January Decor 2018

I love decorating for January. I know you are saying- Honey, it's still December! True, but I am not one of those people who can let decorations sit after the holiday. My tree and accessories come down the day after Christmas. And I like to decorate for January so that the room is festive for our annual New Year's party.

How do I decorate for January? The weather outside is bleak (right now it is 15 degrees without wind chill) and even the lightest days have a grey cast. I crave light and sparkle, and if it's going to be cold and nasty then we should at least have snow and icicles. If nature doesn't cooperate, I recreate these inside to help me through the longest month of the year. I go silver, ice, and glitter!

Above is my vintage Putz village in the snow. I have always loved these little houses. A lady who had a beautiful one for sale confessed that she had a bunch of them that she wished she could sell all at once. It was her mother's whole collection. I winced when she said she would take $35 for lot. I may have mentioned before that I am very frugal...But now I am so very glad that I splurged. Aren't they happy?

I stack three cake stands and make nests of Fiber-fill for a little Swiss Alpine mountain. Someday I'll figure out how to get lights all hidden in the "snow" to make the houses shine.

 

  

On the other side of the room I have mercury glass pinecone lights strung up above an assortment of trees found at Goodwill and the Dollar General.

The platter of snow holds a collection of 40's pinecone people. They could have gone out for Christmas, but I think that a little gnome band with a snowman lighting the way is perfect for January.

Squeaky is glamorous in a Snow Queen crown. 

Grandpa's clock is draped with a crystal strand. The little trees are twigs I picked up in the yard and either glittered, snowed, or painted. They stand in old ceramic insulators. The "runner" underneath is just three sheets of scrapbook paper printed with wood grain and dusted with yummy glitter.

 Fluffy is ready to ring in the New Year and guards the box of noise makers and crowns we will wear for our party on the Eve.

The dining room window is one of my favorite things. I have an old swag of frosty twigs that I bought at a Christmas sale. Under is a string of lights with glass icicles covers.

  The hanging decoration is a vintage one that I found and the lady assured me in years past it had rotated when a battery was placed in the cylinder at the top. I have not had luck with that yet (need to get a boy to look at it). Still, it glimmers and shines so that it makes me smile. It's almost like having a disco ball in the dining room ;). This makes me all kinds of happy.

My table has very simple decor so that it is easy to clear off. New Year's Eve mean fondue, so the table will be covered with newspaper and ready to be dirty!

A cake stand manages to make even simple things look elegant. The snowman and deer are just two ornaments from my pop's childhood, secured with a bit of Sticky Tack and then dusted with iridescent snow flakes. The glitter covered candles are actually battery operated. I love using real candles, but sometimes not having wax drips is nice.

This is my kitchen pass-through. The star lights are staying up from Christmas. The turquoise tree and two globes were from Goodwill. I made the one on the left from an artichoke jar, a dollar bottle brush tree, and fake snow.

 The tree on my kitchen table was snow white when I bought it at Dollar General some twelve years ago. It has aged to a gorgeous tea-stained color. The topper is an angel gifted from my Dearest Friend.

 All the greenery that topped the frames in my living room for Christmas are still there. The red berries are packed up and I tucked silvery twigs in lots of them. The one over the woodstove has more mercury lights.

All in all, bright, silvery light. Lots of shining to delight my eyes and uplift me in the darkest month of the year. New Year's Eve will soon be here with fondue dinner of oil pots waiting for shrimp, chicken, and pork dipped in beer batter. Other pots will heat a white wine and cheese sauce for dipping mushroom, cauliflower, and broccoli. Then the games begin! 

We play games around the table until the Midnight hour. After a while we'll get hungry again, and I'll bring out the individual pots of chocolate fondue. There will be plates of cherries, strawberries, bananas, pretzels, marshmallows... all manner of lovely things that are all the better smothered in gooey chocolate. Sated once again we will play more games, until someone finally realizes the awaited time is near. We'll turn on the TV to find the big crystal ball, waiting to drop in Times Square. We will count out the last moments, a glass of sparkling white grape juice in hand. And at the strike of twelve we will kiss and hug and just be so very grateful for a new year to make new mistakes, and birth new dreams.


"And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." - Rainer Maria Rilke

May 2018 be a year of joy, health, and peace for you, Dear Reader!