Our 2022 holiday decor + a how-to
Although I enjoy seeing the ways my friends who are serious, full-time decor bloggers change up their trees from year to year, mine stays basically the same with some small changes to the details here and there. Enough ribbon and ornaments for a nine-foot tree are a considerable expense on top of the holidays in general. Plus, I hate to either throw away items or have to find a spot in the basement for things I might not use again.
For the formal trees, I use the room’s color palette as a guide. Our main tree is a nine footer in the living room. We also have a six-foot tree in the dining room and a four-foot tree in the sun parlor. I love the sophisticated and elegant ring of ‘sun parlor’ as opposed to ‘messy room with the TV and craft supplies.’
For the main tree, I start with tartan ribbon in traditional burgundy and green. The room’s design incorporates a lot of Christmas colors year round, so it’s easy to adapt for the holidays. We unfortunately lost a lot of holiday decorations due to a flood in our old house. When we moved to our current home in 2016, I had to replace quite a few things, plus we now have a much larger space to decorate. All this to say, I actually got a lot of the elements on the main tree at The Dollar Tree! All of the gold ornaments, berries, pinecones, and poinsettia flowers were purchased there, and you really can’t tell. We also use ornaments that have been given to us as gifts and happen to match the color scheme, the large snowflake ornaments that are leftover favors from our wedding, and a set of Waterford ornaments I got during undergrad. My mom made our tree skirt, as well as the large wreath pillow in this room.
Our stockings are the Pottery Barn Classic Velvet Cuff Stockings. This year, we added a stocking for the Pink Kitties, which are beloved stuffed animals and not real pets. They certainly feel like members of the family, though! The humans have the medium-size stockings, and the kitties have the mini version. These stockings (even the mini size) are all quite large.
On the picture window, I use a wreath made with Margaret’s handprints. The mantel gets a magnolia garland, red candles, a holiday centerpiece in a crystal bowl we got for our wedding, and a few smaller candle holders. The dream is to grow amaryllis bulbs for the mantel and paperwhites for the dining room, but I usually miss the window of opportunity in November. The Aldi poinsettias will have to do.
In the dining room, quite a few of the decorations are leftover from our wedding! We were married in December 2014, and our wedding colors were navy and silver. This ended up working very well with our eventual decor. As I mentioned in my Thanksgiving tablescape post, I love the combination of blue and orange. I used clementines for Christmas 2019 and brought them back this year. Here’s how I dry them:
Heat oven to 300F. Line several baking sheets with parchment. Slice oranges ¼ inch thick and lay on parchment leaving about a half inch of space. The oranges will take a few hours to dry - this is heavily dependent on the oranges and the humidity level on the day you dry them. Keep a close eye and rotate the baking sheets if necessary. You can also turn the heat down in the oven if they’re getting too crispy. I popped out for a few errands on the day I dried my oranges and turned the oven down to 250 while I was gone. (Someone else was home; don’t leave your oven unattended!!!) A small handful of slices burned - likely cut too thin - but otherwise, this method worked very well.
On the garland, I simply placed the oranges in a row that follows the line of the garland. To hang them on the tree, I threaded a large needle through the top of each slice. The tree also has origami birds I made several years ago, some ornaments from my grandmother, and navy ribbon. The tree skirt is actually a vintage fox coat my grandmother didn’t want anymore. I feel slightly guilty using it as a tree skirt, but it’s too big for me to wear and not worth selling on eBay. It makes a lovely tree skirt, and my grandmother has never noticed.
In the messy craft sun parlor is the tree I let Margaret decorate. All of the ornaments are ones that have been given to us as gifts or are old ones I remember from childhood. It’s the least prepossessing tree in the house, but it’s the most fun to decorate. This year, she asked about each ornament as we decorated, and I really enjoyed telling her where everything came from. One of them says ‘Christmas 1983,’ which predates everyone in our house!
Do you keep your decor the same each year or do you change it up?