I haven’t spent Christmas at home in years, it seems. Chris and I would go to Florida to be with Mom and Dad. This year, with Dad gone and Chris in Australia, Mom and I are going to spend Christmas with Penny and Dick in St. George, UT. 

So as much as I love home decorating, I haven’t decorated for Christmas to any extent in a long time. And then the other thing is that a few years ago I redecorated the living room in blue, white and yellow. Not a color scheme that easily lends itself to Christmas, obviously. 

This year I was browsing through the December issue of “Better Homes & Gardens” and one of the homes decorated for the holidays was a bungalow in California. This home, like mine, did not lend itself to the traditional red and green theme and they had chosen instead to work with greens and yellows, plus some orange in an arrangement of oranges, lemons and limes. That got me started! I began with a similar arrangement of artificial oranges, lemons and limes accented with silver jingle bells and evergreens. And since I didn’t want to use the traditional colors, I found yellow ribbon with white polka dots to use on the live wreath, along with more jingle bells and sprigs of artificial berries in yellow and orange. 

I used my favorite old ornaments on the small Christmas tree I placed on the credenza behind my couch. I continued the silver with a large silver bow and snowflake topper and jingle bells, and added small orange ribbons here and there to pick up on the orange on the mantle.