Holiday Decorating

This past weekend my husband and I decorated our apartment for the holidays. Having both grown up in households where Christmas decorations were very colorful, mismatched, and sometimes kitschy (sorry, mom and dad) when we started collecting our bits and bobs six years ago we wanted them to be chic, streamlined and modern. We use only white lights, and silver and glass (clear and frosted) for ornaments. With these few guidelines our Christmas decor always matches wherever we live.

This is kind of embarrassing, but when it's time to throw out the Christmas tree, I always get very upset. (Complete with tears for days...seriously) But I would never get an artificial tree because I believe they are actually worse for the environment that cutting down a real tree. Oh, all that PVC that will never biodegrade! So this year we thought of a compromise that instead of a full-grown 10+ year old tree we'd get a younger, much smaller tree. This comes with two added bonuses: kitties will not climb it and it's super easy to water. So we went down to the lot and picked out this cute little 3' tall tree. Mind you, we live in the suburbs where people have BIG houses and want BIG trees to go in them so it must be rare to have residents of Lafayette buying a baby tree!

Anyway, after getting it into the tree stand, we propped it up an a large square basket with a lid (this basket holds all my husband's technology clutter) and moved it into the corner of our place that faces the windows. Our poor kitties have lost their corner view for a month, but they don't seem too upset about it. With the tree skirt you can barely see the basket below and I like the way it sort of hangs down rather than flat on the ground.  

We lined the two windows with more white lights and strung long strands of mirrored garland hanging down. We hung leftover snowflake ornaments from the garland giving the impression of floating glittery snowflakes hanging in the window.

On the picture rail behind the sofa, we hung another couple of strands of mirror garland. And on our coffee table I filled a decorative red bowl with sliver glittery pine cones bringing even more sparkle into the room.

In the dining room, I took a small square vessel and added the rest of our leftover ornaments for a simple everyday centerpiece. Do those place mats look familiar? I used them for Thanksgiving, too.

The result is clean, understated Christmas decorating. Other than the tree, we reuse our decor every year resulting in less waste during a notoriously wasteful time of year. And having the same items takes the guess work out of decorating. The way I see it, the holidays are stressful and complicated enough, why not keep your home holiday decor as simple as possible?