Simplistic holiday décor for those who can’t stand clutter

I confess…I’m one of those people who love simplicity.As much as I enjoy decorating for the holidays, I tend to take everything down the day after Christmas to give the home a feeling of de-cluttering. Or perhaps I think spring will come faster that way. Who knows!

Anyway, this year I decided to be purposely simplistic in my holiday décor, hoping I’ll resist the temptation to take it all down on the 26^th this year!

To keep it streamlined, I used a simple color palate of silver/gold as neutrals, and a splash of red for fun. I was consistent with this principle in all the rooms to make it more cohesive.

Here are a few displays I created in our dining room, kitchen, family and living rooms:

For the dining room, I took a vase and added some colorful glass ornaments and silver branches.

To dress up the windows, I simply hung a couple pretty wreaths over the windows using ribbon. It’s hard to see the detail, but there are red and green berries on them.

In the kitchen, I took another similar vase and added crystals (to signify ice) and spiced it up with a red pillar candle (fire and ice!). It adds a nice apple/cinnamon aroma to the kitchen.

I’ve always treated my kitchen window sill as an extra mantel. By using very neutral display pieces (and of course, a couple candles) I created a warm yet uncluttered view for dishwashing.

Ok, here’s the “real” mantel in the family room – do you recognize the clear vases with branches? I blogged about those vases on the HomeGoods Openhouse blog – I used them in the kitchen with flower frogs for Halloween (to spell out “BOO”) and in the dining room at Thanksgiving (as a “Tree of Thanks”). Now they’ve been promoted to the family hearth.

I’m not quite done with this project yet. I plan to add some fresh greenery for a pine aroma (to mask the fact that we have a fake tree), and I’m thinking about spray painting the branches silver. But it’s only 21 degrees today. Maybe later! 😉 Any other suggestions?

Next I took advantage of a naturally sunlit corner of my family room, and replaced the faux pears with glitzy elements of nature. They really do sparkle in the sunlight, and the silver in an amber bowl plays well with the silver and gold palate.

I added a little bling to my favorite reading corner with silver jingle bell tree.

And finally, here’s our Christmas tree in the living room. Nothing very unique here…to keep the red splash going, I added a red ribbon around the tree and more red glass balls. The kids did the rest (well, I did move a few things around after they went to bed).

So what is your style of holiday decorating? Are you over-the-top, a minimalist, or somewhere in-between?