Front Entry Christmas Decorate With Me 🎄 | Elegant Holiday Entryway Ideas & DIY Mirror Swags

Hey there, YouTube fam. In today's video, we are decking my front door entry halls. I'll be sharing some inspiration on how I styled the products I shared in the previous video, and we will make and hang some very affordable and very beautiful custom mirror swags. As always, thanks for stopping by Lifestyle with Melanie Graves where I share stylish and creative ideas to help you do what makes you happy in your home. We are diving right on in to the front door entry. If you caught my last video, you already saw me unbox and assemble these gorgeous pencil trees. They aren't these though. These are the ones that I've had for the past nine years, maybe from Grandin Road. I love featuring these trees, but they gave out on me last year and I just couldn't bring myself to spend another $500 on pencil trees. But not to worry, YouTube fam, I found some really affordable dupes. They are the same height as my old Grandin Road trees. Not quite as full, but that's okay because we are going to customize these and make them our own. And the best part of all is that we're going to do it for a fraction of the cost. I paid a little over $200 for all three of these trees and they worked out perfectly. So I wanted to do something special behind the trees. And this was not my original idea, but I pulled out this angel. I got her back in 2020 from Hobby Lobby. Normally she goes in the entry to our primary bedroom, but I thought it would be lovely to put her behind the trees. I use the Command Strip picture hanging strips because I didn't want to put holes in the wall here. Not quite sure what I'm doing with this space after the holidays, but these strips worked out perfectly. One of the features that makes this wall art so beautiful is the finish. It's a very shimmery finish on the angel and I wanted to make sure that that didn't go unnoticed. So I'm adding a wall art light over it. And this one is also a no hole light. It literally sticks to your wall so I can take it down after the holidays. I'll make sure to have everything that I possibly can linked in the description box below for you guys. One of the things I love about styling the front door entry for the holidays is that it can give you a little sneak peek into what to expect in the rest of the home because I will typically use the same color story that I'll be carrying throughout the house. So this should give you just a tiny little sneak peek, not a full reveal, but a tiny sneak peek of some of the colors I'll be using this year. And now for what will probably be my favorite part of this video, we are going to create custom mirror swags. If you've been here for a while, you guys know I love a good DIY moment. I feel like I haven't given you enough of them over the past couple years. So I'm excited to do this with you. I found this very affordable, real touch greenery on Amazon. I'll have it linked for you in my description box. I ordered a total of four of these and these will go right over each mirror to kind of balance everything out and tie the entryway together. And I do have to apologize in advance. The sun was sunning the day that I was shooting this for you. So some of the scenes are a little bit bleached out, but you should still be able to see what I'm doing. The first thing I'm doing, I'm just, I'm clamping down the loops at the top of the greenery to make it easier for me to tie them together. And I'm just going to use zip ties to tie the middle part together. And for those of you who are new here, one thing I always like to suggest when you are styling your home for the holidays is to not be afraid to shape that greenery. You really have to touch every single stem, um, give it some bend, flex it out a little bit. You know, that's how you get it to look like it looks in the catalog pictures. You have to shape it, especially your Christmas tree and your garland. So next, now that I've got my base kind of ready, I'm going to start adding in some picks. I found these gorgeous eucalyptus picks that I wanted to incorporate into my Christmas tree this year, just a tiny amount of very light frosting on them. And I liked them so much. I went back and grabbed really, they only had a couple left in stock. I grabbed the last few to go ahead and add them into this swag as well, trying to give you a little bit of a better look with the sun not cooperating. But you can see that these eucalyptus leaves just have just the perfect amount of sparkle, just enough to say, Hi, I'm here. And then there's some gold bells. I'm using bells this year, and some gold pine cones. I love using picks and stems to add into your base because it's just going to give you a nice variation of mixed greenery. And you can add in as much or as little as you want. I went a little less heavy in the entryway this year. Normally, I will do an entire garland over those mirrors. But this year, I wanted to lighten things up a little bit. Our entryway is it's tall, our ceilings are tall, but it's narrow. And I just wanted it to feel very open. Because hopefully my tree we call her Big Bertha will definitely be the star of the show. But we still want to have something that says welcome to our Christmas home in the front. So that's what we're working on here. Now, this is not a tutorial video. This is a decorate with me video. So I'm going to speed this up just a little bit. But all I'm doing is securing these with more zip ties, these picks, and I'm adding a total of four, I'm putting two on each side, two