Easily Decorating Your Home for Christmas

First of all, think "less is more". The more simplistic your decorations look, the more tasteful and beautiful, and what's more, the easier your decorating will be. I love the simple look of a green wreath in every front window of the house. Green wreaths with bright red bows look great during the day, unlike most other decorations that look terrible or are invisible during the day. At night, the wreaths display well with white spot lights shining on the them, that not only light the wreaths but the house as well. To finish off each window, a dimly lit welcome candle below the wreath on the window sill. We prefer the electric type that automatically shut off during the day and come on at night. We actually leave these welcome candles in our windows year round.

We purchased some realistic looking green wreaths for each of our front windows. They were a bit costly due to the amount of windows we have and were of a good quality, but as we have been using them for six years now and they still look great, quality will save you in the long run. The wreaths will need to endure the harsh winter weather, so spending more in the beginning is the better choice here.

Then we bought plenty of bright red ribbon, the type with the wiring in the edges, so the bows retain their shape. My wife made the bows. She happens to be great at making bows, but you can just purchase pre-made bows and wire to each wreath. You can get any kind of wreaths or ribbon that you prefer. We have found that nothing shows up as well, during the day, than the bright red ribbon and also displays the basic red and green traditional colors of the holidays.

I use a thin wire to hang each wreath on the outside of each window, but I hang them from the inside of the house. This also makes it easy to put up and take down, as there is no need to go outside in the weather. I cut an appropriate length of thin wire, wrap around the top of each wreath with enough remaining to wrap around the two window locks of our double hung windows. To hang, I open the bottom window and tilt the window inward, lower the wreath to the outside of the bottom window and while holding the two ends of wire, I close the window and wrap the ends around the window locks, firmly enough to withstand strong winds during the season. To prevent the wreaths from moving during hard wind, I also attach a length of thin wire to the bottom of the wreath and bring that to the inside bottom of the window, which will hold when the window is closed. This makes three places that the wire will hold the wreath to the window.

Using more greens, that are realistic looking, on a few other locations such as around a front yard lamp post or on porch banisters or railings, with small, steady lit, white lights within the greens, also looks great and yet still simplistic. We choose to not over decorate the house.

After the season, I remove each wreath from the inside of the house and store them in plastic garbage bags and hang them in storage. Next year, they are already pre-wired and ready to hang. You can also look for wreaths and most decorations after the holidays for some great buys!

When I was young and living with my parents, my dad was an absolute manic when it came to everything about Christmas. Of course, as with all things my dad did, I was his right hand helper, so I was right there with him in his mania. He and I would spend hours and most likely a few days decorating the outside of the house for Christmas and usually on the coldest of days, so you hands were basically frozen. It looked great, but hey, so does my house now and I can finish in about an hour or less. Then there are the fanatics who purchase the latest new invention of the season, and hang strings of lights on roof tops, edges, and everywhere. These are usually the houses that you still see the strings of lights hanging from the house in July because no one wanted to take them down. There are also the new inflatable monstrosities for the holidays that people turn on and inflate during the night, but during the day it looks like a weather balloon crashed in the yard and left all this debris scattered around.

I say, keep it simple, keep it basic and most of all, keep it easy!