Christmas Ideas: Q&A

Last week on Instagram I asked for any Christmas ideas you’d like to see me explore on the blog this year. I appreciate your great suggestions so I’ve compiled a list to keep in mind as I plan holiday content for the upcoming season. I’ll try to create something for everyone. I promise!

I was pleased to see how many of your ideas have already been covered here on Inspired by Charm. IBC has been around for almost 10 years, and I know many of you have been following since the beginning. (Thank you!) Of course, some of you may have just found me last week. (Thank you, too!)

To specifically address your questions and remind you of some of the things I’ve done that may be useful to you during the 2018 holiday season, I thought I’d put together this post of Christmas ideas. Yes, the questions are from you. You asked. I answered.

I’m also aware that some long-time followers who are familiar with these posts may be looking for additional ideas in relation to these topics. I will be sure to consider that as I plan my upcoming holiday content.

One more thing, I realize it may seem early to be to talking about Christmas. If I wasn’t a blogger, the holidays probably wouldn’t be on my mind until after Thanksgiving. However, in the blogging world, the goal is to give you as many ideas as early as possible so you have time to find them and implement them if you’d like.

I will confess that I also believe people should be free to start celebrating whenever they’d like. We all need a little more joy in our lives, so if setting up your Christmas tree the day after Halloween makes you happy, please do!

With that said, it’s time to answer questions and share lots of Christmas ideas to give you a head start on the season.

Unique Ways to Decorate and Wrap Presents:
Wrapping presents might be one of my favorite things to do. Seriously. I love it. I’ve created several posts about wrapping Christmas gifts. You can find them below.

You can be certain I’ll be posting more about this topic this year. It’s likely I’ll also design additional printable gift tags, although I still love the ones from last year.

How to Decorate a Christmas Tree:
After getting lots of requests for how to put ribbon on a Christmas tree, I created this post and video tutorial. Many readers told me it was helpful. With at least two trees planned for this coming Christmas, I intend to put together a tutorial on how to decorate a tree from concept to completion.

Different Ways to Decorate a Tree:
Speaking of Christmas trees, if you’ve followed Inspired by Charm for a while, you know that I change up my tree every year and usually decorate two trees. Over the years that adds up to a lot of Christmas tree ideas.

I have written two posts where you can see most (if not all) of my Christmas trees. You can find them HERE and HERE. Although they may be a bit repetitive, hopefully, those posts offer inspiration to get your own creative juices flowing.

A Wreath Like This (Rainbow) Tree:
Several years ago I decorated this rainbow-inspired Christmas tree. Every year around this time, it shows up over on Pinterest. It was even featured by Martha Stewart. It’s still one of my favorite trees, and I will probably bring it back one year.

To answer your question, I did make a wreath to match the tree and shared the full tutorial. You can find that HERE. If rainbows aren’t your thing, I also made a red and green version HERE.

I also recently taught you how to make an ornament wreath out of (mostly) vintage glass ornaments. Here’s how that looks:

You can visit this post here for the full tutorial if you want to make one of your own.

Mantel Decor Ideas:
You’d think I would have a plethora of Christmas mantel decorating ideas, but I honestly don’t have that many. With two mantels here at Bayberry House, my goal this year is to share a handful of ideas. However, I did create a post HERE which recaps of several ways I decorated my mantel for the holidays.

Christmas Decor for Small Spaces:
Last year I decorated my apartment for Christmas. It was a pretty small space. Hopefully, that will offer inspiration for those of you in a similar situation. You can find my Christmas Apartment Tour HERE and a look at how I decorated my apartment bedroom HERE.

I think a lot of the ideas I share on IBC can be translated into a space of any size. You just have to get a bit more creative if you live in a small home.

Christmas Cocktail Ideas:
I love creating cocktail recipes. In fact, two of my holiday cocktail recipes are among the most popular posts on IBC. So many of you continue to love this Jingle Juice Holiday Punch (Only three ingredients are needed, and it tastes incredible!) and this Very Merry Ornamentini (The presentation alone makes it a winner!).

Last year, I put together a post that contains all of my holiday cocktail recipes. You can find that HERE. For these types of round-ups post, I typically go back and add to them as necessary. So it’s always good to revisit them as they are continually updated.

Favorite Christmas Music:
I love me some holiday music. During the past few years, I’ve put together a number of Christmas music playlists. I will link all of them below. I typically add to these playlists every year to keep them fresh and make them even longer. I also create a new playlist every year, so stay tuned for that.

Inspired by Charm Holiday Playlists:

DIY for Christmas:
This is an excellent suggestion. I haven’t done oodles of Christmas DIY projects, so this is something I will keep in mind this year. However, as I think about what I might create, I’m trying to find the right balance between meaningful projects/crafts and things that just become clutter and junk. I do have a few ideas for this year. Fingers crossed they turn out as I envision.

In the meantime, you can find a few of my favorite Christmas DIY/Craft projects here:

Christmas Home Tours:
This wasn’t a question, but I thought I’d take the time to link up all of my Christmas Home Tours here. After sharing holiday home tours for the past several years, I thought they might serve as inspiration for your holiday decorating. For some of you, these may be new, and for others, they might be a walk down memory lane.

Decorating, Not Food!:
I’ve always called Inspired by Charm a lifestyle blog. That means I offer a bit of everything: decorating, recipes, entertaining, DIY, travel, random life stories, etc. Of course, this may make things challenging for the IBC audience. Some of you have no interest in decorating, and some of you have no interest in cooking or baking. I get that. (Though, lots of you were asking for holiday-inspired recipes too!)

Presenting a variety of content reflects my many interests, so that’s what I will probably continue to do. From the business side of things, recipes keep this blog alive. They tend to be what gets shared the most on social media. In fact, 27 of the top 30 posts in the past several years were recipes. Recipes are also cost-effective. I can pull together a recipe for $20 whereas a room makeover runs thousands.

If it’s any consolation to home decor lovers who read IBC, I think about the balance of content a lot. It’s my sincere aim to bring you as many ideas for your home as I can. My hope is that Bayberry House will provide much interior decor inspiration. And I’m confident it will. But as I mentioned in my post yesterday, it’s taking me longer than expected to feel the groove of my new space. I am focused on moving forward with the design and overjoyed to share my home’s decorative journey and the creative results.

With all of that said, there will be both recipes and decorating ideas for the holidays and beyond. No matter why you follow IBC, I hope my posts continue to inspire.

If you are looking for a few holiday recipe round-ups, these are a great place to start:

100+ Christmas Ideas:

And if you’re looking for the ultimate list of Christmas ideas, in 2108 I created this list of 100+ Christmas Ideas. It covers everything from decorate to crafts to recipes and SO MUCH more! I’m so proud of this post. I will also continue to update it as I have new ideas to share! I think you’re going to love it too. Click here to read through that.