Holiday Home 2022

It’s a few days until Christmas, the snow continues to pile up outside & the house is decked out in fresh greens.

Here’s a look at how I decorated our house this year. I used Cedar, Noble Fir and eucalyptus.

This year red ribbon has been popular in my shop and I used shades of it in our home too.

The constants for me are fresh wreaths inside & out, pine/fir boughs in every room & bathroom, a tree alternative like branches or this year our 5′ tall ficus wrapped with lights.

I made 3 wreaths for the front windows from the same boxwood plant in our yard that I use every year. The more I prune it, the better it grows back.

There are lots of plastic ornaments available at thrift stores that can be painted. I used homemade chalk paint to change the bright shiny blue to a matte off-white that reminds me of snowballs. Make sure to let the paint dry between coats

This garland on the mantle is made up of a bunch of jars from our pantry. Real ones dry up as soon as the fireplace is on so I wanted to try an alternative. It works well, I would advise using large, wide jars that won’t tip over and fall.

The bowl that holds the pinecones we found belonged to my Great Nana.

This black vessel was my Nonna’s and the ornament was made by my mum with leftover wool from a coat I made.

The cedar is real as lasts a few weeks as long as the water is topped up. At the end of the holidays I will take apart the wreaths & put the greens in the yard waste.

Happy Holidays!

Holiday 2022 – Decorating Plans

Winter has already arrived in our city so I’m skipping right to holiday decorating. The snow came before I hit publish on the Fall Decorating blog post.

Here’s a look at what I am making this holiday season, for sale in my Etsy shop & my website.

Linen stockings are available these 6 different neutral fabrics:

The stockings can be used for many years to come. Leaving them neutral and unadorned allows endless possibilities to accessorize to suit future decor too.

Handmade Quilt by @thehappythimble

Here are the same cream stockings, 2 different ways:

Last year I introduced 100% silk ribbons when I couldn’t find anything in stores that I liked.

The ribbons are only available in my Etsy shop. New this year are these rusty reds and browns.

Etsy Shop :

Upcoming Decorating Event!

I love decorating for holidays!

This year I’m so excited to be decorating a sustainable show home called Wilden Living Lab for the Homes for the Holidays Tour. It is a fundraiser for the Central Okanagan Hospice Association.

The theme is Locally Sourced & Locally Made. Tickets are available online for the event happening Nov 19th here in Kelowna.

I’ve been collecting driftwood, pinecones and local evergreens to make lots of fresh wreaths.

More to come with ideas for how to create a natural, sustainable Christmas atmosphere.

Looking for inspiration & tutorials?

There are lots available here, search “wreath” to find more on the blog.

Holiday Decorating 2021

Here’s a look at some of the holiday decorating and wreaths I made for 2021. I will do a second post with all the wreaths from this year.

If you’ve been reading my blog or seen my Instagram, you’ll know that I love making wreaths and using fresh material to decorate.

Fresh Greenery

We try to limit how much stuff we store in bins so using fresh greens that go into the yard waste at the end of season does the trick…and bonus smells good too! The only place I use artificial is for a staircase garland.

I started early with making boxwood wreaths to hang in our windows with greens clipped from our yard and silk ribbons that I made (available in my Etsy shop).

Boxwood will last a good 6-8 weeks indoors, especially if it gets some moisture from fogged up windows.

Tree Alternatives

I cut branches off some of our trees and shrubs to make “trees” in the front planters, indoors and as out Christmas tree.

I have tried potted trees in the past but they need to be maintained all year so instead I use branches. That way, at the end of season to the yard waste they go.

Benefits of using branches instead of trees:

• No trees wasted
• Less maintenance than a potted tree
• Nothing plastic and bulky that needs to be stored.

Front Door Decor

The front porch area changed in the Spring with the One Room Challenge when I added seating. For winter I made a new pillow cover …maybe we’ll have a cup of hot chocolate here on a mild day.

The front door set up is similar to last year. I start setting it up in November with a winter look and then add some sparkle in December near Christmas.

After the holidays, I remove the sparkle and keep this display for the rest of winter. I added battery powered tiny lights to the trees that add a glow to the trees for the 3 pm sunset.

For the past few years I have been selling wreaths locally in December. I will share more pictures of the ones I made this year in another blog post.

