Metallic Table Toppers
Photo: Seth Smoot
Decorating for the holidays doesn't have to be stressful or difficult to be beautiful. Here, we offer simple yet elegant ideas that you can use to decorate your home for Christmas.
Give your holiday table a little shimmer with these inexpensive upgrades.
With just two wreaths and some satin ribbon, you can make this spectacular decoration in a few easy steps.
Wintry branches are beautiful on their own and easy to arrange in a large vase or vessel, but they are even more festive when you decorate them with cards you receive from friends and loved ones.
Let the garden inspire your holiday decorating: Display ornaments under a garden cloche -- a bell-shaped glass cover that functions as a miniature greenhouse for outdoor plants (you can buy them at garden-supply stores). Filled with sparkly trimmings, each one will add radiance to any tabletop.
To fill, turn a cloche upside down and balance it inside a teacup. Place ornaments, then invert a plate over the open end. Carefully turn cloche and plate right side up, and display.
Sometimes called the kissing ball, mistletoe not only decorates your home for the holidays, it also encourages guests to show a little love.
With the help of these candle and flower centerpieces, the whole table will shine. For each one, use candle wax to attach a small floral frog to the center of a shallow bowl. Push a taper into the floral frog to secure. Pour water into the bowl. Clip amaryllis blooms (or other large flowers) from their stems, and arrange them in the bowl around the candle.
Pinecones and evergreens belong together, especially in holiday garlands. Here, we've shaped them into rosettes for a decoration that stands out but is easy to make.
This project may look difficult and time-consuming, but we promise it's not. The trick is having enough snow and a few different styles of Bundt pans.
By simply gathering pinecones from outdoors and adding a few embellishments, you can decorate your entire tree, a garland, or a wreath.
This sweet decoration is easy enough for little hands to make (as long as they don't end up eating all of the candy first). Just take any candy that you can pierce and string it onto waxed twine or dental floss.
Use adhesive hooks to hang lights in a myriad of holiday shapes. Here, we created a Christmas tree, the perfect wintry decoration for your child's bedroom.
This simple arrangement will fill your home with the aroma of a winter walk in the woods. Pick a branch with interesting, sculptural lines and lots of fresh needles, and collect a few handfuls of pinecones to use as a frog to steady the branch.
When you include woody plants like this in arrangements, cut the end that will be submerged with pruning shears; this allows it to absorb water more easily. Use a widemouthed glass vase so the pinecones are visible; fill with water, and set the branch firmly among the cones.
Using our template, this project is as easy as can be. Just print, punch, and adhere to a glass hurricane for a striking decoration.
Pile jewel-like ornaments on top of an urn for a festive, easy holiday decoration.
The best material for stringing cranberry or popcorn garlands is inside your medicine cabinet. Waxed floss is strong and slick, so cranberries and popcorn will slide on easily. Knot one end of a piece of floss and thread a needle onto the other; just pierce through items and slip them on.
With just four materials and two easy steps, you can make one -- or more -- of these beautiful, wintry wreaths to hang indoors or outside.
Here, we offer an easy, decorative way to catch dripping candle wax, fitting for the holidays and taking only a few minutes to make.
Fragrant and beautiful, these citrus pomanders are easy to make -- you can put together a few or many to set out as a centerpiece on your holiday table.
Drape this delicate garland over your mantel, banister, or mirror this holiday season and enjoy this magical -- and long-lasting -- holiday swag well into the new year.
With a few bags of cotton balls, you can blanket a tree with the softest snow.
Thread a needle with fifteen inches of fishing line and sew through two or three cotton balls, leaving gaps between (dab white glue next to each so it won't slide); make loop for hanging. Use a sieve to add a dusting of cornstarch over the branches; cut batting for a skirt.
Create a unique vessel like this birch vase to arrange your winter floral arrangements. All you need is some birch bark, scissors, twine, and a vase.
Unlike Narnia, where it's always winter and Christmas never comes, this land of ice and snow welcomes festivities (soundtrack: Louis Armstrong's "Cool Yule"). A combination of vintage and contemporary vessels holds white spider mums as well as seeded eucalyptus (available at florists) and blue Atlas cedar branches lightly frosted with silver floral spray paint. For a change of scene, line up containers across a mantel, along a windowsill, or down the middle of a table.
Create an idealized winter wonderland indoors using snowflake-like bouquet holders and a string of holiday lights. To make one of these garlands, slide a store-bought paper bouquet holder over each bulb. Hang the "snowflakes" inside a doorway or a window, and then plug in the lights.
A lovely, homemade decoration can be as easy as adorning light fixtures you already have in your home with magnolia leaves.
Because this project only takes a few materials to make, any child 6 years or older can create one with great success -- or even a dozen to give as holiday gifts.
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