Simple Christmas Decorating Ideas With Fresh Greenery

This post may provide you with ideas if you're looking for quick and natural holiday decorating ideas for your home's front door and outside. 

I finally retired the worn-out artificial garlands that I had been using for years to adorn my Christmas porch two Decembers ago. I chose to experiment with evergreen garlands instead. 

My house was very recently included to the Napa Historic Society house tour, and I was in a terrible situation. (The historic society must have been as well, or they wouldn't have included my home on the trip.) I finished it off by adding a wreath and a cedar garland to my front entrance.  

I've since expanded on that concept by adorning the porch with additional garlands, pinecones, and evergreen cuttings as well as homemade door swag. additionally some subtle fairy illumination. 

I discovered that this was a lot less work than all those years lugging out ladders for light stringing and wrangling up in the eaves faux-garland. And as a huge bonus, I prefer the way it looks!

It must be ladder-free for me. Although I'm not terrified of heights, I simply lack the time and motivation to do so. Try any of these suggestions if, like me, you're a busy single mum and cannot deck the halls like Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation.

How to install real cedar garland around the entrance

To determine how much garland I would need, I first took measurements around my door frame. If you reside in the Napa region, you can get live cedar garland at Van Winden's Garden Centre by the foot or at Home Depot in pre-cut 15' lengths.

Although my door frame is bigger than typical, the 18' garland I purchased almost reaches the ground.

 I carried a kitchen chair out onto my porch, climbed up, and, armed with a hammer and some long, slender finishing nails, secured the garland with approximately three left, right, and center-placed nails into the top of my door frame.  

If you don't look directly up, you can't really see the nails when it's not Christmas, but if you're worried, you could go the additional mile and paint the nails the same colour as your house to make them blend in even better. 

The garland was then placed after some little fuss and cursing on my part. 

I created a door swag, too. From Trader Joe's, I purchased greenery and silver dollar eucalyptus. I added more by trimming from the redwood street trees in the area. Another lovely, merry accent would be holly or other red berries. 

Visit How To Make A Christmas Evergreen Swag [Easy Holiday DIY] to learn more.

Garlands: Real vs. Fake

A brief word on real versus fake. Both are lovely; they just have different aesthetics. Faux garlands are a very variable investment. The live cedar garland is one of the prettiest live and faux alternatives I've seen online and costs about $24.99 for 15' in-store at the time of writing. 

Over time, faux will become weathered and need to be replaced. On January 1st, live vegetation is disposed away in the garden waste bin to eventually be used as free soil (thanks to Napa county). 

adding (mainly free) foliage to the porch's remaining decorations

I added a few additional feet of garland to my purchase and strung it around the back of my black porch furniture in the Chippendale design. 

However, purchasing a lot of greenery would be pricey, so I found another solution. I hurried over to the "Avenue of Redwoods" in my neighbourhood and cut redwood saplings from the base of the street trees. 

The giant coastal redwoods produce water sprouts all around their bases that must be constantly pruned and sheared in order to prevent the sprouts from becoming as tall as I am. (See under)

Redwood trimmings from the neighbourhood are stored in a stylish steel bucket and are draped over the porch bench.

You can also use other evergreen plants in your garden, such as juniper, cypress, magnolia, holly, laurel, yew, and eucalyptus. 

It need not be the common cold-climate conifers. Try to think outside the box! 

I disposed of the trimmings in a plastic bucket filled with water, then placed the bucket inside a rustic metal container that I had purchased from Brick & Mantel. The last thing you want to do in the new year is clean up rust stains, so if you're using a steel bin that will rust like this one, be careful to set it on a "porch coaster" of some like beneath.

A number of sugar pine cones were taken by the boys and myself from the land of their relative years ago. I use these all year long because they are so gorgeous. Additionally, they have held up flawlessly, so don't be hesitant to use them in your Christmas décor. 

In a wooden bowl, I discovered sugar pine cones, local redwood trimmings, and some cedar that had fallen off the garland. The mossy branch has been on the porch consistently

.

I added some lighting last. In fact, I wrapped the door swag with a fairy light set that I had discovered in my drawer. Later, I made the decision that I needed to build the bench, so I ordered a few more sets from Amazon. All make use of triple-A batteries and have an on/off switch. 

The cedar garland on the porch bench and my evergreen swag both have fairy lights now.

 

Voila! completed holiday porch decoration. It didn't take long at all once I figured it out. Next year, do the same!

 

                                    Backstory of the Christmas greenery decoration

JIC If you're wondering how all of this Christmas greenery came to be, here's a brief explanation:

Did you know that the festive custom of "decking the halls with boughs of holly" has pagan origins? It is real. In reality, a lot of the decorations we associate with Christmas have roots in ancient pagan customs. Instead of attempting to overtly forbid winter solstice celebrations, the church determined that it was a better course of action to incorporate pagan customs with Christian beliefs. Smart! 

Decorating for the holidays, such as hanging evergreen boughs and swags from doorways and around the house, dates back to ancient celebrations of the winter solstice that took place long before Christianity. Jol, a pagan winter celebration, is where the word "Yule" from, while "tide" is Old English meaning "time." 

The only plant that survived the harsh Northern European winters was an evergreen, serving as a symbol of the resilience of life in the face of adversity. (Really black, since the winter solstice has no daylight!) Therefore, they were honoured by the prehistoric pagans at their winter solstice festivals. 

The first DIY winter holiday evergreen decorators came from pagans in Scandinavia, Germany, and the British Isles. 

This year, my holiday Christmas décor is all about green, inside and out, so maybe I'm feeling my Celtic heritage. There isn't a red poinsettia or other decoration to be found. 

Actually, I believe that green's calming and serene qualities are more to blame. I won't go over the difficulties we faced this year and last again, so I'll just say, "Serenity now!" (extra points if you understand that). 

[Learn more about the origins of some of our Christmas customs.]

Are you prepared to give your porch and front entrance a natural makeover? I wasn't sure when I started, but it ended up being a simple and enjoyable method for Christmas decoration that fills your home with festive and hospitable Yuletide spirit.