How to Decorate for Winter * After * Christmas | DIYs for Simple Winter Decorating on a Budget

First and foremost, I wanted to wish everybody a very happy new year, and of course as the new year is upon us, that means Christmas is officially over. So I'm going to share with you guys in this video how we can transition all of our holiday decor into our winter oasis. So without further ado, let's go ahead and jump right into it. Of course, one of the most obvious things that we need to kind of put away for the course, removing all the ornaments, removing all the lights, and then disassembling the tree, putting it in a box, kind of the boring stuff, but you've got to do it so then that way you can start incorporating all of those winter elements. With the tree removed, I never realized how much space that tree actually takes up. My living room felt like it doubled in size, which is actually a kind of nice thing when you have small kids. So I just then brought back in the green chair that's usually always here as well as the light that we thrifted for seven dollars and a little side table. A question that kept coming up for the Christmas video was where did I get that Santa print, and the truth is it's totally free and you guys can get it for free too. Now for winter though, instead of doing a really like Santa specific or holiday specific screensaver, I will choose something that's just like a winter scene tv wall art, and then I'll adjust the settings on my tv just to make it look as flat and as realistic as possible without necessarily having a frame tv. And a general rule when you are trying to put up some wall art that really reflect the season that you're in, so we're talking about winter, so what are the things that are naturally happening in the winter months? So let me give you a quick example. I have both of these black and white photographs wrapped in a black frame. I thrifted both of these in the past. They were each just three dollars, so the one is of a kind of foggy winter scene, and then the other is of some canoes maybe on a lake, which just reads a little bit more summer than it does winter for me. You can also just make or source your own kind of winter inspired artwork. So I know a lot of us have these kind of one-off random frames, and these are the perfect thing to kind of make your own artwork, or you could just print something out on your computer, or try checking out the books at your thrift store. Sometimes you can find like figure skating or ski books, and you can just steal a picture, a photograph from one of those books, and just add it to your frame, and it's like instant, inexpensive winter artwork. When it comes to different kind of decor items to style shelves, or any surface really, I found this kind of ceramic lidded pot here. I also found this greenery at the bins. So for a few dollars, things like this at Pottery Barn are so expensive. So if you can just try to get the look for less, shopping secondhand, combining a couple different things together. Now when summer rolls around, I might put some succulents in here based on the inspiration from Pottery Barn, but I think for right now these are just nice. They're not super season specific, which is really what you want to go for during the winter months. Of course, another great thing to style with, just make sure that the books that you're choosing are A, things that you're interested in, and B, fit in with your color palette for the winter months. So of course, Black is a non-negotiable for me. These great escape books from McGee and Co. are quite expensive. This book, according to the cover, retails for $50, and I just paid $3.99 for it at Savers, so definitely a significant savings. And then most recently when I was at the Hartville Thrift Shop, I don't know how many times I'm gonna find this home body book at the thrift store. I think this is the third time I've found this book, and it's such a good book, so I don't know why people keep donating it. Along with books, another thing that I like to kind of switch up with the seasons is my book ends, just making them feel, again, more kind of seasonally appropriate. So I like to stick with things that are metal or marble or a more rustic feel, like when I made those wheel cog book ends. Those are all really nice things to add during this time of year, especially. Or you can even just use something free, like taking two similarly sized pine cones if they're large enough, just putting them on either end of your book stacks. Or if you have a bunch of small ones, you can decorate them on a stack of books just as like a decorative object. Or if you are someone like myself who has tons of cloches, you can display them in there, maybe with some fairy lights. I also found these faux antlers at the Goodwill for just $10, added a stand to the base of them, so it just becomes like a decorative object that is seasonally appropriate. Moving along now to textiles, which if any season, now is the season to really embrace tons and tons of warm, cozy textiles. So you want to stick with things like suede, faux fur, velvet, leather, and also just removing anything that feels really holiday specific. So I have found this scarf that I placed on the back end of my loveseat, just decided to replace it with a more neutral one that I previously thrifted. This houndstooth one just gives it a little bit of pattern, but gives a more neutral look overall. And you really don't necessarily have to go out to pottery barn or even home goods to buy really great pillows. You can find them at your thrift stores. So for example, I found these four pillows. One of the pillows was 50 cents and the other were $3 a piece. So under $10 for four decorative pillows that all fall in line with that kind of winter aesthetic that I'm trying to achieve. Now I know there's a fine line with textiles and kind of comfortability bringing those kind of secondhand textiles home. So my rule of thumb is if I feel that I will be able to completely disinfect the pillow, then I have no problem bringing it home and putting it in my space. However, to wash these pillows, for example, these are a faux fur polyester pillow. They are recommended that you just spot clean them only, which can be a bit of a challenge because I picked them up secondhand and I want to make sure that they're disinfected. So what I like to do is just unzip the pillow, take the insert out, put the pillow cover inside out, and then zip it back up, spraying it first with a disinfectant spray and then steaming that disinfectant spray and then just letting it air dry. And I've done this now maybe three times and it really doesn't damage the integrity of the faux fur, but I also feel really confident that it is in fact disinfected. And I know even though this pillow did come brand new with tags from the thrift store, I'm still going to apply that same kind of concept, going in first with that disinfectant spray and then just steaming it. And