Deck the halls in a timeless way with a seasonal flair that will never go out of style. We've got stunning ways to add decorative holiday touches to (almost!) every room in the house. Photo By: Flynnside Out Productions If the architecture of your room is symmetrical, hang the same wreath in all of your windows at the same height. You can use the wreaths as jumping-off points for spacing out the rest of your seasonal elements. No matter what your year-round color scheme may be, a few touches of red can instantly transform any space into a holiday masterpiece. In this formal living room, a few red accents added to the blue and gray palette jazz up this cozy spot for Christmas. Get holiday color inspiration. Garland is one of the most iconic elements for adding holiday style to your home, but you can get creative with unexpected materials in place of a traditional garland. In this formal living room, the wreaths are wrapped in red, black and white cotton ribbon to add a classic yet masculine touch with a pop of red. 

As a bonus, any ribbon that isn't cut can be used for gift wrap. Traditional rooms are best decorated with layers, and the key to a well-layered holiday home is to fill rooms with a mix of interesting textures. The lush greenery of the wreaths contrasts perfectly with the nubby, woven fibers of the throw pillows while the merlot-toned flowers introduce new shades of red into the space.handmade wooden christmas ornaments for sale When you're installing Christmas decor, add elements that range in height; best paint colors for exteriorthis will keep the room balanced. christmas decorations for center table

This family room's range in heights starts with a pair of wreaths flanking the fireplace, then moves down to the mantel decor and a few red accessories added to the built-ins and coffee table. Throw pillows, a vintage tricycle and floor cushions complete the look.decorating my home for the holidays If you're serving more formal meals this holiday season, keep your dining room classicly styled. best exterior home design softwareUsing the decor of adjacent rooms as a guide, keep the color scheme consistent. cheap decor diy ideasThen amp up the elegance around the dining table to add ambiance while you entertain. Create a sparkling holiday table. Although traditional Christmas colors are excellent for infusing seasonal flair into a space quickly, they can often be overwhelming on a tablescape.

Instead of color, try a metallic approach by constructing a table made of silver and gold. Make a lace doily table runner. The holidays are special, so why not break out the good servingware to make your guests feel special? An excellent way to ensure the colors of your formal dinnerware blend seamlessly with your tablescape is to surround the plates and bowls with metallic touches. Since silver and gold are neutral, they're certain to coordinate with almost any color. Over the years, it's likely you'll inherit seasonal items or family heirlooms. Put them on display as a charming collection by grouping them together on your dining room sideboard. This will honor family tradition and also spark conversation among party guests. Create a miniature paper tree village in the dining room or entryway. These are easy to make using card stock, wooden dowels and glue. Once complete, simply place inside glass cloches for a more permanent display. Put all of your mismatched holiday heirlooms to use by creating charming holiday vignettes around your home.

Group old serving dishes, candlesticks, vases or boxes together with tabletop trees and holiday figures. Lure guests into the dining room by lighting scented candles in seasonal fragrances like cinnamon or candy cane. One spot in the house that's often neglected when decorating for the holidays is the kitchen. Why not add just a few Christmas touches to make it look and feel more welcoming? Hang the same wreaths used in other rooms on the kitchen windows to keep the look cohesive. Add red dish towels, red napkins and stock your cookie jars with treats for guests to take the festive feel a step further. Bring a seasonal touch to cut floral arrangements by mixing berries in with flowers. Although red roses are readily available year round, this grouping feels tailored for the holidays thanks to the addition of the berries. Discover 10 winter flower arrangements.Christmas Orange DecorationsXmas Decorations IdeasMartha Stewart Christmas DecorationsOrange OrnamentsDecorations GoogleHomemade DecorationsHome Decor IdeasChristmas PomanderChristmas CraftsForwardClove-studded Oranges with pretty ribbon to hang them from.... the aroma is amazing and SO pretty!

Traditional Home-Made Ornaments from Family Christmas Online� Although German-speaking immigrants probably brought the Christmas tree tradition to North America in the seventeenth century, Christmas trees didn't become "mainstream" among most English-speaking Americans until the mid-nineteenth century. In those days, trees hardly had any decorations, and what they had tended to be home-made or borrowed from other uses. They did have special little candleholders for the trees (something most people don't use today - lots of fires resulted from real candles on real trees.) But other than that, folks mostly used ribbons or whatever they had on hand to decorate the trees. In the late 1800s, it became more common to add "store-bought" blown glass balls that had been made by European craftsmen. But even families who could afford such things supplemented them with home-made ornaments and garland. This article is about some of the home-made, borrowed, adapted, or "found" materials folks have used over the years on their Christmas trees.

