18 Cheap Tricks for a Cozy, Nostalgic Christmas That Looks EXPENSIVE (Designer Secrets).

Close your eyes for a second and picture your grandmother's living room at Christmas. Not the decorations, exactly. The feeling. The lamp in the corner with the yellowed shade. The plaid blanket on the arm of the chair. A dish of ribbon candy nobody was allowed to touch until after dinner. Most of us can still smell that room. And here's the funny thing. Almost nothing in it was expensive. The good things were the ordinary things, kept for a long time. Now look at the mantle on my thumbnail. Velvet bows with long tails, a garland of plain wooden beads, mismatched brass candlesticks, a few old books, a winter landscape in a gold frame, dried hydrangeas in an old brass pot, and a basket of plaid throws by the fire. It looks like it took 40 years to collect. Most of it came from a thrift store, a craft aisle, and a backyard. And you don't need a stone fireplace or an old wooden beam to get the feeling. A painted mantle, a bookshelf, even a sideboard in the dining room will do. And it all fits without looking crowded. I'm Eleanor, and in my line of work, the rooms people remember are never the newest ones. They're the ones that feel like somebody has loved them for a long time. Today, I'm going to give you 18 cheap ways to get that feeling, starting with the mantle on my thumbnail and moving out through the house. And I'll keep it practical. What each thing costs, where to find it, and how to do it without a ladder or a sore back. Around the halfway point, I'll show you the one mistake that turns a cozy room into a cluttered one, and it catches almost everybody who loves this look. And the last trick isn't something you can buy at all. It's the one that makes a room feel like your Christmas, not just a pretty one. Trick number one, velvet bows tied by hand with long tails. Look at the bows on the thumbnail. They're not perfect. One loop is a little bigger than the other. The tails are uneven. And that's exactly why they look like someone's grandmother tied them. A machine-made bow with stiff, identical loops looks like a store. A hand-tied bow looks like a home. Use wired velvet ribbon in a deep burgundy, two and a half inches wide, and let the tails fall at least a foot below the mantle. On a five or six foot mantle, two bows are plenty. Set about a third of the way in from each end. Here's an easy way to get that hand-done look. Tie a plain bow, then pinch each loop in the middle and pull it forward a little so it has some depth. Cut the tails on a slant. And if your hands don't love tying, make the bows at the kitchen table, sitting down, and wire them to the garland afterwards. One more thing about burgundy velvet, it fades in strong sun. So keep those bows out of a sunny window. I keep a little cheat sheet in my ribbon drawer with how much ribbon each size of bow takes because I have cut a tail too short more times than I'd like to admit. Velvet isn't cheap and a bow that comes up two inches short is a bow you make twice. I'll tell you where that cheat sheet lives in a little while. Trick number two, a garland of plain wooden beads. It's the most nostalgic thing on that mantle and one of the cheapest. Wooden bead garlands are easy to find at craft stores and often at dollar stores, or you can string your own from a bag of unfinished wooden beads and a length of jute. Drape it loosely across the greenery, low in the middle and higher at the ends, so it swings like a smile. The beads break up all that green, and the plain wood reads as handmade, the way paper chains and popcorn strings did when we were small. A six-foot mantle takes about two strands, each around six feet long. If the wood looks too pale and new, let the beads sit in a bowl of strong cold tea for an hour and dry them on a towel. They come out a soft aged brown. Buy one extra strand while you're at it. Wooden beads look just as lovely draped on a little tree or along a staircase. Here's why it works. Nostalgia lives in natural materials. Wood, wool, brass, paper, real greenery. Plastic and glitter belong to now. The more of the room is made of things that could have existed 60 years ago, the more the room feels like a memory. And that's the part that can stay all year. In spring, the boughs come off, but the bead, garland, the brass, and the old books can stay right where they are, with a jug of forsythia instead of pine. Here's a little test for your own mantle. How many things on it right now were made in the last two years? If it's most of them, that's why it feels new instead of nostalgic. Swap even one of them for something old, and you'll feel the difference. Trick number three, brass candlesticks that don't match. In a formal room, I'd tell you to find a pair. In a nostalgic room, I'll tell you the opposite. Three