23 Dec Holiday Interior Design, Decorating for Christmas

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  Our Operations Manager, Maria, has decorated her home for Christmas.   In this post, she shares her ideas for cozy holiday decor:

“This year I was feeling extra festive but also wanted to simplify. Decorating was a one day set up unlike years past where it’s taken at least a week.  Also, my children are 5 and 7, so anything new décor had to be kid-friendly.  Typically, we get one big Christmas tree and one little table top tree for the kids’ ornaments.   But over time, the kids have amassed a huge amount of ornaments, so this year we upgraded to two nice sized trees.  The tree in our parlor has a sophisticated theme, and the one in the family room is more festive and features all the kids’ ornaments.

I really love how Christmas décor really cozies up our front room.   This is the view from the stairs, which my children descend with excitement to spy what’s been left for them.

For the tree, I aimed for a crystal and tulle look for the tree in the parlor.  You can never have too much tulle or crystal, but for this year, I was just as to keep it simple and will add on to it next year.  There are very few actual ornaments on this tree.   The ones that are there are very special ornaments that Andrew and I have collected over the last few years.

For our fireplace, I was inspired by the Anthropologie catalog.  I saw this image featuring fairy lights in the fireplace and I loved it. You can check out similar lights here.   Since we don’t use this fireplace we stuffed it full of wood and then added the lights.  What’s fun about these lights is they fade in and out to add some interest.

My favorite part of this room is the pillows on the couch.  I found the Merry pillow at Home Goods early in the season and paired it with other little elements I’ve had for years.  This is a great example of how I mixed fun, kid friendly into my Christmas décor this year.

Here are some of my other favorite holiday elements around my home:

As we cut bottom branches off our trees this year I stuck the greenery in vases throughout the first floor, including the kitchen.

The huge hit among the whole family are the mermaid sequin pillow covers I ordered to make the living room festive.  My husband, my kids, and I all love playing with these pillows; its oddly relaxing to rub the sequins one way and then the other.  The pillow covers were also very inexpensive and I found them on Amazon.

Every year, it seems I change up how we display our holiday cards.  This year, while browsing the dollar area at Target, I discovered a very simple yarn card tree.  It was easy to hang, with the addition of some mini clear adhesive hooks I purchased, and I love the result. The cards really ended up resembling a tree and my children love looking at all the photos since they are right at eye level.

In addition to the two full-sized trees, I also made a choice to bring more live plants into the house this year:  tucked in many windows are poinsettias.  And one in particular shines bright on a sequined gold runner.  A pretty combo!

The dining room table was easy and will transition to a winter time look I can keep out long after the holidays.  I have a few sets of battery operated fairy lights and added them to the trees on the table for some additional sparkle (sparkle was a theme here… fairy lights, sequins…. I had a thing for both this year!).”

Hope you all found some inspiration in my holiday décor – perhaps you can keep an eye out for some bargains as they hit the clearance racks next week at the stores. From my home to yours, and from all of us at Down2Earth Interior Design, wishing you very happy holidays! Cheers, Maria