Christmas Door Decor

The front door is a great place to start Christmas decorating, and it's where I am beginning this year. Not everyone will see your home interior, but they see your front door. I stripped the grapevine wreath of its garlic heads and other fall produce a week ago and added this tartan bow. I love tartan and will use it for Christmas; this ribbon was featured on the trees at Rogers Gardens so I bought a few rolls on their "opening day." Here is the bare wreath with bow that has been on the door~
If you look around your garden, or your surroundings, you will find something "free" to use. It might be fresh, it might be dried or frozen and then glittered or altered, but you will find something. And it will be organic. Our fall weather has been so strange, heat, then rain, it has made the roses bloom when we normally cut them back. Then tonight it's 45 degrees, downright frosty for SoCal; still, the hibiscus are still blooming, red of course~

But the star of my holiday garden is the humble Toyon, or California Holly. It's a scrub brush found in the wild, and in tree form in sauvage gardens like ours. The berries are pretty and very red, and last for the season when cut; we can not have many varieties of East Coast Ilex here, but the Toyon is all over~
Because of the rain, the bushes and trees are laden with berries; I will use tons of them this year. Of course it looks fab with tartan too~

there were other reds in the garden, the pom pom tree, pretty, but it will not last cut~
The weather was so wet and warm lately we even had the Madagascar jasmine bloom; crazy, it blooms in summer; its snowy white and glossy green leaves might make it onto my holiday mirrors~
Here is my finished wreath on the big front door; I cut the Toyon berry clusters and pulled the stems through from the back. This took me 10 minutes. And it was free, yay!

I had thought to post all of my decor posts the same week, but I will continue to go in chronological order. Dad asked me to go for our mani/pedi tomorrow, which is our "father daughter thing;" so I best get this post up now; much more Christmas and New Year's ideas to come this week; I have so many posts in store.