Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Vintage Christmas cards are great fun to share online. Click here for more vintage imagery. Click here for our favorite creative Christmas trees.

Easy Peasy Holiday Decorations

These are frantic days at 973, as Christmas is less than 4 days away, and I am scrambling to finish putting on the holiday touches.

Still to be done: (admittedly last-minute) green, minimalist decorations


I consider this the antithesis of the NYT article in last week's Home" section, "Even the Tree Has a Stylist." If you missed the article and you are the type who can manage your own holiday decorations, don't fret. Consider yourself fortunate enough to have the creativity, vision and leadership to do what some others seeking to find beauty and comfort at home at Christmas must pay dearly for.

Images for inspiration: plain glass ornaments filled with simple compositions, from Country Living, burlap (or other recycled household textile) makes a charmingly provincial stocking, from Better Homes & Gardens.

Catching Up in Time for Christmas

After a series of real world distractions, it's nice to be back at 973. There is much to do this week and I need all the holiday short-cuts I can get!

Here's the minimalist to do list:
Trim the tree - check, Hang wreath on door - check, Send holiday cards - check, Holiday music on ipod - check, Party foods on hand for surprise guests - check, Party drinks - check, Gifts for family & friends - not finished yet! Easy decorations - to be done!

Easy decoration idea/inspiration #1: Take a white bowl and fill it with pretty red ornaments. Ta Da! This would be pretty with any monochromatic assortment of ornaments. Having something with a little white on it helps visually connect the bowl with its contents.

More to come, very soon!

The Twelfth Night

With the twelve days of Christmas concluded, I am finding new excuses to leave the tree decorated and indoors a little while longer. Perhaps it's the cozy scene it evokes in the evening with the lights delicately illuminating the ornaments? Perhaps it's the cheerful view of the home-made red tree skirt, embellished with smiling reindeer and sequined trees? Or perhaps it's the joy of having found our own Charlie Brown tree this year.

The sweet holiday scene above is from an old Johnson Brothers dish I keep on my desk. Most of the year, it's filled with clips and other important fasteners in various colors and sizes. But in December, in anticipation of the holiday decorating, I clear out the dish and enjoy the inspiring view it provides.


Next week, I'll think about trees and mulch, for now, the Christmas season continues at this address.

Green Christmas Trees

Again this year we struggled with the concept of a green Christmas Tree and what it should be. As much fun as it sounds to find a vintage white or aluminum tree that we can save and make our own - it's just not happening in time this year. We couldn't find that old artificial tree looking for a good home. But we did enjoy the hunt. Instead of a tree, we happened upon some fabulous retro vintage ornaments and dazzling decorations long forgotten and still quite fabulous. But I digress.

We toyed with a living tree, root ball intact, but it seemed harsh to subject it to our indoor climate, then expect it to adapt again to a garden and thrive after all that excitement.

A tree of recycled paper seems environmentally thoughtful. And some may argue a tree of green bottles is sort of responsible, too.


We're still most enchanted with the trees we featured here last year and think they offer the eco-conscious style and classic beauty we admire and respect in a green holiday tree.

Make Your Own Advent Calendar

Countdown to Christmas with a personalized Advent Calendar. Here are a few beautiful ideas to get you started. Carrying on with our matchbox theme - start with 24 matchboxes, cover in holiday patterns, number the ends in different styles and glue them together somewhat erratically, then fill with tiny surprises.



Collect two dozen envelopes in holiday colors, apply gold self-adhesive numbers, tuck in little notes of holiday memories and string on a bulletin board or across a window.



Wrap small boxes of chocolates or sweets in holiday paper, add bows and embellish with round numbered tags to display on a tiered dessert stand.



Collect messages of hope from family and friends and wrap in ribbons with small numbered tags and then pin onto a long wide ribbon.



Gather baby socks in bold patterns and number with stickers or iron-on patches to hang in a swag with mini clothes pins and stuff with tiny treats.



Recycle old holiday card images to fill the windows on the charming house template from here.

The top four images are from BHG.com, the bottom two images are from marthastewart.com.

Matchbox Packaging Treats

Maybe it's my attraction to diminutive things and maybe it's the economy, or what my grandmother referred to as living through the Depression, but matchboxes offer so many possibilities. Sure, they are handy for lighting candles or starting a stubborn pilot. They are also cute little containers just waiting to be upcycled and restarted.

Here are a few examples to inspire your own little matchbox world.



Martha shows how to create a mini advent calendar from 24 matchboxes decorated on both ends. As each numbered box is removed and reinserted backwards, a holiday tree is revealed.

A Tiny Traveling Doll's House is thoughtfully refurbished inside and out at Coloured Buttons.

Top: B is for Baby, a lovely book of gifts to make for new ones, shares this sweet announcement idea in a matchbox via Craft Stylish.

A Green Christmas Tree

It's difficult to think about Christmas without the Tree. The lights, the ornaments, the tree skirt, the gifts neatly wrapped and stashed beneath all bring us joy. Whether you are organized enough to get your tree the weekend after Thanksgiving or too busy until the week before Christmas, it's a ritual with warm and happy memories.

In spite of those joyful emotions it is increasingly difficult, maybe Scrooge-like, not to consider what a greener kind of Christmas tree would be. Greener might mean a live tree transported with its roots intact or a pesticide-free tree. Greener might mean strung with solar powered LED lights or being reduced to mulch for park trails.

Perhaps you are even more inventive in your approach to the New Green Tree? Suppose you want to use the 3 Rs and do it with style. Here are some artistic inspirations above and below that reduce, re-use, and recycle!

Paul Deakin, a student at the University of Southampton in England, created this tree with 1,050 beer bottles.

The ladder tree via Apartment Therapy via MetaFilter via MeCha.

More details on the 2-D Christmas tree appear in the The Style Files, a daily blog by Danielle de Lange, based in the Netherlands.