or four candlesticks of different heights and shapes, picked up one at a time over the years, look collected. And collected is what nostalgic means. Look for them at thrift stores and estate sales, leave the tarnish alone, and fill them with ivory candles. Not white. Pure white looks new. Ivory looks like it's been burning since 1950. Brass and ivory together are what make the thumbnail mantle look warm instead of shiny. Near the garland, use flameless tapers. They look like the real thing, and nothing on the mantle can catch. Mix the heights of the candles too, 10 inches next to 12. If you love real candles, light them only on the table or on a tray, well away from the greenery, and never leave the room while they burn. Trick number four, old books. With something tucked inside, a stack of two or three old hardbacks on the mantle gives your candlesticks different heights to stand on. Then make the stack tell a story. Tuck an old Christmas card between the pages so the corner peeks out, or lay a sprig of pine across the top. Look for books with Christmas, winter, or home in the title, or old cookbooks and hymnals. Nobody needs to read them, they just need to look like someone did. Old hardbacks are usually among the cheapest things in a thrift store, so choose them by color. Deep reds, greens, browns, and creams. Tie two or three together with twine, and you have a little riser for a candle. Trick number five, a winter landscape in a gold frame. The painting over the fireplace on my thumbnail is the kind of thing you'd expect to cost a fortune. It doesn't have to. Many museums now share images of their public domain paintings for free, and you can print one at a local print shop for a few dollars. Search for a winter landscape or an old country scene, print it on matte paper, and put it in a gold frame from the thrift store. Hang it a few inches above the mantle, or simply lean it at the back, And your fireplace suddenly has a hundred years of history behind it. Choose something quiet. Snow on a field, a farmhouse at dusk, a bare winter tree. Busy scenes look like posters. Quiet ones look like heirlooms. If you hang it, keep the bottom of the frame about six to ten inches above the mantle, so the painting and the mantle read as one picture. Trick number six. Dried hydrangeas in an old brass pot. If you have hydrangeas in the garden, the late summer blooms that turn deep burgundy and antique green are the ones to save. Cut them with long stems, strip the leaves, and stand them in a vase with an inch of water. Let the water dry up on its own and the flowers dry slowly, keeping their shape and color. Put them in a brass pot or an old pitcher at one end of the mantle. Dried flowers are as dry as paper, so keep them on the end away from the fire. If you don't have a garden, ask a neighbor who does. Gardeners always have more hydrangeas than vases. And if there are no hydrangeas anywhere near you, many craft stores sell dried or faux stems in those same antique colors. Pull off any shiny plastic leaves and tuck in a few dried grasses from the yard so they don't look too perfect. Now let's add up that whole mantle. A roll of velvet ribbon, two strands of wooden beads, Three or four thrift store candlesticks, a few old books, one printed painting in a thrift frame, and hydrangeas from a neighbor. For most people, that comes to somewhere around $50 or $60, and it looks like it came out of a country house magazine. A small favor before we go on, if your house is already starting to feel a little more like your grandmother's in your head, subscribe. A new, slow, cozy idea goes up here almost every day this month, and the next ones carry this same feeling into the rest of the house. Trick number seven, the throw basket. Take the plaid blankets and knit throws out of the closet and roll them, don't fold them, into a big wicker basket beside the sofa, or a safe few feet from the fireplace. Rolled throws look relaxed and inviting. Folded ones look like a store display. Mix one plaid, one chunky knit, and one plain wool and let the edge of one hang over the side. And if you have a quilt that belonged to someone in your family, lay it over the back of the sofa this month. Nothing makes a room feel loved faster. Keep the basket where people actually sit. A throw nobody can reach is a decoration. A throw within arm's length is an invitation. And if the family quilt is fragile, fold it so the strongest part faces out and keep it out of direct sun. Trick number eight, the color of the light. A nostalgic room isn't lit like a kitchen, it glows. Look at your lampshades first. A white plastic or a bright white shade throws a cold light. A cream, linen, or parchment-colored shade turns the same bulb soft and golden, like the lamps we grew up with, and you'll often find them at thrift stores for