Simple green and white Christmas decor using lots of natural greenery, handmade items and heirlooms for mantel and table decorations anyone can do.
A few years ago I started decorating everything but the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving and saving the tree for the next weekend. It makes our real tree stay fresh longer and spreads out the decorating so we’re not trying to do it all at once, so it’s become our tradition.
And while I’ve brought in color the last few years (mainly with purples), this year I’ve been drawn to quite, simple decorating (looking at my Pinterest Christmas board) so my daughter and I scaled back by mainly using lots of natural greenery & white accents for our Christmas decor.
I’m finding this green and white mantel so calming! I found the old shutter in our shed and painted it the only green I could find – which turned out to be a perfect compliment to the natural greenery and provides a nice background for my diy Anthropologie wool pom pom wreath I made last year.
I leaned the sweet little ‘joy’ sheet music sign (from last year, too) against the shutter and then made a couple of cone sheet music trees to coordinate with it. I bought the cabled sweater cone-tree on clearance last year at Target (shocking that I bought something that’s easy to diy, isn’t it?), and though it’s not exactly the same shade of white as the wreath and garland, I like how they come together.
A bit of mercury glass, our stockings and holders rounds out the mantel. One thing I did different this year was to mix a lot of different greens together and not just rely on fir and pine. I added cedar, cypress, arborvitae and even some laurel leaves, which I’m loving for their big, shiny texture.
One day I’d like to make some burlap stockings, but I’m actually still enamored with the stockings I made years ago using material and trims from my stash of vintage items.
Do you think a good blogger should only have different decorations to show you each year? Well, I still love the pom pom wreath and garland (even after keeping it up last year as our winter mantel, too), and I thought it was just as important to show that you don’t have to have new things each year (even things you make) – you can just use what you have in new ways. I think this mantel feels completely different from last year’s, even though I’ve reused some of the major elements.
Our dining room holds a few of my favorite decorations, both old and new:
- a large glittery wise men ornament that reminds me of the sweet lady who gave it to me and always holds a place of honor hanging from our chandelier,
- sweet and simple rosemary wreaths that I combined with some numbered diy wood tags on the backs of the chairs,
- a fun new bud vase from Pottery Barn (love.) filled with arborvitae and purple beautyberry stems (my one nod to color!),
- a white ‘feather’ tree with book page garland and my grandma’s 50+ year-old kissing angels on the sideboard.
Greenery, sparkly pinecones and glitter houses…
Painted ceramic buildings (each one painstakingly done by me…), book page bird ornaments from two years ago (yes, I ‘put a bird on it’), sheet music thrifted coasters, and a bookshelf vignette using the thrift store deer I made over last year…
Simple white pitchers and lights, candles and more lights on the mantel.
Really, it’s a bit hard to capture the mantel wall in a photo, since it looks like such a big amount of space here. But it’s not sparse in person, it’s just…nice. And we all are enjoying it.
I’m pretty sure our tree will have more bling that it’s surroundings, though – we’ve accumulated so many fun ornaments that we look forward to seeing each year. But that’s fine – it will just stand out that much more.
Do you decorate with a theme or just put your treasured holiday decorations out every year?
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annie says
A late, (about 6-7 years) reply, but ever so sincere thank-you. Today, 1/24/20, I found this lovely post, which I’ve pinned, bookmarked and saved for next year’s Christmas. We celebrated our first newly married Christmas 40 years ago, with about $20 dollars to spend on Christmas decorations. We live in a university town with a college forestry club that sells Christmas trees and evergreen boughs for (as their sign says), “whatever you can afford to donate”. That first year I loaded up with a beautiful balsam Christmas tree and armloads of evergreen boughs for $10.00! Those sweet college boys even loaded and secured my purchases into and on top of my car. My next stop was to a now-defunct Woolco discount store where I purchased an abundance of different sized white candles at their Christmas clearance price of $4.50 for a near cartload of them. My sweet mother-in-law shopped every thrift store within a 40-mile radius of our home and collected a treasure chest of old brass and silver candle holders and spent a good three hours helping me polish each one to its finest patina. With my remaining dollars, I bought a box and a half of old mercury glass tree ornaments and my dear mother provided 200 twinkling clear lights. Our home was a small, two-bedroom bungalow but our simple green and white Christmas decor made it seem like a winter wonderland! Since that first beautiful green and white Christmas, we’ve never strayed from that color theme, I’ve added more decorations as our home sizes increased, but all have been simple green, white, brass, old silver, natural wood and mercury glass decor I’ve picked up at estate and tag sales over the years. Your 2013 post is timeless and offered me a mindful of inspiration, thank you! Change is always good for the soul, but some things are better left alone. Thanks for allowing me to express my trip down memory lane. I was a 20-year old college student that very first Christmas. My husband and I met in our Botany class, fell madly in love and in spite of our parents’ loud protests, we married just 8 months after that first day of class and never regretted a moment. Happy, Blessed New Year to you and yours, you write a beautiful blog.
