Sweet simplicity! Dress your holiday home in comfort and joy.
Simple inspiration leads to personalized Christmas decor on this family farm.
For Laura Putnam, Christmas decorating involves more than just bringing out the same boxes of tinsel and bows each year. First she picks a color or element to begin planning her festive decor. It’s a tradition she started about eight years ago. “In this case, it was the chalkboard that my husband and I built to use on our mantel,” she says.
Laura lives on Finding Home Farms, nestled in the Hudson Valley region of New York, with her husband, Dana, and two daughters, whom she refers to online as Sunshine and Peanut. Dana comes from a family of maple syrup makers, so he handles the sugar side of their farm’s business while Laura maintains the blog, is responsible for all marketing and product development and coordinates events at the farm.
Once Laura decided on the chalkboard as the starting point this particular Christmas, she chose to use red as the featured color, marrying it with hints of black and white and mixing in greenery here and there. “I am a big fan of the green in holiday decorating being the natural green of evergreens and using red in decor options, and I love the graphic impact of adding black and white to the mix,” she says.
Her decorating process focuses on keeping things simple and saving money whenever possible. Since Laura loves using greenery in her holiday setup, she cuts costs by mixing real with fake.
Another clever trick that she turns to is tucking inexpensive, simple ornaments into bowls or glass jars as an easy way to introduce holiday cheer to multiple rooms.
“This allows an opportunity to spread your decorating throughout the whole home without spending too much money or overcomplicating your efforts,” she says.
Christmas is the time when Laura goes all-in on dressing up her home, something she gets to share with her family. “Our daughters love getting involved as well, especially when it comes to decorating our tree with all their childhood ornaments.”