I just have that kind of reassurance and peace of mind that what I'm bringing in is completely safe. So when I was searching through all of my inspiration images, one consistent theme was that it had kind of a roaring fire and a lot of firewood beside it. Just grabbed this previously thrifted and then DIYed metal basket and I'm just going to fill it with some firewood that I picked up at my local grocery store. And although my fireplace is an electric fireplace and I'm not actually going to use the logs, it still just makes it look a little bit more realistic, makes it feel a little bit more winter in here, but it was so cost effective because I just used things that I already had. Moving along now into the rest of the space. So next up I had to take down all these beautiful garlands from my stair rail and to store the garlands because I have several of these Norfolk garlands and wreaths and they are pretty thick. They'll basically take up, they'll eat away an entire just black box. So what I found instead of just ordering something online, the best thing to use is actually those kind of mattress bags if you ever have those bed in a bag bags. The clear ones are the best ones. I find these all the time at the Goodwill bins. These are great for storing florals. I don't really keep them for spring and summer but definitely for fall and winter. Any garland, any wreath can just be shoved right in here and it is nice because you can see what's inside and it also has a handle so that you can hang it up on a wall so that it doesn't take up your shelf. Moving along now throughout the rest of the entryway, not too many changes here. We're keeping the cabinet that we remade, the mirror that we thrifted, this DIY vase as well. Just removing anything that felt really holiday specific. So anything with a ribbon gets taken down. Anything that felt a little bit too Christmassy, we're obviously just going to remove. So one thing that was really nice is the stems that I chose already had that kind of pine look which are still winter. I think the stems are still okay. If they're trees, that's when it swings a little bit too Christmassy for me personally. But we're just going to remove that velvet ribbon that we added. And just to make a fuller arrangement, magnolia is another one that's not necessarily Christmas specific. It's kind of like pine. I think you can use it all winter long. So I'm just going to place these magnolia stems inside of here just to give it a more full look. Also just swapping the tray for something a little bit more neutral. Again, another example of that, I found this really beautiful blue kind of glazed bowl that had these ever so small little feet at the bottom, but just the wrong color. So I went in with some spray paint that I already had. Cost a dollar. I had all the other supplies already. So it's a really inexpensive change to make. If you happen to watch my Christmas Decorate with me, you'll know that I swapped all these really giant pictures for these black and white pictures that I just printed on my computer. I made mats using just Dollar Tree poster board, and this was really the most time-consuming part of that whole project, was making the mats. And now that Christmas is over, I can easily just put those pictures that were originally there back in their place. But I really like just having the larger mat with the smaller picture, and then just the black and white just makes it feel really like high-end and sophisticated. So now I'm just going to swap out all of those really Christmas-specific pictures, pictures with Santa, or just some winter pictures that we've taken throughout the years with my family. Just placed these Christmas ones in a folder for next year, if I want to use the majority of them, which I'm sure that I will. But now for the winter months, I have this instead. Another change I wanted to make was, if you watched that video, you'll remember when I found this kind of display shelf. I'm not sure what is actually supposed to be in this shelf, but for the holidays I had done that kind of taupe and wax technique, like I mentioned, and then I put a bunch of ornaments inside based on something that I had seen on Anthropologie's website. And now with Christmas being over, I wanted to just use it to display some really beautiful glassware. I don't really have a set of martini glasses or whiskey glasses or anything like that, so I just went to my thrift store. I actually had to go to two of them to find exactly what I was looking for, and then I just filled in some of these openings with this specialty barware. Moving along now into our kitchen and dinette space. We had it totally decked out for the holiday season, and it was so beautiful, but now it's just time to kind of give it a really calm and neutralized look. So a lot of things that you'll see designers do, especially in these kind of like mountain retreat homes, are they'll incorporate sheepskins on the backs of pillows or on benches. We're gonna make it a lot more simple than that. I also found these really beautiful fringe napkins for just 25 cents a piece, and then just to give them again that kind of mountain rustic lodge kind of feel, I'm just going to wrap them with some leather fabric, and then just to secure them in place with this pushpin. Taking these little pine cones, we can turn these now into some little pine cone name card holders if you are hosting, but for the most part it's just me and my family and we're just going to keep it really casual. This is just a really simple way, a neutral kind of tablescape that you can create for just a few dollars in a very short amount of time. For the kitchen, this is really just about kind of paring down and embracing the simplicity of it all. So when it comes to floral arrangements, if there was any floral arrangement that had any berries in there, I just simply removed the berries. I don't need to start from scratch because again to me pine and cedar and all of those greenery are still very winter appropriate. So I'm going to leave those ones inside, save the red berries for next Christmas, and now you can always add more to this. You can add white roses, but you can also just leave it as it is. Sometimes the best things are the most simple of all. For the advent calendar, I just removed all of those little boxes I had created. Now this wall decor stays up here all year long. I can choose to put some kind of wintery kind of things in here, but I like it just kind of as it is, just plain and simple. It adds a nice just kind of rusticity to my space without feeling too busy. Removing any bows, just leaving the books that are always there up, but then just taking away anything that feels really Christmas specific. With all that being said, that really wraps it up for today's video. Thank you guys so much for watching. Let me know down in the comments which hack or find or project was your favorite, and I will see you guys next Sunday. Bye for now!