Christmas décor, naturally

I feel like it was such a short time ago I was anx­iously writ­ing about spring gar­den­ing, it is hard to believe we have made it to Decem­ber and true win­ter is just a few weeks away. Despite the bit­ter cold, howl­ing winds, and dif­fi­cult travel — OK, I will stop — undoubt­edly the bright­est time of the win­ter is the hol­i­days. Oth­er­wise dark streets by night are illu­mi­nated and trans­formed by dec­o­ra­tive lights in all col­ors, door­ways are bedecked in green­ery and rib­bon, and trees shine from inside packed to the gills with fam­ily memen­tos. While I do love the free­dom of sum­mer warmth, my absolute favorite time of the year is Decem­ber. This spe­cial time of year is made even more spe­cial by using nat­ural mate­ri­als in your décor. As soon as I was old enough to hijack my fam­ily hol­i­days, I pawned the cum­ber­some, dusty arti­fi­cial off on a fam­ily friend and pro­claimed we would only have real trees from this point on.