at the very top or the middle, and then two about halfway down. And then afterwards, I am adding some ribbon, and I'm making a bow. Now you could definitely there's so many bow options out there, you can buy a pre made bow, you can make your own if you would like a bow tutorial. I've got at least three bow tutorial videos in my Christmas past series, but I'm not doing that today. I'm just kind of showing you how I'm putting this together to inspire you to make your own and save some money. Speaking of inspiring you, that's what I do here on my channel, I really try to inspire you to do what makes you happy in your home. If you have learned at least one new tip so far, please give this video a thumbs up and consider subscribing. I always make it my goal to, you know, make sure you walk away feeling like you learn something new when you watch my videos. I want them to be entertaining and fun too. But I want you to feel like you've gotten some value from them. And, you know, I look at my YouTube analytics, and they show me that there are so many of you that come back video after video year after year, but you aren't subscribed to the channel. Subscriptions don't cost anything. They're free. They're not like the old school subscriptions of like the newspapers and the magazines where we had to pay for those. This is absolutely free. All your subscription does is show your support to my channel and help the YouTube algorithm know who to show my videos to. All right, so hit that subscribe button. We're almost at 100k. It would be amazing to get to that goal before the end of the year. And for those of you who are subscribed, my sincere thank yous. I love you as always. And I love rocking with you. All right now for those of you who feel like you needed a little more instruction than what you're seeing here, drop a comment in the comment section below. If I get enough comments saying that, you know, you'd like a detailed tutorial on building a swag, I'll do one for you. But there just has to be enough interest. I feel like I've done, you know, enough of those in the past, but so many of you are new here. I'd be happy to do one. Just let me know. Okay. All right. So now I'm at the point where I'm just securing my custom bow. As you can see, I'm using some green velvet. Hint, hint. And then once I'm done with the bow, I'm adding in some fairy lights. Of course, these are, they have a timer and they have a twinkle option or just a solid option. And I kind of just layer it over the top of both sides of the swag evenly, and then tuck them, tuck in the lights. The other thing that I do is make sure I get the green wire because it just hides a lot better than the gold or the silver. Now, when you're creating a DIY, something custom like this, you always have to kind of finish it once you have it in place, because you've got to be able to step back and check your symmetry. I like to make sure that both swags feel balanced, not too perfect, because that's what gives them that natural designer feel, but you do want them to be balanced. So I'm placing the swag over the and then I'm going to continue to shape it and put my lights in place. Once I was done with the mirror swags, it was time to start putting the finishing touches on things. So to start, I'm just covering the basis of these pencil trees with some miniature tree skirts, and then I need to hide the cord. You guys will see the completely finished look once I put up the final home tour, which won't be for several weeks, but to get things started off, this is perfectly fine to make the entryway feel welcoming and finished. I need to hide those cords. So I'm going to show you how I do that next. Now to hide that cord base, I am going to use these ceramic gift boxes. They came in a set of three. I don't think they're available anymore. I got them years ago from Grandin Road, but they were the perfect color and the perfect size for this space. I'm also updating the front door entry runner. I originally ordered a holiday specific runner, but when it arrived, I didn't like it. So just using a regular one. Now in the previous video, I shared this garland with you that I was so excited about. So this is the first place I am using it to style this console table, and I'm definitely going to try to incorporate it on the mantel this year too. I can definitely see what all the fuss is about with this garland. It's just, it's very realistic, very easy to shape. This year it came pre-lit, which I love. It didn't personally have enough lights for me, but we will take care of that here shortly. So now I am just pulling in a couple of simple touches. These console tables are very, they're narrow, so you can't put a lot on them. And we also, my kids definitely use these tables a lot. So I just have to be very intentional when I style these. So I'm using pieces that aren't going to obstruct the drawers or the cabinets underneath. And now I'm adding in those same twinkle lights that I added to the swag above. I'll have these linked for you. They're, they're very affordable. I like that they have the twinkling option. I'm going to try the twinkling option down on the, on the bottom here. I'm not doing it up top. The tree is already twinkling. I may change my mind, but for now we'll try it with the twinkling lights. I feel like we are off to a very good start of decking the halls for 2025. I hope you got some great ideas. If you did, please give this video a thumbs up and consider subscribing to the channel and I'll see you right back here very soon. Until next time, love and peace.