Decorating for Fall & Christmas!

FALL 2021

While our new magical patio lights will be our major touch of color for all seasons and holidays, I decided to decorate lightly inside for fall. We are not going crazy with a bunch of stuff to store in the off season. Barry and I agree that LESS is More!

Hobby Lobby has become my “go to” store within these last two months of being back in Yuma. Thank you, Kelly and Nancie, for introducing me to this place! I found the perfect garland of fall leaves to adorn the top of my kitchen cabinets for October and November.  You just can’t beat getting everything 50% off regular store prices!

I found this cool wire pumpkin. I knew I had to make it into a centerpiece for the island. A few fall leaves arranged with the pumpkin and together set on a black charge plate worked great!  

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A sunflower arrangement worked great for the dining table. It will be similarly simple for Christmas.

CHRISTMAS 2021

I do love the Advent and Christmas season. In Washington I used a lot of red. I set Red poinsettias all around with a couple white ones mixed in, and red and gold bows as finishing touches on the tree. But starting mainly from scratch this year, I’ve decided I wanted to use Advent blue, white and silver to tie in with the colors of our living areas. I like the calming effect of the blue.

We didn’t want a big, full tree that would dominate our new, but smaller home space. Nor did we want to deal with storing a bulky tree for 11 months of the year. But having a house now, we felt a tree was important IF we could find the right one. When we were leaving Big Lots! back in October, we saw a $100 pencil tree that was on sale for only $75 plus tax! It was pre-lit with white lights and was 7.5 ft tall. That will work! I’m not sure I wanted a “pencil tree”, as opposed to a “slim tree”, but with supply already quite limited, and talk of it getting worse and likely to jack prices up this year, we got this one.

We put the tree up after Thanksgiving. I always enjoy decorating the tree. This year was exciting since it is our first Christmas in our Yuma home, and I haven’t seen our saved ornaments for a few years! Some were too big and didn’t make the cut, but I got new smaller blue and white bulb ornaments that were perfect. Barry had Alexa start Christmas music playing for a fully festive atmosphere. 🙂

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Our new tree is definitely light weight. My angel topper was too much for this tree. I ended up raising one of my favorite angel ornaments to work as our “topper”. I think it works fine.

The tree was definitely a pencil shape–a bit more so than we had hoped. Even though I filled it with ornaments, it still needed something. Nancie told me that adding some different “floral sticks/picks” around various spots in the tree will give an illusion of a thicker/fuller tree. She went with me to Hobby Lobby where Kelly joined us, and then onto Michael’s to see what we could find. I got a variety of things to try. I liked how somethings worked, so I went back to Hobby Lobby to get more. I found some crystal-like ones in the wedding area. They are delicate, but reflect light nicely. I really do like the added dimension and fullness the variety gives. Hobby Lobby also had just the right tree skirt that was proportional for a smaller tree like ours. It was like a light covering of shimmering cold snow.

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I found the PERFECT garland for the kitchen cabinets. Where? Yep – Hobby Lobby! I bought 4 strands for the price of 2 (6 feet each). I absolutely love that this garland looks quite realistic, and are battery operated, but the best thing is the 24-hour timer! We push the button to initially turn on the lights at the time we want them to come on. After that they stay lit for 6 hours, and then turn off for 18 hours. We never have to touch them again till we take them down in January! I added a few white poinsettia flowers to the garland.

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For the centerpiece on the kitchen island, I found these awesome trees at Hobby Lobby and immediately knew I could use my mom’s Hummel figurine, “Ride Into Christmas” with them! I love it! Then I found a beautiful table runner there to represent “snow” and have set off this winter scene.

A simple, battery-operated lantern adds the perfect amount of light, and sweet, holiday ambience each night for dinner.

We still enjoy using our Advent tree calendar that we had in Everett. It was our only tree in the motorhome the last few years.

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“And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care.” Well, maybe not the chimney, but at least by the fireplace. I first had silver stocking from Hobby Lobby, but opted to swap them out for the blue ones pictured below that I found at Walmart.

We are all set inside for Christmas. Now let’s take a look outside…

Being in a 55+ park we needed to dress up our golf cart for Christmas. She was already the perfect red, but I was able to put to use the battery-operated poinsettia lights that we used previously in the big front window of our motorhome. Jimmy’s wife, Nancy, gave me a sweet snowman to adorn our golf cart. I recently added some of our unused red and gold bows along the back arm bars.

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Outside patio living area with festive red/green color selection, and the front porch area…

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Now if only what we ordered for Mona would come in! It isn’t looking good with all the supply and shipping issues. Better go with a back-up present.