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?