a few dollars. Then, for the evening, try a candlelight bulb. Some warm bulbs go down to about 2200 kelvin, even warmer than the usual 2700, and in a lamp by the chair they look almost like firelight. Then add one small lamp somewhere unexpected, a kitchen counter, a bookshelf, a hallway table. Old houses always had little pools of light in odd corners, and that's half of what made them feel cozy. And for a little tree in the kitchen, try the big old-fashioned bulbs, the fat ones from the 50s, in soft colors. On the main tree, I'd keep to warm white, but on a small second tree, colored bulbs are pure childhood. Trick number nine, oranges studded with cloves. This is one of the oldest Christmas decorations there is, and it costs almost nothing. Take an orange, press whole cloves into the peel in rows or spirals, and set it in a bowl. As it dries over the following weeks, it fills the room with the smell of an old-fashioned Christmas. Pile a few in a brass bowl or an old pie plate with some greenery, or tie a velvet ribbon around one and hang it from a cabinet knob. Tie the ribbon around it in a cross, the way the Victorians did, and it looks like a little present. It's a lovely job for little hands too. Use a toothpick or a skewer to start the holes so small fingers don't get sore. Keep them somewhere cool with a little air around them and they'll last for weeks. Some families keep theirs from one year to the next. Trick number 10, a cranberry and popcorn garland. If you grew up stringing these at the kitchen table, you know exactly why they belong on this list. All you need is a bag of fresh cranberries, a bowl of plain popcorn, a needle, and some strong thread or dental floss. Here's the part nobody tells you, make the popcorn a day ahead. Day-old popcorn is a little less brittle, so it doesn't crumble on the needle. Drape the garland on a small tree in the kitchen or across a window. And when Christmas is over, hang it outside for the birds. Leave a little space between each cranberry and each piece of popcorn so it looks strung by hand, not by a machine. If you have a dog, hang it high. A 10-foot garland takes about an hour at the table, with a cup of tea and some company. Let me tell you about my grandmother's ribbon candy. Every December she set out a cut glass dish of it on the side table and every December we children were told not to touch it until after dinner. think I ever liked the taste of ribbon candy, but last year when a client told me her house felt nice but not like Christmas, I put a dish of ribbon candy on her side table. She called me two days later and said, it feels like my mother's house. That's why I tell every client the same thing. Before you buy anything new for Christmas, find one old thing. That's what nostalgia is, not a style, a memory you can walk into. And yes, we still have my grandmother's dish. It's on my side table right now and nobody touches it until after dinner. Trick number 11. Brown paper, twine, and a cinnamon stick. Gifts under the tree are part of the decoration, so wrap them the old way. Plain brown kraft paper, a length of jute twine or a narrow velvet ribbon, and one thing tucked under the knot. A cinnamon stick, a sprig of pine, a little slice of dried orange. One roll of brown paper and a bundle of cinnamon sticks will wrap most of your gifts for very little. Under the tree, a pile of brown paper packages looks calm and old-fashioned, and each one smells like Christmas when someone opens it. Use the same paper and the same twine for everything under the tree. 15 different papers look busy, one paper looks like a picture. And fold the paper away afterwards. Brown paper can wrap next year's gifts too. For tags, cut little rectangles from old Christmas cards and punch a hole in one corner. Trick number 12. Old Christmas cards strung on a ribbon. Don't throw away the cards from years past and look for vintage ones at thrift stores and estate sales, often for pennies. String them along a ribbon with tiny clothespins and hang them along a doorway, down a staircase wall, or across a bookshelf. The old illustrations, the handwriting inside, The names of people you haven't seen in years. It's a garland made of memories. And it's the easiest thing in this video to start today. My mother kept every Christmas card she ever received in a shoebox under her bed with a rubber band around each year. When I strung a few of them across her kitchen doorway one December, she stood there reading them for 20 minutes before she even took off her coat. If ribbon isn't your style, tuck the cards into the frame of a mirror the way our mothers did. Or ask everyone in the family to send you one old card each. It turns into a project you all share. Trick number 13, paper snowflakes in the windows. Remember folding a square of paper and cutting little