Home and Garden Information » Holiday Decorating http://homes-andgardens.com Home and Garden Redecorating and Upgrade Information Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:32:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc Using Gingerbread In Decorating http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/gingerbread-decorating http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/gingerbread-decorating#comments Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:19:57 +0000 Gavin N http://homes-andgardens.com/?p=3739 Continue reading →]]> If there is one food that embodies Christmas to perfection, it is gingerbread. Bake it, and your entire house smells like a holiday. Nibble it, and you are transported to Christmas past. But what elevates gingerbread above a mere seasonal treat is its decorative quality. Turn it into ornaments and gifts, and every tree or tabletop it touches seems joyous. Even its monkish hue, which may not look very festive, is a warm and amiable backdrop for whimsical shapes and fanciful icing in any color you like.

The gingerbread cookie was the favorite Christmas treat of early-American children. It became popular because it was inexpensive to make and resilient enough to withstand the vagaries of wood- and coal-fired ovens. Gingerbread enthusiasts, however, like to point out that gingerbread became beloved for its taste—that inimitable combination of molasses, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg—and for the fun it provides.

Gingerbread’s delights were evident as far back as the early Christian era, when ancient Romans baked it in portable ovens. The confection was so desirable during the reign of Elizabeth that the royal family employed its own gingerbread baker. Gingerbread became synonymous with extravagant decoration; cut into shapes or baked in wooden molds, it was iced with sugar and gilded. Gingerbread also proved to be a near-perfect construction medium, ideal for building elaborate edifices.

Creating a gingerbread house or Christmas-tree decorations can be so enjoyable, you may want to make it a part of your holiday activities each year. The fun begins with the planning. You can render, in miniature, your favorite cottage or skyscraper, or perhaps a facade of your house—or the house of your dreams. Or you might consult an architecture or history book for more ideas. Stars, butterflies, and snowflakes make enchanting decorations, too. Gingerbread is so adaptable—almost anything you like can be interpreted with golden-brown dough and royal icing, from barnyard animals to Faberge eggs.

Even as a building material, gingerbread abounds with sensual delights. There’s the pleasure of rolling the dough and cutting out designs. There’s comfort and delight in the scent of baking gingerbread, redolent of spices, as it wafts from the oven and fills the kitchen and house. Making gingerbread is an engaging holiday project for any child old enough to manipulate a cookie cutter or squeeze a pastry bag with some degree of precision. And decorating cookies is a splendid exercise in self-expression, especially because icing is so forgiving; if you make a mistake, just wipe it off before it dries, and try again. Gingerbread cookies and constructions can be elegantly simple or astonishingly complex, and each has its own reward. But gingerbread, of course, is meant to be eaten, so be sure to make an extra batch or two. You will recall that heavenly flavor each time you admire your gingerbread house or gaze at the colorful cookies glistening on the tree.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/gingerbread-decorating/feed 0 Using Evergreens http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/using-evergreens http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/using-evergreens#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:44:32 +0000 Gavin N http://homes-andgardens.com/?p=272 Continue reading →]]> Evergreens are so natural and neutral, you can drape great swags of them anywhere over mirrors, around banisters, from picture rails. They are not meant to be permanent, but that is part of their charm. Without nature’s prettiest and lushest offerings evergreens for garlands and wreaths, and fresh blooms for bouquets a house is not quite dressed for the holidays.

Garlands are like gift-wrapping for your rooms. Making them is an easy two-step process. First use wire and twine to construct a narrow length of thin, pliable branches called a base garland. Then you completely cover it with decorative greens. Evergreens can also be combined to create beguiling textures and contrasts; when woven through a swag of blue spruce, sprigs of seeded and weeping eucalypti shimmer like tendrils of silver lace. You can make garlands as slim or as full as you like. The beauty of evergreens lies in the length, color, and complexity of their needles or leaves, so most call for little embellishment other than ribbons.

