Here are a few guidelines to help you decorate your home for Christmas.
1. Start small. Just choose items that you really enjoy looking at. Pick a few each year, and your collection will grow over the years. Find a good spot for each item--in the bathroom window, by the kitchen sink, on the dresser in your child’s room, etc. The first year you buy a tree, you might want to splurge and go ahead and get quite a few decorations so it doesn’t look too skimpy. Or, if you are short on cash, fill it with bows and pine cones the first year, then buy a few new ornaments each year.
2. Where to shop. 100 yen stores are a good place to begin. Check several times during the season, because when they get in a new shipment, the cute items sell out quickly. Also, be sure to check different chains, and different stores within the same chain--sometimes they carry different items. Be sure to check in different departments--vine wreaths and florist’s wire in the flower or gardening section, ribbons in the gift-wrap section, and sometimes toys make cute decorations. If you see a wreath that would cost 500 yen in any other store, but it has ugly decorations, go ahead and buy it, and take the ugly decorations off, and put decorations you like on. Although most 100 yen stores used to sell Christmas trees, In the last couple of years, only the 99 yen stores/ Lawson 100 have sold Christmas trees for 100 yen. Some 100 yen stores don’t sell the trees anymore, and some only sell larger ones for more. I use these small trees not just as trees, but sideways as a swag, or as greenery for candles and wreaths. Other places to shop: Nitori usually has very cute decorations at very reasonable prices. Seiyu doesn’t usually have a very big selection, but what they do sell is reasonably priced, and you can find some cute things if you shop early. Most places begin selling Christmas decorations just before or after Halloween. The Keio D2 home center has good prices for plain wreaths and hooks for hanging wreaths on doors.
3. Coordinate all the decorations in one room. You can choose one or two colors, or you can choose an idea to build a theme around, such as music or toys or gingerbread.
Candles or plastic balls are inexpensive ways to create a color coordinated look for a room. Ribbons can be used in many ways, too-- bows to put on wreaths or a tree, or as an accent on a basket. When they all are the same color, it pulls the decorations in the room together, to look like they belong together.
Traditional colors for Christmas are red and white and green, and sometimes gold or silver is added. If the colors in the room would not look good with red, then maroon or pink might be a better choice. Blue and white have become a popular color combination for Christmas decorations, and occasionally you see hot pink and lime green ornaments. Another way to think of the decorations is whether they are shiny and shimmery, or if they are rustic and natural looking. Usually these two would not be mixed in one room. Choose one room to decorate with dark, rustic colors, and another room to decorate with shiny, shimmery ornaments.
4. Doors, windows, walls, and any horizontal surface can potentially become an area to decorate. What would look good in each space? If there is already a wreath or tree in the room, you probably want to come up with something different for that empty space. Would a nativity set or a snowman look good in that spot? How about a group of candles, or a basket of pine cones? I put my every day decorations away during the season in order to open up more spaces to decorate for Christmas. Then when I put my Christmas decorations away, the everyday items seem new again.When I am planning the decorations for a room, I like to sit in a room, and look at each surface and try to imagine which if my decorations would look nice in that space. I may try several items out--sometimes it does not look as good as I thought it would. If I can’t find anything that will work in that space, when I go shopping, I look for items that would fit that space, and would coordinate with the rest of the decorations in that room.
5. Match the item with the space. if it is a big wall, it needs a big wreath, or a collection of smaller items--a small one by itself would look silly. If it is a tall, narrow space, it needs a tall narrow decoration, such as a Christmas tree or a vase with branches painted white. If you have several small items that you want to display, you can put them on the shelves next to the bathroom sink, or you can put them in various places on a bookshelf, or line them up on a widow sill. If all your shelves are already full, then move some items and put them away for the season, so that you have spaces you can decorate. 2 more ways to display small items: buy or make a small shelf, or buy a stand to hang them from. The hundred yen stores used to sell shelves, but don’t seem to anymore. I think Nitori still does.
6. Arrange decorations so they roughly fit within a triangle. It can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. This is much more interesting than if they are all the same height.
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7. Keep rearranging and adding layers until you like how it looks. Add a cloth under an item, or add branches cut from a hundred yen tree. Add a bow, or group 2 or 3 things together.
Once you have gotten the decorations the way you like them, you may want to clean up your house--if there is a lot of clutter around, the decorations lose some of their luster. For ideas on how to do this, check out Life Tip’s “Getting Organized.”
