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  • Style Tip Articles

    You Don’t Need Candy Canes: Easy, Sophisticated Holiday Decorating

    Red and Green pillows

    Part 1: How to keep the red-and-green theme

    By Cathy Lee, RSVPstyle

    Dressing up your home for the holidays doesn’t have to be as time-consuming or costly as you might think. My tip for you is to accessorize with household items that you already have, or complement them with a few new accessories you can use year-round.

    Let’s focus on the living room. For most people this is the main showcase for Christmas decorations, with a beautiful Christmas tree starring as the centerpiece. And since we’re going sophisticated, let’s stay away from the fun but corny candy canes, snowmen, Santa Claus and red-nosed reindeer.

    Cranberry and pine hurricanes

    An easy way to give the living room a festive feel is to start with pops of color on the sofa. Stay away from the obvious choice of simply pairing red and green pillows: It gets the job done, but there’s no real interest there. Instead, be sure that at least one of the pillows has an element of texture to it. This tip is especially handy if you already have pillows in Christmas colors. I started with a solid green pillow I already had and paired it with this fantastic red coral-like pillow from Pacific Orient Traders. (You can watch the video segment that inspired this article by going to the homepage and clicking on Videos.)

    And here are two more points. First, using texture to contrast one thing in a pairing with something else of a different color can apply to other accents like candles, candleholders and bowls as well. Second, when Christmas is over, your new pillows can easily be reworked into your everyday decor. Pair the red textured pillow with a solid red one, or a green pillow with another green or yellow pillow.

    For my coffee table, I wanted an earthy feel to complement my sofa accents. You may already have hurricanes like this bronze-colored pair. If not, look for oversized ones that you can fill with small accents. One I filled with fresh cranberries and the other with pine cones, adding holiday color and texture to ordinary household accessories.

    Throughout the year, use these hurricanes to decorate for other holidays, or fill them with interesting textures like sand, shells, glass pebbles or river rocks.

    Part 2: Tired of red and green? Try some holiday shimmer