Holiday Decorating with Wilton Woman’s Club

I inherited my decorating bug from my mother, our house was always decorated for holidays and she had a knack for coming up with really creative and beautiful ideas. I love the fantasy and fun of holiday decorating and transforming your home every year.

Here’s a link for the video for the Wilton Woman’s Club:

FOYER

Normally I use a seasonal floral arrangements here but came across these cool white and gray pumpkins at Stew Leonards and loved them. Few in the back are on acrylic risers to give the arrangement some height and dimension. If you do not have risers, use an empty glass vase turned upside down. Some greenery or white mums (deer ate mine ugh) and fairly lights completes it. Add some mice, crows or spiders for Halloween.

DINING ROOM

I love creating different tables capes and collect different types of placemats, napkins, china. While we are not entertaining in 2020 (thanks covid), it is fun to do this with your family, to set up a special dinner for them, to make a memory. We couldn’t go trick or treating with our friends or go to parties like we normally would but we sure can have a really fun dinner! Both my daughters have been enthusiastically coming up with menu ideas: Melanie wants to make deviled eggs as an app and Olivia found a pasta recipe with tomato sauce and meatballs that look like eyeballs! I can’t wait.

Centerpiece is made of magnolia branches, I believe Earth Garden in Wilton has them, protea flowers (use any dark blooms) and pheasant feathers (ordered these from Etsy). Little dark pumpkins, pomegranates from Stews/Stop&Shop.

Placemats are from Open House Gift Shop: www.openhousegiftshop.com.Chargers: Michaels; plates with gold trim not available but similar ones available at Kohl’s, Wayfair, etc.; napkins and Halloween crackers from William Sonoma, tortoise shell napkins rings vintage, check Ebay or Etsy or here, crystal glasses Ralph Lauren, tabletop gargoyles similar here, silver candleholders similar on sale here, spider rings here.

FALL GARLAND

Measure first, then purchase and buy more than you think you need no matter what size fireplace you have. This type of garland only works when you mass it together and don’t forget lights (gold, orange, yellow), floral wire, and common hooks (stronger the better).

Garlands: here, here and here, different color scheme but if you like black and white this is so cute, great price on this 2 pack here. Velvet pumpkins and gold pears and apples from Pottery Barn, individual picks, stems and bush pick from Michaels here. Pheasant feathers from Ebay.

CHRISTMAS GARLAND

If you do not want to decide/do a theme for your Christmas decor, I still suggest that you decide on a color scheme such as green and orange, or green and red, or maroon, gold and purple – endless options, and then use those colors throughout the house. Keep to the same style also, rustic Americana w logs and plaid doesn’t go with glam silver ornaments and shiny silver. Ornaments are really inexpensive these days and you use ribbon in your decor to add some color and texture. I prefer wired ribbon as it handles better.

I wanted to do something different this year so I decided on assembling an ornament garland. I ran out of ornaments pretty quickly, for something like this you want to use at least 400 ornaments (SHATTERPROOF) and get them in different sizes from 3″ to 6″. I tucked in some dark green ribbon to tone it down. There’s an excellent tutorial here: Sullivan Owen.

I think this is going to get removed to decorate the evergreens by the front door. But it was something different, girls loved it, I learned some new tricks and I do think it will look stunning outside. You will make mistakes, some things will break, and you will change things around. Sometimes the next day! Keep the scale and proportion in mind and decide well before Christmas what you are going to do and then buy what you need. This is not the type of thing to tackle a day after Thanksgiving, you will get discouraged and stressed out, Planning ahead makes all the difference! For some more inspiration, here’s a post on our holiday decor from last year: My Christmas Home Tour 2019.