Holiday Decorating with Lowe's

Happy Thanksgiving!! Tomorrow is Christmas decorating day for us. We're putting up our tree and hanging lights outside - the girls are unbelievably excited!

I got to practice my holiday decorating skills a couple weeks ago when Lowe's invited me to come to New York for an event with a few other bloggers. We had SO much fun using products from Lowe's and a few other stores to decorate spaces in a mock house built in a giant loft space in Chelsea.

Each of us was asked to decorate one of the "rooms" in the house (with less than a day to execute most of it!), and I got to decorate the foyer space. There were a few logistical hiccups and some pieces I had selected for the room didn't arrive in time for the event, so it was a little more sparse than I would have liked, but I still really like the way the room turned out. Lowe's has a ton of great pieces in their holiday section this year, as well as in their regular decor section, like these adorable suzani-style pillows:

and these cool vessel lamps that I filled with painted nutcrackers!

The Lowe's team helped me make frames out of gold ornaments for some oval shaped mirrors just by stringing the ornaments on a wire and gluing them down around the edges. Turned out cute, right?

And on the front door, which was painted the prettiest shade of mustard yellow, we made a simple garland out of assorted Lowe's holiday decor. Lowe's has really gorgeous sparkly decorations in gold and silver tones that were bendable and easy to twist around each other for a quick garland.

The silhouettes were paper cut-outs from textured paper I picked up at Paper Presentation (which is the best paper and party supply place in the city, btw). I thought the gold and silver foil Santa hats were fun. 

I think flowers are always a great way to decorate for an occasion or during the holiday season, and, really, I love any excuse to shop the flower district shops (Dutch Line and Jamali, both on 28th St, are my favorites). I went with flowers and leaves with sort of a wintery feel in color and texture. My favorites are the purple thistles.

I found the oil slick vases at Jamali and I love how they look on the lavender-gray mirrored console that the people at Lowe's made for me.

I found this trophy also at Jamali and used it for a flower arrangement that I put on the little Saarinen table we used in the center of the foyer. I used a little snowflake bowl from Lowe's and a stamped silver platter to hold holiday cards.

The artichokes in the arrangements are so pretty and unexpected. I love adding big and unique elements like that, especially in bigger arrangements, to help flowers look less stuffy and formal.

My lovely friend Gabrielle from Design Mom decorated the front yard area. She was waiting here for the Kitchen Cousins to be ready to film her interview segment and I made her strike a pose for me.

The painted floors were a little dirty by this point in the evening (lots and lots of dirty footsteps from the rain), but I love the colors.  (You can't really tell from these photos, but the lines are actually a series of concentric rectangles.)

These ombre Christmas trees were my favorite project from the day though. Lowe's has really great ornaments this year in all shades of white and silver that made for the perfect base for painting.

I picked out four or five paint colors in different shades of turquoise and teal, and had quarts made of each. Gloss stays on the best, but flat looks really pretty too.

My sweet sister- and brother-in-law let me crash their apartment to spread out a little and paint the ornaments. I separated the ornaments in equal size piles and made sure there were roughly the same number of each style of ornament in each pile.

I dipped the ornaments in the paint, but intentionally didn't dip the whole ornament on most of them. I stopped at varying levels so that they wouldn't look uniform.

I hung them up on those cheapie tension rods and let them drip dry for a few hours before the event.

Then I hung the ornaments from white to dark peacock blue on the two white trees I placed in front of the windows in the space. I LOVE how this turned out and it was so easy!

I wanted to have the trees in big planters here, but they didn't arrive in time for the event. No problem, though - the look is a bit more modern without the planters or a tree skirt. :)

Ooh - and I almost forgot to mention the seven Moravian hanging stars that we grouped over the Saarinen table. Aren't they gorgeous? They're made of thick white plastic instead of paper so should last for years and years of holiday decorating!

Anyway, it was a fun event! A big thanks to Lowe's for inviting me to participate! I think I'm now sufficiently warmed up to tackle decorating my own house tomorrow. Just as soon as I sleep off all of the Thanksgiving food I ate today... :)