No Pressure Holiday Tables

I love all the preparations leading up to Christmas, but when the big day arrives I’m ready for things to be easy, easy, easy. The 25th should be about spending time with my family and playing with the kids not stuck in the kitchen or fretting over the perfect holiday tablescape. To help take some of the pressure off, I plan as much ahead as possible including quick table decorations from the grocery store or my own storage boxes.

Gather a few decorations you haven’t used elsewhere, selecting an array in one or two colors. For a holiday dinner party I put three candy striped candles and silver balls on a glass cake stand filling in the gaps with fake snow. Candy canes were tucked into white napkins for an extra sweet touch.

This family dinner table was set with pomegranates, satsumas and little lady apples placed on white platters down the center of the table. The colors from the fruit perfectly matched the vintage Christmas table cloth and red candles.

The table for this Christmas dinner is still undecided though my snow woodland theme will include pinecones and candle sticks made out of tree branches. And my white Christmas will definitely require more fake snow.

Deck the Halls 2010

I have flocked, glittered, hot glued, dremmeled, hammered, sawed, baked, hung, re-hung, arranged, and rearranged for nearly two weeks but I’m finally ready to show off the Christmas decorations.

I’m particularly pleased with the vintage pom-pom tree decked out in silver and blue. The winter village underneath is home to 60’s pinecone elves, bottle brush trees and glittered houses we’ve collected over the years. Nick and Linus helped me glitter an inexpensive plastic farm set adding more sparkle to the Daddy tree.

For the main floor I created a snowy feeling with the garland for the banister and flocking wreaths myself that I hung in the dining room with blue and silver faux bois ribbon.

This time of year I love to fill my favorite white pottery pieces with either yummy things to eat or pretty things to look at, like my collection of pinecones.

We always do a kid tree for the playroom and this year’s was cut down by yours truly. The beautiful and fresh Noble Fir is hung with red and gold ornaments, Peanuts characters and gingerbread Ls and Ns.

Merry Christmas!

12 Days of Christmas Decorations

I'm always surprised how quickly home Christmas decorations go up, including the tree, so soon after Thanksgiving. Not in my house as a kid. Mom always trimmed the house two weeks before Christmas and then took everything down the day after – and if the tree was dry, down that came after gifts were open. A practical sentimentalist my mom who liked a clean house as much as her Tom and Jerry punch.

When it comes to my own holiday decorating I take after my mother. The planning and watching for new ideas begins in October but nothing is ever put up until December. I favor settling on a theme or color pallet when decking the halls to keep the house from feeling like an elf exploded everywhere. Sticking to a theme means on any given year some decorations get displayed while others are repacked for next time, giving us something different to enjoy each year. While we don’t dismantle everything on Boxing Day we do begin the New Year with a clean house and not a trace of glitter.

Since we’ve become parents I have made a point of doing a kid’s tree in the playroom, the one Santa leaves his haul under. The past two years I’ve decorated the boys’ tree with homemade gingerbread cookies: the alphabet decked out in red and white candy followed by green and blue trains. They boys were charmed by them, they made the room smell good and were safe for a 2 year old to occasionally snack on.

One of my favorite themes was a woodland Christmas, when I glittered and spray painted plastic deer. Another year I made wreaths from gum drops. Color pallets have ranged from silver and gold, gold and brown and blue and brown. In my book, the color choices or decorations can be centered around just the tree, one room or the entire house.

Visions of red, white and silver are currently dancing in my head. Visit next week to see how my halls are decked this year.

Dining Room: Before & After

I believe changing a light fixture is one of the easiest things that can most transform a room. Good and beautiful lighting is necessary to all the activities in your home, especially in the dining room. If you are considering a change in the light about your dining table taking the extra step and center the fixture over your dining room table. More often than not an electrician you never knew (and long before you even moved into your home) hung the current fixture in the center most spot of the ceiling. This makes sense to an electrician but certainly not an interior designer. Now you are stuck with a table and a light that don’t get along. A handy person can do a quick internet search and find a how-to on moving the junction box yourself or, as a fan of out-sourcing, you can hire an electrician for the job. It will seem like an inconvenience and cost some extra money, but this simple change will make you’ll fall in love with your dining room again and every time you sit down for a family meal or just walk by you’ll appreciate the harmony you created. That is priceless.


That’s exactly what we did in this Bryant dining room. The smoked and etched glass fixture had to go. We swapped it out with the more elegant Round Pendant Shade from Restoration Hardware. It was centered over a consignment shop dining table and pulled together with oval back dining chairs from West Elm. Now the modern lines of the seating compliment the classic shape of the fixture and the expandable table fits the period of the mid-century home.

Ballard House 2.0: Light fixture fix

Completely replacing the 3 pendant lights in our kitchen wasn’t in our immediate budget, but I couldn’t live with the frosted glass shades put up by the previous owner. The fixtures are only a few years old, and their bronze finish matches the rest of the lights and door knobs throughout the house. It finally occurred to me to simply replace the glass.

(Before: The frosted shades felt frumpy)

What I thought would be a quick and easy decorating fix did take several trips to hardware and lighting stores to find shades that fit and that I liked. The winner was from Harold’s Lighting in Wallingford. At $10 each, this affordable shade instantly made the kitchen feel more modern and sleek.

Inexpensive, transformative and no special tools required – your decorator’s secret for the day.

Preserving a bit of autumn

The boys and I drove up to Leavenworth, 2 hours east of Seattle, to meet out of state family. Along the drive through the Cascade Mountains, yellow, gold and red started to peek through the green leaves and I was wishing I had brought a saw and cut a few branches for a leaf preserving project I’ve wanted to try out. As luck would have it, there in park in the middle of Leavenworth was a pile of tree branches bursting with autumn colors. Always a good sport, my Aunt Lora Lee helped me load some rather large branches in the back of the car. Then the real quest started. My leaf preserving project required glycerin which helps keep the leaves pliable and keeps their colors from fading, sometimes for years. Finding this agent (a by-product of soap making) was not easy, and after 3 days of phone calls, visits to every craft and natural store I could think of, I finally found it at Zenith Supplies in Seattle. By now, even though I kept them in water, my branches started to dry out a little. Still I crated these two arrangements in the house, mixing glycerin with water and a little dish soap to help break up the surface tension and to allow the glycerin to be more easily absorbed. I’m very pleased with how the leaves look and if it they don’t preserve this time, there’s still a few weeks to head to the hills and try to find a fresh batch of leaves. I’ll let you know how things turn out. Happy autumn!

Add style and wit with the x-bench

I’m obsessed with the x-bench. Impossibly chic, it is the perfect accessory to any room and adds unexpected style and a pop of color. It goes anywhere: the foot of the bed, under a console table, opposite the sofa for extra seating when needed. The yellow bench above provides a bright counterpoint to the room’s palate and pulls the interior together with a sizzle.

If you really want to add sharp style to your room, get two! Ballard Design may be your best bet with a price range from $179 - $371. You can get the bench in a wide range of upholstery options and can preview the look from a big selection of swatches. Don’t hold back, go for a print!


For a touch of luxury, Jonathan Adler has the x-bench in a wide range of colors and prints starting at $495 --- but you are worth it.

Serena & Lily’s Parker x-bench comes with piping options, adding a very sophisticated detail and a $599 price tag to match.