Holiday Decor

A Thanksgiving mantel is about plenty rather than sparkle: wheat, pumpkins, dried leaves, candlelight. It’s hard to get wrong. And since Christmas decorating starts more or less the day after Thanksgiving, it’s worth setting the mantel up so it can change over without starting from scratch. Harvest Wheat and pumpkins. Dried wheat (on Amazon) laid along the mantel with small white, orange and green pumpkins (on Amazon) between and three pillar candles at different heights. Dried wheat costs very little and keeps for years. ...

Friendsgiving can be looser than the family version. Nobody’s checking the place settings, half the food comes from other people’s kitchens, and it’s usually in an apartment without enough chairs. So the decor should be relaxed, and some of it should help the potluck run smoothly. Keep it casual Eat on the floor. If there aren’t enough chairs, don’t pretend there are. Layer blankets and rugs in the middle of the living room, put floor cushions (on Amazon) and pillows around a low coffee table, and you can fit ten people in a studio. It also looks great in photos. ...

A tall flower arrangement looks great in a photo and terrible at dinner, when it sits between you and the person you’re trying to talk to. The one rule for a Thanksgiving centerpiece is to keep it low: nothing in the middle of the table taller than about 12 inches, roughly the height of a wine bottle. The exception is anything tall but thin and see-through, like taper candles or single stems in bud vases. People can see around those. It’s bulk that blocks a conversation, not height. ...

On a tree, a lot of ornaments end up facing the wall or lost near the back. If you’re not putting a tree up this year, or you have more ornaments than branches, you can spread them around the apartment where people can actually see them. A big tree holds 80 to 100 ornaments; most of these ideas use somewhere between 5 and 20. In bowls and under glass A large glass bowl (on Amazon). Big ornaments on the bottom, smaller ones on top, with a strand of battery fairy lights (on Amazon) tucked in so it glows. The bowl needs to be big, at least 12 inches, or it looks like storage. Thrift stores have plenty. ...

Anything in a child’s room will be touched, moved and, with toddlers, possibly tasted. So the rules here are simple: nothing glass at any height (kids climb), no real flames, things on the wall hang from damage-free strips, and anything on the dresser sits well back from the edge. Within that, let it be their room. If your four-year-old wants everything red plus dinosaurs, that’s the color scheme. A tree of their own A felt tree. A 3-foot felt tree (on Amazon) with stick-on felt ornaments is probably the best thing you can buy for a kid’s room in December. They’ll rearrange it every day, which is the point. Hang it at their eye level, not yours. It folds into a drawer afterward. ...

Smell does more for a Christmas mood than almost any decoration, and the best Christmas smells are cheap. Most of them come from the kitchen. Three simmer pots Put everything in a saucepan, cover with water and keep it on the lowest heat so it steams without boiling. Check the water every 45 minutes or so and top it up. Turn it off when you go out or go to bed. You can keep the same pot going for two or three days: refrigerate it overnight and add fresh water in the morning. In an apartment, half of each recipe is plenty. ...

By mid-December, wrapping supplies are usually everywhere. A roll of paper under the couch, the tape gone again, scissors somehow in the bathroom. You don’t need a craft room to fix that. You need one place where it all lives, whether that’s a cart, a door, a shelf or a bin, and the habit of putting the tape back. Pick one setup A three-tier rolling cart (on Amazon). About 18 by 12 inches and 30 inches tall. Tools on top (scissors, tape, ribbon on a dowel, pens, tags), tissue and bags in the middle, rolls standing up on the bottom. A tension rod or a piece of PVC pipe across one side turns it into a paper dispenser. It rolls to wherever you’re wrapping and into a closet afterward. ...

Homemade decorations look best when you make a lot of one thing in a limited set of colors. One dried orange slice looks like a craft project; a bowl of twenty looks like something from a catalog. Volume is the trick, and most of these materials are cheap enough to make in bulk. Each idea below costs under $10 in materials, most under $5. Paper 1. Paper bag stars. Nine paper lunch bags, a glue stick and string. Fold each bag in half lengthwise, glue the folded edges together in a stack, cut a point or a curve into the open end, then fan it out and tie it open. It opens into a star about 24 inches across. Use 6 bags for a smaller one, 12 for a big one. About 20 minutes, under $2, and it folds back flat. ...

At a holiday party, the bar cart is where people end up standing. Most carts look the same in December as they do in July, which is a missed chance, because it doesn’t take much to change that. Three things do most of the work: something tall, some warm light, and a limited set of colors. You don’t need a new cart. First, clear it off 1. Empty it completely. Take everything off and wipe it down. Carts collect half-finished bottles of bitters and odd glasses, and decorations on top of clutter just look like more clutter. Put back four to six bottles you’ll actually pour, the glasses you need, and one set of tools. The rest can sit in a cabinet until January. ...

Thrift stores in October and November have a lot of old Christmas decorations, and plenty of the good ones get passed over as dusty boxes. Old pieces have something new decorations can’t quite copy: real wear, real weight, a slightly imperfect hand-painted face. What’s worth looking for Shiny Brite ornaments. American glass ornaments made from the 1940s to the 1960s, with silvered insides, painted designs and cardboard caps stamped “Shiny Brite.” Look for silvering without dark patches inside, original paint and caps that aren’t bent. A box of 12 in good shape for under $15 is a real find. Partial boxes are worth it too; mix them with plain new balls in matching colors, or new vintage-style ones (on Amazon). ...