Holiday Decorating: All-a-sparkle

I cannot tell you how exciting it is for me to see all of these inspiring people in one place for Creative Inspiration Week! Of course, there are many more out there who are my friends and ever bit as talented and inspiring too, I just had to limit myself to a few this week. A few? Well, OK, we are cramming people in so I do hope you will scroll back a bit and catch up with my rapid firing postings. You don’t want to miss anything! Did you see Charlotte Lyons in the previous post? I had to quickly move on to the next topic, so I hope you’ll take time to go back for a visit and leave her a thank you for the craft idea.

My next guest is another blogger I have actually met in person! She and I had some great coffee and treats at a local coffee shop a couple of weeks ago. She was SO nice, and so generous in sharing her ideas and helpful advice on blogging and business and such. I really felt inspired after meeting with her, she is a smart lady! Do you see a pattern here? I am drawn to successful, but down-to-earth, kind people! Kind people are the best. And I am pleased to introduce you to another of those inspirational folks. Pam writes a great design blog called Housemartin. She is an amazing floral designer and is opening a home, garden & lifestyle shop this next Spring in Portland called Ink & Peat. Hooray for me, I can visit it! She has some great natural holiday decorating ideas for us that I really love, so sit back and soak in the ideas! Thanks Pam!

Welcome to all the readers at The Inspired Room and thanks to Melissa for including me!

I really had fun with the Holiday decorations this year. I tend to get a bit more romantic for Holiday decor. I seem to need a little sparkle – maybe because it gets dark at 4pm? We decided not to get a tree so I just came up with other ideas to build some vignettes in our home.

Here is the mantelpiece over our fireplace. It’s a sparkly wonderland of different textures. First I set the palette of aqua and silver. I worked with evergreen branches as a base and nested simple white lights inside. It gives the house a Holiday smell without having a whole tree. On top of the mirror is a snowflake garland from Wendy Addison (a true glitter guru) for Season’s of Cannon Falls.

Off on either end you can see white feather trees that I bought locally but you can get them here.

Of course, the star of the winter wonderland show was my new-found deery friend – a vintage cement garden ornament. He even dons a vintage turquoise velvet bow for the occasion.

and to add some shine and color, I used large apothecary jars filled with vintage ornaments in my color story. These were from West Elm several years ago but you can get similar ones here. This really would work with any color story – red and gold, green and gold, silver and pink for those of you with non-objecting beau’s.

and here I have more of a footed fishbowl container filled with ornaments.

And now onto the dining room vignette… here I brought in more of sense of nature. It is a large tableau created from many elements. In the center is the “tree”. I used 8 very tall mossy branches in a vintage tarnished metal urn. The urn adds some charm and drama.

the palette is shades of green, brown, pale aqua, gold and silver. The ornaments are a combination of vintage balls as well as new acorn and pinecone ornaments from Martha Stewart for Macy’s (my sis and I kind of went nuts in there the day after Thanksgiving trying to round up our loot before the kiddies came to see Santa after the parade).

Here is a closeup of how this was constructed. The branches were all set deep into the container and decorative rocks were piled around the branches to anchor them. Then reindeer moss was added to the top of the container for color and mood.

and down below the “tree” was more evergreen branches — these had brown berries which added texture. I also kept my Blue Hubbard squash as I felt they still fit the scene. People tend the throw pumpkins away the minute Halloween is over but I enjoy keeping them as long as possible. I have found the green and white varieties far outlast the orange and I keep them for Holiday decor. I moved the white ones to my porch!

And here is a vignette at either side of the tree. I used vintage column pedestals and built on top. I then added an apothecary jar filled with moss. I poked into it these clusters of wired glitter ferns (bought locally but available through Michael’s) and added silver balls to create a vignette. Behind these are bold silver stars (again by Wendy Addison)

and a final little vignette on a side table…a mini wonderland with a vintage white deer, a sparkling tree, and acorns. It is all set atop a vintage silver bowl filled with live moss.

Cheers and thanks for coming to see it all!

All photos and decoration descriptions are copyright of Pam @ Housemartin blog. Used by permission.

Next, CLICK A FANCIFUL CRAFT! Don’t miss other posts in this Creative Inspiration Week series: click here for the beginning!

Tagged as: Creative Inspiration Week, holiday decorating, Ink & Peat