After-Christmas Decorating Ideas

After the holidays are over, it's time to pack up your decorations and get the house back to its normal state. Before you pack everything up, think about how you can use seasonal items to spruce up your home. There's no limit to the creative ways to use existing items and natural materials to home your home a little more stylish, even after all the seasonal decorations are put in storage.

Let's take a look at a few of my favorite mid-winter décor ideas!

There are so many wonderful ways to use Christmas lights all year long. Many homes have large supplies of Christmas lights that are either carefully rolled up or thrown in a bag for the majority of the year. Why enjoy their inherent luminosity outside the holiday season? These are a few of my favorite ways to decorate with Christmas lights.

Mason jars and Christmas lights are a natural combination, and it takes less than five minutes to gently lay of cluster of Christmas lights into a crystal bowl, chalice, carboy or traditional mason jar. For this project, I love icicle lights because the white-colored wires are very discreet. Lay them in a big jar, and they aren't icicles anymore!

Traditionally used for brewing, carboys and demijohns are ideal containers for displaying your orb of glowing Christmas lights. I even saw an art show one time where carboys were filled with layers of colorful buttons and other trinkets.

Add a bit of romantic luminescence to your space wrapping your bed frame with Christmas lights, or placing a string lights behind a sheer curtain to create a beautifully luminescent surface. Christmas lights are so versatile and they are available in so many colors, which makes them great for decorating throughout the seasons.

Apartment Therapy shared one method for creating a modern Christmas light display by poking the bulbs through a stretched canvas.

*Photo courtesy of: Home Trend Design

Check out these design destinations for more decorating ideas and tutorials for using Christmas lights creatively.

Stickers are a great way to add decorations to virtually any surface. Many of these decorative stickers are reusable, so you can put them up again next year. These snowflake decals are fun, inexpensive and great for kids.

Waldorf window stars made from German or Dutch kite paper or transparency paper are fun to make and beautiful to look at. Each star is made from modular units that become the point of the star. The overlapping units and transparent folds create beautiful patterns. Transparency paper was traditionally used to make kites in Europe. It is waxed, transparent and easy to fold. You can attack the stars to your windows easily using double-stock tape. If you don't have kite paper, try using waxed paper instead. This is a great activity for kids.

***Helpful Hint: UHU Glue Sticks from Saunders Manufacturing are the best for this project. They are tinted light purple but dry clear, so it's easy to see where the glue has been applied.

Useful resources for making your own transparency stars and locating kite paper and other supplies.

When it's cold, snowy and overcast outside, plants can contribute much needed color to your indoor living environment. Forcing bulbs, creating a moss terrarium, purchasing potted herbs, decorating with indoor topiaries and planting a tray of wheat grass are all wonderful ways to make your winter decor a light brighter and more colorful.

Forcing bulbs is a pretty cool process where gardening trick flowering into blooming in the winter or when they would normally be dormant. This process takes a lot of energy out of the bulbs, so they typically don't farewell during the next season. Basically, you want to suspend you bulb just above water, so the roots can grow down, but the bulb won't root. There are specially designed bulb vases to complete this process.

Helpful Hint: Be sure to place your bulbs in a bright area, or they may become top heavy.

These bulbs are ideal for forcing:

Amaryllis

Daffodil

Hyacinth

Paper Whites (mini daffodils)

Many of these bulbs are fragrant too, which only adds to their charm.

In the middle of winter, potted plants and cut greens or flowers can be just the thing to brighten up your space. Herbs like rosemary can be incorporated in your meals, like pork or roasted potatoes, and other plants like ivy can provide a casual source of interest anywhere in your home.

If you can't go outside, why not bring the great outdoors in? Moss is beautiful, versatile and it thrives in low-light environments. It also comes to life in later winter or early spring, which makes it ideal for seasonal decorations.

You can make your own moss terrarium quickly and easily. You will need:

One decorative glass jar or container.

One bag of river pebbles or gravel.

Some soil.

Moss.

Artificial mushrooms

Bonsai pagodas

Decorative Rocks

And other Landscape embellishments.

Simply line the bottom of of your decorative container with a layer of pebbles. Cover this with soil and layer down your moss taking care to tamp it down well, so the moss has good contact with the soil. Incorporate your decorations, add water, place in an area with needs a touch of the outdoors and enjoy!!

TIP: Moss terrariums need lots of moisture, so if you can find are jar that has a lid or can be covered easily, it will help your moss stay nice and healthy.

Ikea is one of the top names in modern lighting, and with good reason! Their products are inexpensive, easy to hook up, and they always look great. Here are a few of my favorites from Ikea and other brands that I wouldn't hesitate to put up anywhere in my home. Proper lighting can enhance the look of the furniture, decor and art in any room. My current favorite is Ikea's wall-mounted reading lamps, which plug in. No electricians required! It doesn't get better than that!

Another thing I like about many of these Ikea lamps is that they use mini-flood lights or type-R reflector bulbs, which are stronger, brighter and great for reading!

Don't forget the bare winter branches, p***y willows and large frond of tropical foliage are all great decorating items, and they're very accessible!

Bare branches create stark lines that are ideal for decorating. Simply choose a vase of your liking and arrange your bare branches or evergreen foliage within in. For a different look, try spray painting your bare branches white, silver gold or some other fun color!

Here are a few of my favorite plants for minimalist arrangements:

P***y willow (The Squidoo spam filter didn't like this one!) ;)

Corkscrew willow

Fothergilla

Evergreens

Fennel

Moneyplant

Cattails

Dried hydrangea blossoms

Boxwood

Philodendron

Banana

In the photo above, fabric design maven Amy Butler shows off her stylish Midwestern home in Ohio. I just love the way she uses simple tropical leaves to create a high-impact statement.

*Photo Courtesy of: David Butler