holidays.
Personalize the holiday with monograms on napkins, place cards, ornaments, stockings and pillowcases for guests.
Make a natural statement by simply embellishing fresh wreaths with out-of-the-ordinary items. Try jazzing a wreath up with kumquats, lemons, pomegranates, nuts or cinnamon sticks. In addition to looking beautiful, it'll smell wonderful!
Place three candles on a decorative plate and pour fresh cranberries around it to create a beautiful centerpiece.
This time of year, many local garden centers have rosemary bushes in the shape of Christmas trees. Replant them in a festive pot and add decorative ribbon. The rosemary will make the house smell great, too.
Drape your chandeliers
Drape festive ribbon and garland on chandeliers.
Take lots of different sizes of clear glass vases, pitchers and hurricanes, fill them with different round ornaments and display them all together down the center of your dining table, in a window sill or on a buffet table.
To create simple, homemade wrapping paper, cover gifts in brown shipping paper, tie on a fancy ribbon and add some gold stick-on stars. You can also draw directly on the paper with a gold paint pen for a festive look.
To make a holiday napkin ring, cut small sprigs of any type of greenery (boxwood, evergreen, pine or even off the underside of your Christmas tree) and place a sprig on a napkin and tie it all together with a red ribbon.
To create a last-minute centerpiece, buy a wreath and lay it down on your table. Put a large pillar candle in the middle of it, and you are done. The wreath can be real or fake and can be made of greenery, silk flowers or glistening berries. Fill the rest of the table with small votive candles.
If you have a wall where you have several frames hanging together in a group, tie small sprigs of greenery (evergreen, boxwood, holly) with narrow red ribbon and rest one on the top of each frame to dress up a wall a bit. It's an unexpected detail that everyone is sure to notice.
Buy a bunch of big old-fashioned candy canes and put them in a clear glass vase or a silver bowl and add sprigs of greenery in the bottom so that it falls out over the lip of the container.
Use decorative ribbon and hang ornaments in your windows.
Buy five red or green pillar candles (choose one or the other, you want all the candles to be the same color) and get them in varying shapes and heights. Put them all together, with the tallest candles on the inside, on a platter or cake plate. Place some sprigs of greenery, berries or holly in between the candles, and light it up for a fast but beautiful centerpiece.
Wreaths aren't just for front doors and centerpieces: They can easily add some holiday spirit to any room when placed over existing artwork or above a fireplace. Choose a lightweight silk or artificial wreath, wrap two lengths of wide gold ribbon the span you want the wreath to hang down from and include excess ribbon to make a bow or tails.
Loop the ribbon once around the wreath, tie a bow and hang from the ceiling so it's in the center of your artwork.
Get a garland a few feet longer than the length of your table and simply run it down the middle and add bends to it here and there. Place white candles, pillars or tapers, in the bends of the garland and you'll have an elegant yet easy tablescape. You can also include pine cones and berries for an extra touch.
To make a festive light, wrap a sheer wide ribbon around a votive holder, or even a rocks glass, and secure it with a little bit of hot glue. The sheerness of the ribbon allows the candlelight to shine through, but it adds a little sparkle.
Tie candy canes around a pillar candle with satin or velvet ribbon. You can use either the hook candy canes or the straight stick candy canes, and it's best to secure each one to the candle with a small dab of hot glue. Tie cinnamon sticks around a pillar candle with a red ribbon and place a sprig of greenery in the tie, it adds a nice holiday aroma as well as ambience.
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