As the More is More Mom®, I’m all about…….more seasonal outdoor décor! The holidays always give me that warm fuzzy feeling. I love hanging our stockings from our mantle (with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there), unwrapping our favorite ornaments and trimming our trees. Because more of everything is always better, I love to pay a little attention to our front porch too.
This year Chuck and I made outdoor decorating an event with Christmas carols playing on my iPod while we sipped champagne in our parkas and worked through the night. It was the perfect way to spend a quiet Sunday evening……
I usually start with garland around our front door. This year, I decided to wrap the 22’ of roping with 250 twinkling lights, a dozen red and green ornaments and a great big green leopard bow. I secured it all to the garland using inexpensive floral wire. It looked great and was so easy!
Last year when we filled our urns with winter greens, I was excited to incorporate these fantastic red bamboo stalks and gigantic Christmas bells. To see that design please visit me at
https://moreismoremom.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/gorgeous-do-it-yourself-winter-urns/
This time around, I wanted to do something a little different. I found some really fun green butterfly ornaments that I wanted to feature in my arrangements, so in addition to a great variety of greenery, I chose tall and willowy Dogwood branches as an elegant anchor.
After a visit to the nursery we came home with a trunk full of Dogwood, cedar, white pine, balsam and, if I were a master gardener, something else that I would know that name of branches.
In a wide mouthed urn filled with tightly packed dirt (or floral oasis), we started by securing the Dogwood branches in the center, along with our base layer of cedar branches around the perimeter of the urn.
You’ll want to have a pair of pruning sheers handy to trim the branches down to size, placing the largest branches on the bottom and reserving the smaller ones for use as filler at the end of the project.
Because we have a pair of urns, we tried to make each arrangement as similar as possible.
The second layer we worked with was the white pine. They have such a pretty and soft texture. Again, we reserved the smaller branches to use as filler later.
Our third layer was the balsam pine because those branches have a lot of structure and they helped our arrangement really take shape.
Now it was time to start filling in with some personality. After a quick stop at the craft store I found a few more embellishments. Ultimately, I used the additional short thick branches from the nursery, the sparkly gold stems, the tall, red glitter, curly-que stems and all of our little leftover pieces. The whole idea was to make the arrangement really full and luscious.
Once we were satisfied, all that was left was to hang the green butterfly ornaments. They were absolutely beautiful!
To complete our outdoor décor, there were a few final finishing touches.
I tossed a few Christmas throw pillows on the bench and had a little something special planned for the side table.
To continue my red and green theme from the garland and the arrangements of winter greens, I filled three lanterns with red and green ornaments and topped the two red lanterns with leopard bows. They were adorable!
Now that the outdoors is ready to welcome a spectacular holiday season, I’d better get moving on the inside.
More welcoming the holidays, more creative and quality time spent with Chuck, more merry making, more outdoor seasonal décor…..
To schedule an Interior Design appointment or life style consultation, or for questions or comments please send me an email to moreismoremom@aol.com
More is More Mom 