Welcome to Tumbleweed Tidings! I have noticed that 2020 has many people returning to more traditional ways, from baking bread, to doing needlepoint, to making comforting casseroles. For the past few years, I have been decorating for the holidays with a very subdued palette of golds, creams and silver in the living and dining rooms, but 2020 has me craving the more traditional Christmas colors of red and green.

Christmas 2020 will be much simpler and quieter than normal, but that doesn’t mean I want to forgo decorating for the holidays altogether, so for my traditional decorating this year, I chose green accents for the dining room and red accents for the living room. You may remember a few weeks ago, I shared a few simple updates done to the dining room that brought in the freshness of green and white. If you missed that post, you can see it here: It Isn’t Easy Being Green…Today, I’m sharing our dining room, all decked out in even more green, white, and gold, just in time for Christmas!

In the dining room, we use a very small tree that fits nicely in the corner atop a set of nesting tables. This year, I purchased a couple of boxes of shiny and matte ornaments in green, gold, and white from Hobby Lobby. The ornaments were the only purchase required to completely change the look of this room for the holidays, and I repeated these colors on the tree, the swag above the mirror, tabletop, and entryway. It never ceases to amaze me how you can add a few hits of a color and change the entire look and feel of a room.

For the tree top, I made a bow of cream ribbon with tails falling down the tree. The rest of the tree is comprised of the green, gold and white ornaments, as well as some deer I had from previous years. I just love how this palette picks up on the colors in the adjacent artwork and plate wall.

For the space above the mirror, I replaced the Gather sign that usually hangs there with a simple swag using artificial greenery, cream ribbon, and more of the gold, green, and white ornaments.

For the table, I topped the green runner with some simple greenery, the colored ornaments, candlesticks, and a centerpiece of a hurricane lamp with candle.

For the entryway adjacent to the dining room, I placed two white deer, a crystal bowl filled with ornaments, and a green candle holder. One of the things I have enjoyed this year is incorporating both shiny and matte finished balls into the decor. The shiny ornaments reflect the tree lights and candlelight, and the matte ornaments add a certain depth of richness.

Christmas is hands down my favorite season, but this year I wasn’t sure how much decorating I wanted to do. By going in a completely different color direction and scaling back on decorations, it feels like the right middle ground was achieved. It’s going to take more than a pandemic to dull the joy and promise of the Christmas story.

Good tidings,

Diane