To see more photos of the outdoor decorating I have a few Reels on my Instagram to get a more detailed look.

Linen Stockings & Silk Ribbons

Recently I have turned my love of decorating into items available in my shop.

Well made pieces made with natural materials aren’t always easy to find in stores so I’m making them.

I have several neutral linen fabrics that can be mixed and matched. They can be personalized with ribbons, ornaments to change the look over the years.

Most of the time I make ribbons for myself and now added them to the shop. They are 100% silk with frayed edges and available in a few metallic colours.

https://www.shibangdesigns.ca/collections/holiday/products/minimalist-linen-blend-stocking-oatmeal

Stripe, Cream and Oatmeal

Stockings with Silk Ribbons

Right now my Etsy shop is where I have the ribbons available. www.shibangdesigns.etsy.com

Wreaths

Here’s a look at my winter wreath making. These boxwood wreaths are for the front windows in my home. We are so lucky that someone planted a boxwood shrub in our yard years ago.

I cleared out the Fall decor (cooked the pumpkins, put the grasses in yard waste) and I’m beginning to decorate the front porch, more to come soon!

Holiday Decorating & Wreaths – 2020

Here’s a look at some of the decorating I did for our home this year as well as the wreaths I made. Pine from the yard was the main green used, I had been waiting for months to do some strategic tree trimming.

I started with pine that I cut from a bush out front. I kept the trees simple and saved decorating them until December.

I like to use greens from the yard (in our former home that was Blue Spruce) and then add one special element, in this case Eucalyptus.

From early November until mid December it is wreath making time! I love making them and sell them locally during this time.

This was boxwood clipped from our yard that became a wreath for above the kitchen window as it is long lasting and doesn’t drop needles.

This was the annual giant wreath that I make to hang behind the kitchen table and bring in that Christmas scent. It’s hard to tell here but the wreath is 3 feet wide and very heavy. It is made with spruce so it has a short indoor shelf life.

At the front area of the house is this corner where I keep extra material and wreaths before they are picked up.

Once it was December I added some baubles to the trees and a bow to the front door wreath just before Christmas. I like to extend the season and gradually decorate.

These Baby Blue Eucalyptus wreaths are one of my favourites because they smell incredible and are long lasting.

This year I was able to cut 5 branches long enough to be mini Christmas trees.

This was the other big (by our standards) Christmas tree.

Here’s another reminder of the transformative power of paint. More on this kitchen makeover from last year can be found here.

Holiday Home – Blue Spruce Wreaths & Garland

Making wreaths & decorating for the holidays using greenery from the yard has become a major passion of mine in recent years. I like to try something different each year using what I have available outside or foraged and then I usually add one element that is bought – like Eucalyptus.

Here is a look at our Newmarket home decked out for the holidays in 2018 using Blue Spruce from our yard as the base.

This beautiful, mature Blue Spruce supplied greenery every year that I filled the house with – I can’t believe in our first year living here that I was buying boughs of pine when I had this readily available.

I save all pruning until November and December now so that I will have plenty of material for decorating. In the case of this tree, I actually found that it grew more small boughs thanks to all of the small cutting done each winter.

I also made a 15 foot garland using the Blue Spruce by wrapping it around our Christmas lights making it an easier job to create. This went over the garage door.

The base of the wreath is made on a wire frame and then I added some dried silver dollar Eucalyptus I’d saved from something else I’d made in the summer. The pinecones I collected with my kids when out on walks.

The picture frame moulding made the perfect display area to hang a sash that I sewed from some silk look material I had. Since we choose not to have a large Christmas tree I think I tend to over compensate with fresh wreaths and garlands!

A detail of this table trestle leg – have you seen what it looked like before in this Apartment Therapy feature? It was a big project to refinish the table but so worth it.

Here’s a glimpse at the front of the house with the garland. There is a post showing how this garage door looked before it was painted here.

There is a tutorial on making a fresh wreath like this one here. Also instructions on this shiplap wall can be found here.

How to Make a Fresh Holiday Wreath

This weekend I’m planning to start some of my holiday wreath making using the pine and boxwood that we have in our current yard. I started some clipping last weekend with this simple branch. The wreaths here were made with driftwood I collected in the summer and this fireplace got a paint update last year.

