My Home At Halloween 2007

Halloween is quickly becoming one of my favorite holidays. I don't necessarily decorate with a spooky them - more of a vintage, kooky, gypsy-esk style. Picture Hogwarts at Halloween. I like an abundant, lush, textured look - the more stuff the better!

I absolutely adore my crystal ball and my gargoyles.



Top of Entertainment Center

I dressed up as a Witch Faery this year so I had this book (The Faeries of Spring Cottage by Terri Windling. Doll by Wendy Froud) open as part of the decor.

I line the top of the Mantle with my collection of milk glass and put a battery operated tea light in each one so that when the lights are off they have an eerie glow to them.

Other Misc. Vignettes

Top of Dining Table


Vampire/Twilight Vignette



I hung a bigger bulletin board in my office and added a touch of Halloween to it.

The Thompson Home

The Thompson home is a really good example of a home where they had me buy very little new decor so I simply used what decor they already had, but displayed in different ways than in years past. Since they had a mismatched bunch of ornaments we decided to use those elsewhere and redo the tree simply in gold ribbon and gold ball ornaments. It was very inexpensive and we had enough gold ribbon for two more garlands and a wreath.

I added a few glittery rust-colored berry sticks to coordinate this mantle garland to the wall color.

I placed the nativity on a small end table on the other end of the fireplace. The garland softens this display.


I rummaged through her old ornaments and found a few very Christopher Radko-like, put them on a crystal dish and grouped them with some other pieces already on display for the breakfast nook.

More simple Christmas touches throughout the kitchen area....




Jill, the owner, picked up this tree last year to put in her hotel room for a Christmas away from home. She never thought about decorating the downstairs guest bathroom with it - perfect in pink and white stripes.


Added some random pink ornaments underneath...



A small nutcracker collection on the first ledge up the staircase.



Snowman collection on the main ledge as you go up the stairs.



I used a lighted tree that is meant for the lawn in this window and it looks very nice from the outside at night!



I added a pine cone garland over the truck in the sitting room and some Christmas pillows to the couch.



The Thompson's have a wonderful red dining room which you see as you first walk in the front door.






Jill had tons of silk poinsettias so I stuck them into the pots of real and silk plants that stood in the corners of this room.



Jill loves anything victorian and therefore owns a nice collection of victorian clad dolls which I put together for the table topper. The sleigh is filled with plastic red apples and berries to symbolize Jill's love for teaching. The poinsettia adorned fiber-optic tree coordinated quite well with the poinsettias in the trees on the floor.


Just goes to show you that you may not need hundreds of dollars worth of new Christmas decor to brighten things up, maybe just a different set of eyes!

My Thanksgiving Decor

I don't have as many Thanksgiving decorations as I do for all the other holidays. I bought this big cornacopia this year at Marshall's for $30. The rooster was something that was already in my kitchen and the hurricane was something left over from my Halloween dining table vignette.

I only changed out a few things for my sofa table in my bay window. I added my small cornacopia (bought at the wonderful dollar store!) and filled it with fake gords, brought some pumpkins in from outside and kept some of the fake pumkins up from Halloween. I replaced the black spiderweb table cloth with a small table runner with an August poem on it and took the witch hat off the angel statue - she's holding a bunch of wheat so she's perfect for the Harvest feel.

I LOVE my Mark Roberts Pumpkin Fairy!! He's sitting on a black/eggplant colored fairytale pumpkin from Martin's.

For the top of the entertainment center I put back a floral arrangement I usually have up there but had taken down for Halloween. It's very wild with moss-covered branches and a woodsprite hanging from one. The rabbit urn is usually there also. I just added a fall leaf garland (dollar tree again!) and a pumpkin from another table.

Christmas At the Christmas Faerie's Home 2005

"Christmas Faerie
quite contrary
how does your own
Christmas decorating go?"




On a round side table to my couches in the family room. I love my 3 Patience Brewster ornaments hanging on the feather tree and in front of it.



Garland I hung in the entry way from the family room to the kitchen/dining area. All in red and white with candy ornaments and red grape lights.


Lighted

Grouping on top of entertainment center. Some of these ornaments were bought at half off after Christmas from the Martha Stewart line at K-mart but most of them I purchased from good ol' Dollar Tree!! I made sure most of them have glitter on them and are in the primary colors so they all look cohesive. That Santa pushing the cart that looks like a Christopher Radko is really from Dollar Tree too!

Mantle garland - The two lighted ornament trees I bought at the outlet store, Welcome Home, for only $10 each after Christmas. I also group my nutcracker here with some doll ornaments and a really great santa doll I got from my Faery Godmother! There are also some vintage looking reproduction tree toppers I use as decorative finials. The needlepoint stockings are a tradition from my family growing up.

Lighted

Most of all my arrangements around the house change or have some Christmas items added to them.

My master bath is done in Chocolate Brown, Tiffany Box Blue and Cotton Candy Pink with silver fixtures and a vintage feel with an old fashioned fan, an antique curling iron, french soaps and black and white pictures. This is the Christmas decor for it. With a few vintage figurines and tree, I filled an Arthur Court ice bucket we received for our wedding with more ornaments from the Martha Stewart line at K-Mart. I especially love the vintage looking bathtub from Bath and Body filled with those same ornaments!

Just a few little Christmasy touches in my daughter's room.

Nativity Scene and collection of creche pictures in my study.

My Dining Table - The advent calendar is from Target and goes perfect with my black and white kitchen. Another feather tree and bowl of fruit. I love how the fruit and ball ornaments match!

I have to move my sofa table from the bay window to actually be behind one of my sofas. I buy a small snowman every year to add to my snowman collection. The white feather tree is also a great find from the Martha Stewart line at K-mart.

Close-up of table

My tree. This tree has been ours for the past two years now. I did it in the colors of my family room - olive, gold, and red with lots of sparkle!

Lighted

Close-up

Of course the Christmas Faerie would have none other than a Faerie atop her tree! I love how she is reaching heavenward! I didn't necessarily buy her for my tree topper - she was just gorgeous and a really good deal at one of my favorite stores, The Wild Grape, in Victoria Gardens Shopping Center in Rancho Cucamonga in Southern California, so I couldn't pass her up! To give the illusion that she coordinates with the rest of the tree colors I hung the tiny, glittery balls (from the Martha Stewart line at K-mart) on the sparkly branches around her that graduate from pink to orange to red as they fall down closer to the rest of the tree. Somehow it works!

I would love to someday do a rainbow tree that graduated from one colored ball at the top down through all the rainbow colors to the bottom of the tree! Anyone want me to give it a whirl at their house?

Here are some of my Mark Roberts Fairies helping me decorate - the Christmas Faerie has to have helpers! My wonderful mom gives me one each year for Christmas - the one on top is The Mistletoe Fairy and the one below is The Gumdrop Fairy.

And here are my other two helpers - The Pinecone Fairy above (he always tells me he works better upside down) and A Partridge In A Pear Tree Fairy below.

Tree magnified - This angel fairy was my tree topper for my smaller tree I used to put up in my apartment before I moved into my home.