shapes into it at school? That's all this is. Plain white printer paper, a pair of scissors, and an afternoon with the grandchildren. Tape them to the windows with a little clear tape or hang them on fishing lines so they turn in the light. Cut a few small ones for the bottom panes so it looks like snow drifting down. From the street, a window full of paper snowflakes says somebody in that house still knows how to have fun. One tip the children always love. Fold the paper into six sections, not four, and the snowflakes come out with six points, just like real ones. And notice something about the last few tricks. The oranges, the popcorn, the snowflakes. They're all kitchen table jobs with the grandchildren. That's not an accident. The Christmases we remember most aren't the ones that looked perfect. They're the ones where we were allowed to help. So leave one thing a child made this year somewhere everyone can see it. Now, the part I promised. The one mistake that turns cozy into cluttered. When you love this look, you want everything out. Every ornament, every candle, every little figure from every Christmas you've ever had. And suddenly, the mantle has 11 things on it, the side table has 9, and the eye can't find the story anymore. Nostalgic rooms that work are the opposite of crowded. Each surface tells one story. The mantle is the bows and the brass. The side table is the candy dish. The window is the snowflakes. And about one surface in three gets nothing at all, so the others can breathe. Here's how I do it. Put out everything you love. Then put half of it back in the box. Next year, swap them. On most mantles, two groupings are plenty, not five. That way the house feels a little new every December and nothing gets forgotten at the bottom of a bin. The other half of the mistake is color. Nostalgia has a shortlist. Deep burgundy, an old forest green, cream, a little tartan and aged brass, like on my thumbnail. The moment bright silver, icy blue, and neon lights join in, the room jumps forward 50 years. Pick your shortlist and stop there. Look at the thumbnail again. There isn't a single silver thing in it. And skip the things that only pretend to be nostalgic. Painted wooden signs with sayings on them, ornaments with fake cracks printed on, and scented plug-ins. A real orange studded with cloves smells like Christmas. A plug-in smells like a hotel hallway. And this is where my Christmas guide earns its place. The two things that keep a cozy room from tipping into clutter are a short color list and knowing when to stop. And both are in there. There's a palette called Heritage and Plaid. Burgundy, hunter green, a navy tartan, and aged brass. It's practically this room. There's the mantle formula, so you know how much garland and how many groupings before you start, and a final edit that tells you exactly when to stop adding. And remember that cheat sheet in my ribbon drawer? It's the bow table on page 29, with every cut length, so not one inch of velvet gets wasted. And there's a chapter of little kitchen table projects to do with the grandchildren, with the oven times written out. Burgundy, velvet, and plaid are everywhere this year, and the good ribbon in those colors tends to disappear from the craft stores well before Thanksgiving. If this is the look you want, get your list ready now. Point your phone at the little square on your screen to open it, or open your browser and type in eleanorsguide.shop. It's the top link in the description. Trick number 14, old family photos. In mismatched frames, go through the albums and find the Christmas pictures. Your parents in front of a tinsel tree, you at five years old in your pajamas, a grandparent carving the turkey. Make copies, keep the originals safe in the album, and put the copies in a few mismatched thrift store frames. Group them on a shelf or a side table, three or five together. Black and white or faded color photos are pure nostalgia, and guests will stand in front of them longer than anything else in the house. Hang them a little lower than you think, at the eye level of someone sitting on the sofa, and write the year on the back of each frame. If there's a photo of the house itself at Christmas, put it closest to the front door. If you have old home movies, play a few on the television with the sound off while guests arrive. It's like a fireplace for memories. Trick number 15. A plaid wool scarf as a table runner. Look in the men's accessories at the thrift store for long plaid wool scarves, often just a few dollars. Lay one or two down the middle of the dining table or along a sideboard with the fringe hanging over the ends. A table runner made for Christmas looks bought. A grandfather's old scarf looks like it has a story and it's exactly the right width for a few candles and a bowl of those clove oranges. If