Easy and fun winter decorating ideas

Where did the year go? It’s already time for winter holiday decorating! If that makes you turn into the Grinch, relax and use some of these fun and inexpensive ideas. Decorating for the holidays doesn’t need to be a huge or expensive production. Craft and grocery stores are great places to pick up inexpensive ingredients for your seasonal decorating. Here are some easy ideas that will make your winter decorating simpler, less expensive but still seasonal and fun.
• Your color palette for winter and Christmas decorating doesn’t have to be the traditional red and green. Try silver and frosty blue; a jewel-toned palette with bright purple, blue, green and pink; copper, silver and pearl; or all icy winter white.
• Swap out your fall-inspired pillows for some holiday or winter-themed ones in richly colored fabrics that complement your Christmas color palette.
• Change out the candy corn in your hurricane vases with red and white peppermints, red and green jellybeans or another brightly colored and fun shaped Christmas candy. Fresh cranberries work in hurricanes and cylinders and can be used for filler in flower vases.
• For a Christmas or winter mantle vignette, use the same various sizes of ivory candles used in your fall mantel scape, but fill in with fragrant pine boughs, intertwined with white lights and silver ornaments and a few bright pepper berries.
• Fill a bowl or cylinder vase with pretty colored ornaments for an easy centerpiece. Choose ornaments of similar color or shape for maximum impact. Drape strings of beads and add some candles for an elegant centerpiece. A battery powered string of lights can be intertwined in the vase for more sparkle.
• Use your imagination for containers. Place a handful of candy canes tied with a pretty ribbon in a vase or your antique silver pieces. There’s probably a pretty bowl or vase that is not used much that would look beautiful filled with Christmas candy, small pine cones or brightly colored ornaments.
• Hang a few pretty ornaments on ribbons on your chandelier.
• For a fragrant centerpiece, run a pine garland down the center of your table filled in with pinecones and a few sparkly ornaments and tea candles.
• Tie a pretty Christmas ribbon around your lampshades.
• Brighten up your front porch with pots of cyclamen and baskets of pinecones. A greenery wreath with a pretty bow completes your welcome for your holiday guests. And they smell good, too!
Holiday decorating can be as simple or elaborate as you like. Pick a palette and stick with it for a cohesive look. Use your imagination and have fun.
If you need help getting your home ready for the holidays, give a professional decorator a call.
Pamela Ryalls-Boyd is an interior decorator who lives in Morgan Hill. She is a Decorating Den Interiors business owner. Reach Pamela at (408) 776-1412 or

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