Your own property may contain the boughs you need. Cutting greenery from your own trees and shrubs is not just economical, it can also be good for them. Blue atlas cedar, for example, is by a little sparse, and pruning the tips helps it grow back fuller. Evergreens that have needles should not be heavily pruned cut a pine-tree branch to the trunk, and it will never grow back but you can safely trim the smaller offshoots down to the main branch, shaping the tree as you go.

The evergreens will either dry beautifully or stay lush and supple for about three weeks, long enough to get through the holidays. And they last even longer if they are used outdoors or set in water greenery makes wonderful arrangements.

Flowers will not last as long as evergreens, but they are more welcome than ever. On a winter morning, a bowl of silky tulips can seem like a tiny miracle. Use the season’s traditional blooms, or other favorite flowers, in unexpected ways. Cut from their bulbs and arranged in a vase, amaryllis seem even more vibrant and exotic. Paper-whites are endearing planted in individual pots and grouped on a tray atop a small table or mantel. Instead of a favorite vase or urn, employ a pretty household item, like a sugar bowl or coffee pot, then fill it with flowers that show it off.

When it comes to decking the halls, no one provides better materials than nature.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Decorative Greens

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/using-evergreens/feed 0 How to Decorate with Fruits http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/how-to-decorate-with-fruits http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/how-to-decorate-with-fruits#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:44:12 +0000 Gavin N http://homes-andgardens.com/?p=251 Continue reading →]]> What could be more glorious than a holiday table laden with fruit? Fruit is nature’s bounty and an eloquent symbol of its richness. The Dutch and Flemish masters immortalized fruit, as well as flowers, in their prettiest still life’s. But it was the French, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who refined fruit centerpieces into soaring pyramids of glistening cherries and grapes; elaborate epergnes whose branches were filled with strawberries, figs, and miniature apples; or a single golden pineapple served up on a pedestal.

The French built centerpieces in a variety of vessels, mixing real fruit, flowers, and leaves with ceramic fruit. Sometimes the fruit was meant to be eaten, and other times not, since some of the techniques to make a pyramid stable, like drizzling warm caramel over the arrangement or pouring water over it so it would ice, made the display purely decorative. But then a fruit centerpiece was designed less to be tasted than to dazzle and to amuse.

The best fruits for creating table decorations have sturdy skins and can thrive without being refrigerated. Apples, oranges, and lemons, for example, may last several weeks; grapes stay pretty for four or five days. Combining fruit is as rich an art as arranging flowers, and just as rewarding, if you learn to appreciate fruit for its color, shape, texture, and size, as you do your favorite blooms. Be simple or be grand.

A single pear crowning a slender candlestick can be as eloquent as a lily in a bud vase—or a tower of plums, pears, and grapes can have the intricacy of a lavish bouquet.

You can make delectable arrangements with surprising ease. Construct a tall cone of fruit simply by piercing each piece of fruit with a toothpick, then piling the fruit in circles on a Styrofoam form. Create sparkling table ornaments with a coat of spray-on adhesive and a frosting of granulated sugar. A single piece of fruit can shine, dressed with a ribbon at each place setting.

For still richer arrangements, combine fruit with greenery. Sprigs of princess pine or boxwood can enliven a fruit pyramid. Red fruit will look even more vivid against bluish evergreens, like eucalyptus or white pine. Wired to a wreath or garland, apples and plums will resemble luscious Christmas-tree balls. And don’t forget artificial fruit: A swag garnished with polystyrene fruit is both lightweight and long-lasting.

Fruit is so vibrant it can provide a color theme for your table or the decoration of an entire dining room. To dress up a serene green-and-white dining room for the holidays, you can gather the reddest apples, pomegranates, litchi, and viburnum berries, and place them atop the mantel and table. Fruit can also spin a mood. A spiky pineapple and the bright, sunny hues of oranges, lemons, and limes may call to mind the tropics. But what fruit does best is help you welcome the holidays, and your guests, with one of nature’s sweetest, most prized gifts.

