Thursday Thrill – Christmas in Cleveland

I know it's been done for a couple weeks now, but I'm sharing a bit of my Christmas with you all today. A few of you that follow me on Instagram (@chatterblossom) got a peek at parts of my holiday celebrations, decorations, and outfits, but I wanted to do a full post here to share more photos and details. 

The hubs and I went to celebrate Christmas with my sister and her husband in Cleveland. Weather wise, this is perfect! Raleigh rarely gets snow so having the possibility of a white Christmas in Ohio is wonderful! And snow we got! Almost every day that we were there actually. Big fat falling flakes! 

Another fun item on the holiday agenda? My sis asked if I could do the decorations for her new house. They just moved into a gorgeous home, but she didn't have holiday decor yet. She had a few ornaments from the last house but not much and nothing for the rest of the house. I was able to get a fantastic deal on some beautiful decorations! A local shop was liquidating their holiday stock and there was a buy one get one sale on already well below wholesale prices for very, very pretty things. My sister had asked for whatever I thought would be nice, classic, elegant, and in red and gold. Those were my stipulations. And it had to be for under $100. Challenge accepted!

I had to decorate a tree, a fireplace mantle, a table centerpiece, and a front door wreath. I know she asked for gold and red, but I wanted to try and incorporate a little silver so that she could use a few of her old ornaments and so that it had more texture and versatility if she ever wanted to go in a different direction. I found the prettiest stuff and had SO much fun putting it together. I love craft days and my sister was extremely nice to give me free reign. 

For the tree: All the tinsel you see is a hodge-podge mix of different colored vintage tinsel remnants. I bought a whole box of random assorted tinsel from the 1940s and used them all. Silver, gold, white, and mixed. The silver ball ornaments were my sister's. I brought the glittered silver/gold and light catching crystal snowflakes to mix in. I wanted to make sure the red wasn't too bright and gaudy, so I tried to find berry reds to give it a more elegant feel. I found red glass berries on gold glittered stems, red glitter berries on pine sprigs with red metal jingle bells, a few deep red small ball ornaments, and stained red and gold crepe myrtle leaf sprigs. Sprinkled here and there are tiny birds too! Some have real feather tails painted a lovely gold and others are glittered with German glass glitter that will tarnish beautifully with age. 

For the mantle: I found a case of gold foil pumpkins that I figured could be used for multiple holidays. I layered larger twigs of faux holly berries along the mantle, set out the pumpkins, added sprigs of red jingle bells in between. The vases of flowers she already had, so I just took out her purple flowers and added large berry twigs. She had some candles, pinecones, and a small paper flower arrangement in other parts of the house, so I took those and interspersed them as well. I added tiny berries to the paper flower arrangement in the center. To top it off, I added long golden leaves that I twisted into curly q's and two large real feather golden pheasants. 

For the table centerpiece: She already had a large bowl with pinecones so I just emptied it, bent faux holly into a circle for the rim, filled it with pumpkins, and then tucked in berries and her original pinecones. Curled a couple more long gold leaves to elongate the piece and voila!

For the door wreath: Blast!! I forgot to take a photo! It was so pretty too! Dang it. Anyways, I made the wreath from metallic leather leaves in bronze, gold, and silver. I added layer upon layer and bent the leaves (they were on wire) to create a tousled organic feel. Some of the leaves veins were lined in German glass glitter as well. Sorry about the lack of photo! Drat!

Did I make my budget? With flying colors I did! I came in way under budget and kept half the decorations I bought for myself to use as materials for my shop. So everything you see here plus one wreath that you don't, came in at $50! I would call that a win!

Did you decorate for the holidays? I never do (very small apartment with zero space), so this was a super fun project for me! Thank you sis!!

Last Week's Thursday Thrill:

Birthstone Roundup