Parts of it may give you ideas, and parts of it fall under the category of "don't try this at home." By far the vast majority of home-made Christmas-tree ornaments in 19th-century American homes were made from paper. Some, like paper snowflakes and paper chains, have continued in use until this day. Others have been replaced by "store-bought" ornaments or ornaments made from other materials. As an example, the 1907 article from a children's magazine shown in the photo to the right gave instructions for making the tree-topper and other kinds of ornaments that most folks would not bother to make for themselves these days. Yet in 1907, many families were making these sorts of decorations themselves. Our Christmas Craft Ideas Page has links to paper ornaments crafts, including free, downloadable kid-friendly patterns and instructions for making classy home-made paper ornaments. It also provides several free downloadable "wapping paper" patterns you can print on your color printer and use for crafts.

In families with a tradition of crocheting doilies, there was no reason not to make some that looked like snowflakes and starch them to go on the Christmas tree. I hope to have instructions for this sort of thing in English one of these days. (Most crochet instructions seem to consist of phrases like "24ch, slst into 10th ch from hook.") writer, Amy Solovay has provided an article on making a simple crochet snowflake here, with links to the individual stitches that the project uses. Several more advanced snowflake patterns are provided on thisAustralian Women's Weekly article. If you don't know how to crochet all, Sandi Marshall has some very helpful tutorials for absolute beginners, starting with her How to Make a Crochet Starting Chain article. If those pages should be taken down, simply google "crocheted snowflakes," and you'll get about forty thousand entries, most of which are links to other sites, but some of those links are productive. In times and places where nearly everything was saved and reused, it was common to repurpose used metal items for Christmas decorations.

Of course they could be thrown away at the end of the season, but it was a good way to stretch your decorating dollar. Two come to mind immediately: Recycled tin cans - of course these were really steel with a tin plating, but they were shiny and solid. One of the most unusual uses I've seen is shown in the photograph at the right - they've been hung on a Christmas tree. My guess is that the color was added by the photo processor, but there are a number of finishes you could use to get the same effect if you so desired. And you could put candy or small gifts in them. Tin can keys - I don't have a photo of this yet, but when my dad was little, many products that came in cans (including Prince Albert tobacco) came with little keys that you would stick in a tab and turn to pull of a strip of metal and open the can. At the end of this process, the key looked like it was wound up in a watch spring. But you could pull the "spring" downward to create a spiral that was shiny on at least the inside.

(Some were shiny on both sides). They were also very sharp, so they were dangerous to children. But that didn't stop many thousands of families from using this decoration before, during and after the Great Depression. And for less affluent families, they were more affordable than the lead foil icycles the rich kids used. Scrap Tinplate - For families who could afford store-bought pies, the thin tinplate pans that they came in could easily be cut into a star shape that could be used as a tree decoration. Of course, when aluminum pie pans replaced tinplate, they were much easier to work with, but by then most people were using "store-bought" ornaments. (We did find a nice modern-day recreation of the traditional tin star tree-toppers. Pine cones, seed pods, grape vines, and many other products found in nature also found their way onto Christmas trees. A few examples are: Pine cones could be painted green and used to represent trees around the nativity or electric train. Or they could be left natural or painted other colors and used as ornaments.

(In fact, between 1905 and 1915, pine cones were so popular that pine-cone-shaped ornaments were among the most popular "store-bought" ornaments in families who could afford them.) Pine cones could be: Tipped or painted with gold or silver paint or glitter and used as ornaments on the tree. Used, painted or not, in wreaths and winter flower arrangements. Painted green (or green with silver or glittered silver tips) and used as trees in "putzes" (scenery set up around a Nativity or elecric train; see our article on Nativities for more information about putzes). Seed pods - a few examples that we remember seeing or using: Seed pods from gum trees look a little like Moravian stars as it is. And the stems for the things form natural hooks more often than not. Seed pods from milkweeds can be painted to look like flowers, or painted other colors just for effect. Grape vines can be soaked in water to regain some flexibility, then shaped into wreaths or wrapped around any other shape for effect.