If you follow me on Instagram I have created a hashtag #shibangwreaths to catalogue some of my wreath projects over the years. There’s a lot that doesn’t make it to my blog but it is on my Instagram @shibangdesigns.

Happy decorating & foraging!

New in the Studio: Screen Printed Tea Towels

Here’s a look inside my studio from the side of the room that I haven’t shown before. I did a mini makeover last year with several more DIY projects, which included building a new work table for screen printing.

With all of the focus on doing home improvement projects, I wanted to make an accessory for the finished space, in this case the kitchen.  Here’s a look at the process and finished pieces.

 

 

They are designed to be functional for everyday use and the linen will get softer with every wash.

Also, a tutorial for this wreath as seen in the photo above will be coming to the blog within the next week.

This board and batten wall works well for hanging fabric to dry too. The tutorial on how I built is here and was recently featured on Apartment Therapy.

Fresh Eucalyptus Wreath DIY

 

Every holiday season I love to make wreathes, each time trying something new. This was my first attempt at making one out of only Eucalyptus.

For the wreath form I used a smaller 10 ” wire frame and 3 bunches of Seeded Eucalyptus from the grocery store.

It took me a few days until I started making the wreath and in that time some of the leaves had started to dry out even though I had kept the stems in water. I started with the dried pieces and made small bundles in the same way that I made the boxwood wreath last year.

These leaves worked the best. When there were so many seeded pieces it was difficult to work with.

Here is the wreath one week later, it dried out within 2 days of making it. Hopefully it will last the whole winter and won’t need to be constantly cleaned up like cedar.

Update:

This post has been getting a lot of traffic which makes me think that people would like to see more examples of Eucalyptus wreaths so I’ve added a new post with others I’ve made.

Baby Blue Wreaths – 2019

Staircase Reveal

If you’ve been following along on Instagram or previous blog posts, I’ve been sharing glimpses into my staircase makeover. The wall had been painted for two years, waiting for moulding and thanks to Metrie it has become a reality. There was no major renovation involved. I broke down the steps, starting with painting the walls & staircase spindles, refinishing the banister and finishing with  chair rail and panel moulding that starts at the front entry and continues to the upstairs hallway. The painting and refinishing had a lot of impact, but it wasn’t until I added the moulding that the staircase became a strong feature.

This was a big learning curve for me, but it’s not impossible, it just takes patience and attention to detail. It’s amazing to see how much dimension the moulding brings, and it makes this formerly overlooked space seem larger. Immediately after finishing I made a fresh garland to dress up the staircase since it’s now a main focal point and I was feeling the holiday spirit.

This is the view from the main floor.
That’s the kitchen off to the right.The view from the kitchen.The moulding continuing through the front hallway.

This is a reminder of what it looked like when we first moved in and what I did to get here.

Below are the Moulding Profiles that I Used:

Metrie MDF Chair Rail

Metrie French Curves  Panel Moulding

With this project now completed I definitely have my eye on some other plain walls in the house that could benefit from some architectural elements. Are you thinking about adding some moulding to your home? If so, I have shared my process with lots of photos in the blog posts below.

Previous Posts:

Adding Architectural Elements – BEFORE

DIY Trim Tutorial

Improved Boxwood Wreath

Are you planning to make your own fresh wreaths this holiday season? It’s not too complicated and right now all of the boughs are readily available at grocery stores or maybe in your own yard.  Last year I shared how I made a boxwood wreath and this year I’m sharing an improved version.

Supplies:

Once you have the basics then all you need to add (or clip from your yard) is the fresh greenery.

• Wreath Form ( Wire or Grapevine)
• Paddle Wire
• Pruning Shears or Sharp Scissors
• Fresh Greenery (2 Bunches for a Fuller Wreath)

 

To achieve a full and even wreath the key is to make small bundles of greenery that are roughly the same size. Rather than trying to use one large branch, cut it into smaller pieces, hold that bundle and secure it to the frame. Continue layering the bundles and securing them with the paddle wire.

Also using more greenery helps too. I used two large bunches of boxwood for this wreath compared to last year when I only used one. Last year I wrapped wire around each bundle that I added to the frame but this year I skipped that step and only did one continuous length of wire for the whole wreath.

These are the basics but berries and a mixture of greens could be added too.

 

Boxwood Wreath 2015

A few photos of it finished wreath.