Related Blogs

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/how-to-decorate-with-fruits/feed 1 The Front Door http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/the-front-door http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/the-front-door#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:27:40 +0000 Gavin N http://homes-andgardens.com/?p=200 Continue reading →]]> With only gray skies surrounding it, a house in early winter can look stark. But hang a wreath or a swag on the front door, and your house will spring to life. Cuttings of evergreen are sweet compensation for the leaves that are missing from most of the trees, and the tart hues of winter berries are reminders that nature has not forgotten about color, even though the garden is no longer in bloom. Add wide ribbons and twinkling lights, and holiday spirit brims over.

The Victorians, who never willingly left a surface unadorned, are sometimes credited with the custom of hanging Christmas wreaths on front doors. In more recent years, front-door displays have taken many forms, from flashy tinsel wreaths with silver-metallic bows to electric-light garlands that spell out “Season’s Greetings.” The most eloquent outdoor ornaments, however, are usually simple and natural, made from the hearty fruit and greenery that flourish while almost all of the landscape hibernates.

Winter’s harvest abounds with unexpected textures and shapes, like spiky pinecones and smooth little eucalyptus seeds.And the palette is more than the red and green we expect. We do get those colors, of course, in abundance: scarlet cranberries, blood-red rose hips, crimson Pyracantha and a cavalcade of greenery silver-green eucalyptus, blue-green cedar, deep-green boxwood, and the astonishing chartreuse and olive-green of the intriguingly named golden hinoki false cypress. But there is also the tangy purple of privet berries, the spongy gold of kumquats, and the yellow pods and wild-red centers of bittersweet.

To make decorations for your front door, you may find all the raw materials you need growing in your own yard or garden, but if you don’t, visit garden centers, florists, Christmas-tree lots, even greengrocers. If the greenery you have chosen feels sappy or prickly, be sure to wear work gloves. And remember that although there is nothing wrong with a big spray of holly tied with a red bow, embellishing the traditional recipes can yield lovely results..

If you select cuttings that are as fresh as possible, and the weather stays cold, your outdoor displays should last for weeks, spreading holiday cheer throughout the season.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Pyracantha

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/the-front-door/feed 0 About Fabrics http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/about-fabrics http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/about-fabrics#comments Sun, 21 Sep 2008 06:44:11 +0000 Gavin N http://homes-andgardens.com/?p=294 Continue reading →]]> Dressing your house in the fabrics of Christmas is as satisfying as wrapping yourself in the sensuous silk scarf or velvet jacket you save for the holidays. Fabric brings richness, color, and depth to any shape it embraces almost demanding to be touched, whether it is a scratchy wool or a buttery silk. Trims are the finishing touches that shimmer and delight, like icing on cookies.

Fabric has been woven into holiday decorating since Victorian times. Before the Christmas stocking evolved, real socks, often embroidered or trimmed, were hung near chimneys, with high hopes. At the turn of the century, fancifully shaped animals and figures made from snowy cotton batting wrapped on metal frames dangled from countless American Christmas trees.

With so many fabrics and trims available, how do you begin to choose? You can use dressy fabrics like silk-faced satin, silk taffeta, and velvet for most of your ornaments and stockings, and finish them with a wide selection of metallic-silver ribbons, bullion, rickrack, and twine, all of which take on a soft, nearly golden patina over time. But almost any winter fabrics will do, from woolly tartans and humble corduroys to an old Christmas table cloth, too worn to be used for dining, but too beautiful to discard. Felt is pleasing to work with because of its opaque color and tidy edges, which do not require a hem; you can easily add a decorative edge with pinking or scalloped shears. Gingham and grosgrain ribbons are congenial companions for a homey fabric like felt. And pretty ribbons can be draped, looped, stitched, or tied into bows to become ornaments all by themselves.

Fabric can deliver a powerful jolt of color to any ornament or decoration so plan your color scheme carefully. Use fabrics with contrasting textures in just one or two colors, or unify contrasting fabrics with a single shade of trim, like silver ribbons and twines. Whatever fabrics and trimmings you choose, everything you make will brighten your rooms, and your spirits, with the color and warmth of the holidays.

Related Blogs

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://homes-andgardens.com/holiday-decorating/about-fabrics/feed 0