Here’s how I decorate for the holidays.
My recipe for holiday decor is pretty simple; I lack the time and patience for anything much more involved. Here’s what I like to do. And note that because we’re a non-denominational household who celebrates Christmas (with a side of nightly menorah lighting, dreidel spinning, and gelt eating during Hanukkah), this post is Christmas-centric.
1.) A live tree with lots of C7 multi-colored lights and a tree skirt (if you prefer a tree collar, don’t let me stop you). If my kids can be patient enough to let us wrap some ribbon on the tree before they go nuts putting piles of ornaments in clusters on the tree, then I add one or two wide ribbons in a color that makes me happy (pink); ideally the ribbon has wire in it to help position it in the tree. When it comes to decorating the tree, I’m a fan of displaying a hodge podge of ornaments collected over the years, including all the messy ornaments made by kids, and our kids hang them, which means they end up clustered in corners and never even close to evenly distributed, but things don’t have to be perfect and kids should absolutely get to be a part of the fun, too.
2.) I hang patterned stockings — you can go classic or go more modern, and don’t overlook Etsy as a place to find fun stockings — from the shelving in my open kitchen because I find they look better there. (We put our tree right next to the mantle and it was too much even for me; it looked like a mess of a Christmas explosion all in a single corner.)
3.) Otherwise, I buy live greenery and wreaths at Trader Joe’s each year (nothing to store when it’s all done!) and hang wreaths over a couple key big, open spaces in my house. In my case I hang one over a big picture window in the dining area and another over the open shelving in my kitchen. A simple green wreath looks so cheerful on the white tile over the shelf with the stockings hanging! If I have the energy, I hang swags of live greenery on the stairwell banister (I generally use fishing wire to hang it so nothing but the greenery is visible), and maybe some smaller live wreaths over mirrors using the same ribbon I use on the tree. I’m such a fan of live wreaths and live greenery with no ribbons or other adornment. It seems so classically simple and yet really cheerful to me. And the house smells great. Though I also like to fill the oil diffusers in the bathrooms with Thymes Frasier Fir and it makes me so wildly happy to come in the house and smell it throughout the holidays and into January.
That’s about all I do, and it feels really festive and yet manageable to put up and take down after Christmas. We generally do a backyard bonfire after Christmas and burn the wreaths and make s’mores.
