I am so excited to share our home dressed to the 9's this Christmas! Disregard the construction next door! As many of you know, this is our first home, so we were super excited to deck it out for Christmas!
I wanted to create a classic, romantic, whimsically enchanting wonderland and I think we did just that! It was so much fun scheming and dreaming about what to do with our holiday décor for our first Christmas in our home. However, this is that time of year when the pressure seems to get higher and things that should be exciting can seem to get quite overwhelming.
My best advice to you all who feel me out there, would be to take a breath, keep things in perspective, and do what you love! Not what everyone else says you should do to decorate. You loose the fun in it when you decorate to live up to social media or other peoples standards. This year, I literally bought our tree when it went on sale early November, and decided to take my time with all the decorating to truly get the most out of everything. This allowed me to enjoy it more, and take my time with it all. Plus I get to enjoy my hard work and money spent longer than just four weeks.
So I'm a classic girl. I've always loved southern style homes with big front porches, columns, red doors and black shutters. Being our home resembles a classic home, I wanted to keep it very classic and enchanting, while adding some whimsical charm, as that totally goes a long with our families personality.
Here's how I achieved the look. Let's start with lights and garland. I went for simple white lights (The C-9 size in warm white from Ace Hardware), to give our house a sparkly glow. I ordered two battery operated, on timer, strands of warm white pre-lit garland to wrap around our entry stairway. I also ordered the best, least expensive, snow flocking spray can on amazon that I could find to lightly flock the garland (I didn't want it to be too white to blend in with the house). I'm really happy with how it turned out. Our neighbor taught us how to use fishing line to tie around the garland, which invisibly secured it to the railing. This gave us a nice frame to play with leading up to the front door. I also added red bows onto the Garland with the same velvet red ribbon I used on our front door urns and wreaths, from Grandin Road (The ribbon is a splurge but such high quality and doesn't bleed, so wellll worth it!). Plus it is luxurious Velvet, I mean come on!
Next, on the stairs, the whimsical decor touches. I already had bought these lanterns on sale from pier 1, so I just took the candles out that I had in them for Fall, and filled each lantern with shatter proof red, white and green ornaments, which I bought one carton of on sale for $10 at Hobby Lobby! All their Christmas stuff is 50% off...such a steal! I purchased these "rice lights" on a silver wire from target, that are also battery operated on a timer, and put one strand in each lantern woven between the colorful ornaments to light them up at night. I found the small white flocked tree's on a bargain at Homegoods, which I used to create texture, contrast, and depth, staggered in between the black lanterns filled with colorful ornaments on the stairs. I finished the trees off with red bows, and the lantern hook with this harlequin print black and white ribbon (Purchased from Grandin Road), to tie in my Zoey front door Urns.
Let's talk Planter Details with DIY Floral Arrangements. If you've seen my house before, you've seen my Zoey Urns at the front door, and black Nantucket planters, year round on my front porch. I just change out whats inside them with faux florals for each season. This saves me money each year as I store what I use each season in my garage. I created a whimsical winter wonderland with these planters by tying red ribbon around the bases of the Zoey urns, and filling the black planters with Snow flocked Pine, Poinsettias, Dahlias, Pine Cone and Faux Candy Cane Treats. I found this all at Hobby Lobby, again 50% off!
And for the wreaths....quite possibly my favorite part. I've always dreamed of owning a white house with a red door, and hanging those super classic, festive Christmas wreaths on each window. Well dreams really do come true (just add snow please Santa!)! It feels like the American dream for sure, and I am sooo thankful for our beautiful home we worked so hard on! I found these 24" wreaths at Michaels for $6.99 a wreath with, I believe a 25% discount. I tied the velvet red Grandin Road Ribbon in a classic bow on each one.
Here's how to hang the wreaths to make them appear floating in the middle of the window. Go to Home Depot or Lowe's and buy the command strip for outdoor windows (click here to see), follow the directions, and make sure to let them dry for an hour before hanging the wreath. They are water and weather resistant and have worked like a charm for us this year. I bought the large size in clear. Our front door wreath was a slight splurge from Grandin Road, Linked Here for you. It's pre-lit and also on a timer (thank God for timers these days!).
Final touches include, poinsettias in the front yard, matching harlequin bows on the top of our two front yard trees, snowflake pillows I found at homegoods, an adorable snowman rug (keeping that whimsical charm up), and last but not least a red, white and green tier stack of faux presents by the front door, finished off with the same harlequin ribbon and a glam crystal mistletoe! Tip: put unused can items or a small bag of flour in boxes you've saved for the faux presents so they are weighted!
Walaa, so there you have it! Our Whimsically Enchanting Winter Wonderland. A lot of work but I love doing it. It's like a creative outlet for me and It's so worth it to see the joy it brings to so many people's faces! Please feel free to share your feedback or ask questions in the comments below! Love hearing from you guys! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
PS- I Linked some of the items and similar items for you on-line shoppers, below here. :)