Jami says
What a beautiful story, Annie! I could just picture it as I was reading – how lovely it all sounds. And yes, keeping to a theme that makes you happy is a very good thing. 🙂 Thank you SO much for sharing your memories with me!
Kris {Driven by Décor} says
Your mantel is so gorgeous – the neutrals and greenery are perfection! And I hopped over to your post about making the pom pom wreath – LOVE that and think my girls would get a kick out of making one next year. Thanks for sharing!
Jami says
Thanks, Kris!! My daughter and I had fun making all the pom poms, so I think your family would, too. 🙂
Lisa @ Shine Your Light says
Jami, I LOVE your mantle styling. I have a similar long mantle and sometimes I feel like it can get cluttered…..so I love seeing how you used the white creamers and pitchers on the ends. They fill it out without making it too busy, I love that idea!! Now I’m off to explore your pom pom garland and book page birds and rosettes, all so lovely!
Thanks for sharing your holiday home tour, and I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas!
Jami says
Thank you SO much, Lisa, for your sweet words! I used to struggle with our long mantle so much, just like yours it was cluttery – in fact I did a post about it and asked for suggestions! Here’s the resulting post from that: https://anoregoncottage.com/mantel-progress/
AOC’s readers had some great ideas, including the idea to use graduated items on the bookshelves which draw the eye to the main mantel. Sweet benefits of having a blog, huh? 🙂 Happy Holidays!
[email protected] says
I love the look of a classic green and white Christmas (with touches of black too!). Gorgeous! Thanks for sharing!
cassie says
love the mantle and all your pom poms! what a cozy home!
Jami says
Thanks so much, Cassie! 🙂
Chelsea says
This is my first time here and I love your site! Your tranquil Christmas decor is absolutely beautiful. Green and white just never grow old. Love it all, well done!
Chelsea
chelseasgarage.blogspot.com
Gayle says
I love your green and white, I went with white and silver this year as well. It is very peaceful and your home photos reflect that.
Shannon says
I absolutely don’t think bloggers need new stuff each year (especially if they are from sponsored posts.) Nearly all of our decorations are sentimental or drive the color/style of the non-sentimental ones. I adore the green & white decorations and have been doing a similar nod to winter this year. I love it and don’t see getting overwhelmed with it before Christmas is even here.
Angi says
It looks beautiful, Jami. And I love that you reuse your stuff from one year to the next. We don’t do themes. We have things that are very special to us and I use those each year. Almost all of our tree ornaments were made by my children at different ages so it’s a really fun walk down memory lane when we decorate.
Stay warm!
Lisa says
I think your green and white is very pretty, very relaxing. We have about 5 or 6 different themes that we rotate. This year’s theme is what we call “a Hallmark Christmas”. All different ornaments (Hallmark and others), lots of color and all styles of decorations, with lots of colored lights. The gifts are wrapped with all different papers and ribbons and bows. It’s very fun. I’ll confess, though, that I do look forward to the years we use our “all natural” Christmas decorations.
Jami says
Wow, 5 or 6 themes you rotate, Lisa? I’ve never thought of that! You sound like you guys love Christmas and the decorations. 🙂 Do you all decide which theme to use each year, or does someone decide for everyone else?
Lisa says
Normally I’m the one to choose the theme – my husband likes all the themes and doesn’t usually care which one we do, though if he suggests one he’d particularly like to do we will do that one. I sometimes get inspiration from a wrapping paper that I really like, or something else that catches my eye to gives me an idea on how to update one of our themes. And, yes, our storage room is about 1/2 full of Christmas decorations – we really love Christmas!