To decorate for Christmas, I prefer to not put the everyday decorations of a house away.  I often see people take a beautiful picture down over their fireplace for Christmas so they can put up a wreath.  Typically the wreath is not as pretty as the picture was, and all of a sudden, the focal point in the room becomes less spectacular instead of more interesting.  To avoid this problem, I often decorate the wall sconces over a fireplace.  If you don’t have sconces, you could use a garland over the mantle.

The photo above, and the ones following show three different rooms in the same home.  The home is a Colonial Williamsburg style home in which the owner wanted to maintain the original house trim colors of red, blue, and green.  We colored the decorations to compliment these tones.

The first photo is in the library.  There is an early print of Times Square over the fireplace, and two authentic Williamsburg sconces.  For Christmas, we added a branch of greenery to each sconce to act as our base.  We simply cut about a 24″ section of garland to use as this piece and wrapped it around the arms of the sconce.  The greenery will hold everything you use to decorate it with in place.  We then tucked in gold icy twigs and red glittery berries.  Voila!  A beautiful Christmas mantle.

The next four photos show wall sconces in the kitchen.  Again, these are associated with a fireplace, but this same type of application would work on bathroom sconces, a bedroom, or hallway. 

The first photo shows a sconce with greenery only on it.  We used garland to create the greenery base.  This is a piece about 48″ long that we wrapped around the arm of the sconce.  Make sure you fluff out the garland.  You can not get this look and not fluff the garland.  You have to pull each branch and straighten it out to make it really full.  This rule applies to any artificial greenery you use.  The next photo shows the sconce after we applied the ribbons.  This is a kitchen, with colors inspired by the antique French poster.  We used a red velvet ribbon with a fuzzy white edge, a red grosgrain ribbon with white polka dots, a red and green plaid, and a red and white stripe ribbon.  Don’t be afraid to put multiple ribbons together.  Play with it and have fun with the colors.  It will look festive.  I only did one loop per side on this bow, but when it is fluffed out, it appears to have four loops per side because of using multiple ribbons, so it is really full.  I used tails that were about 24″ long each, and worked them into the falls of the greenery.  The next photo shows the sconce after we put on the ornaments.  We used all sorts of kitchen inspired ornaments such as gingerbread men, cupcakes, and candy.  These look like you could eat them, so they are perfect for this setting.  The final photo in this group shows the pair of sconces with the antique poster that inspired the colors.  What fun!

The last photo in this post is of sconces in a living room.  We did a similar treatment to the first photo you saw of the library, but used less greenery, and instead of making the greenery be horizontal, we applied it in a more vertical fashion.  The small piece of greenery is attached to the arms of the sconces.  This holds all the other decorative pieces in place.  We added red hydrangea blossoms with glittery stems, and gold icy twigs.  It is very simple, but really adds a festive touch to the room.  We completed this mantle grouping by adding colorful ornaments to an antique bowl on the mantle.  The bowl was first filled with greenery to act as a base, and then the ornaments laid on top.  Be sure not to overfill the bowl.  A little less will look just as good.  You don’t want the ornaments to fall out if the bowl is moved.  The final details in this photo show that we added some sprigs of greenery, berries, and ribbon to the bookshelves.  It doesn’t take much of this to create a great look.  Just tuck a sprig of greenery behind some books or a figure or vase on the shelf, and do that two or three times in each shelving unit.  It creates the look of Christmas decorations without removing anything from the shelves. 

Remember to have fun while doing your Christmas decorations.  We always play Christmas music to get us in the spirit.  Have fun with your family and friends, and create something beautiful in the process.