one scarf is too short, lay two end-to-end and tuck a sprig of pine where they meet. Trick number 16, white ironstone in the hutch. If you have a china cabinet or open shelves in the kitchen, take out the busy dishes for December and stand plain white plates and platters upright at the back. Old white ironstone turns up at thrift stores and estate sales, and it's surprisingly affordable when you buy one piece at a time. Then bend a few sprigs of fresh rosemary into a little circle, Tie it with twine and hang one on the front of each plate. It looks like a farmhouse kitchen from a storybook and it smells wonderful every time you open the doors. Turn the plates over when you shop. The old ones often have a maker's mark on the back. And if you don't have a hutch, the same idea works on a plate rack, a bookshelf, or a row of hooks. Three white plates, three little rosemary wreaths. White dishes make everything in front of Look calm. Trick number 17. The sound of Christmas. Nostalgia isn't only something you see. Tie a strand of sleigh bells to the inside handle of your front door so it jingles every time someone comes in. You'll find them cheaply at craft stores. And when your family is due to arrive, put on the old carols, the records your parents played, quietly in the background. It costs nothing, and it's the first thing people notice before they've even taken off their coats. Play it the old way if you can. A radio in the kitchen turned low, the way someone's mother always had it. Music from one corner of the house feels like a memory. Music from every speaker feels like a store. Now, before the last trick, walk with me through the rest of the house for a moment because nostalgia doesn't stop at the living room. In the entry, put one thing your Your family will recognize the moment they step in. An old wooden sled against the wall, a pair of ice skates on a hook, a basket of mittens. In the kitchen, the cookie tin on the counter and that radio. In the guest room, a quilt at the foot of the bed, a small lamp left on, and two or three Christmas books on the nightstand. In the bathroom, one sprig of greenery and a juice glass. None of it costs much, and each one tells your family, the minute they walk in, that this is still the house they remember. Let me ask you something. What's the one sound or smell that means Christmas to you? Not the one in the magazines. Yours. Maybe it's oranges. Maybe it's one certain record. Maybe it's the smell of pine in a cold car on the way home with the tree. Hold on to it because you're going to need it in a minute. Which brings me to trick number 18, the one I've been saving for last. Bring back one real memory. Everything I've shown you today makes a room look nostalgic. This one makes it feel like your Christmas. Close your eyes again the way you did at the beginning. Think back to the house you remember most from your childhood Christmases and pick one specific thing. Your grandmother's candy dish, the angel on top of your parents tree, the way your father always put a candle in the kitchen window, the cookie tin that only came out in December, the paper bells your aunt hung in the doorway, the nativity with the shepherd who'd lost his staff. Then find it. or something close to it and put it where your family will see it first. If you still have the real thing, bring it out of the box. If you don't, a thrift store often has its twin for a few dollars. Put a little card next to it, if you like, in your own handwriting. Grandma's candy dish 1963. That one object will do more than all 17 other tricks put together because it's the only one that's truly yours. And if the memory is a smell, a cookie, a pie, the bread your grandfather baked, make it on the day your family arrives. The house will tell them before you do. And tell the story to your grandchildren while you set it out. That's how a memory becomes theirs, too. You don't have to do all 18. If you only have time for two, start with the hand-tied velvet bows on the mantle and that one real memory. And when Christmas is over, write down what you loved this year while it's still fresh. There's a page for it at the back of the planner so next December starts with your own memories instead of a blank page. Do one trick a day and by the weekend the whole house will feel different. Here's something for tonight. Choose your one memory, the candy dish, the angel, the cookie tin, and find out where it is. Call your sister if you have to. And if it's gone for good, write down everything you remember about it and read it to your family at dinner. Then tell me in the comments what it is. I'd love to read the list of things that mean Christmas to all of you. And if you'd like more slow, cozy ideas like these, subscribe so the next one finds you. Make your homework for you, not the other way around.