The Scents of Winter

Nothing smells more heavenly than freshly cut evergreens.

In my case they catapult me back to Italy during the holiday season. The lights adorning the cold and dreary streets, the thick blinding fog that would roll in the late afternoon, the lit Christmas trees in every square and the nativity scenes peeking through the curtains of just about every home.

Don’t get me wrong, being able to casually stroll on the beach an catch the waves crashing ashore is beyond words but the holiday always carry a certain amount of nostalgia along with them.

It is nearly impossible to recreate the snowy winter wonderland of my childhood but as December rolls in i try my hardest to bring as much of those days into my house.

1- This is a must for me: Clove spiked oranges and clementines.

I remember my dad placing orange peals and a clementine or two with cloves pinned to it onto the room heaters. As they slowly dried they would feel the room with such a distinct spicy and fruity scent that became synonym with those cold nights I spent at home with my parents watching old movies and drinking hot tea until my eyes would just give out.

2 - Freshly Cut Evergreens

Ok so here I go a little crazy, but I like the scent of evergreen so much I try to create different arrangements in every room. I use the term arrangement loosely here as in some case it is just a few stems of cedar and princess pine in small bottles.

I do however place a larger piece into the bar counter in my living room. They are very long lasting, I just end up replacing the cut flowers once every 10 days or so but the greens last until Christmas.

“Illuminate”

I designed this for the website and it is now sitting on the bar counter.

I am a big fan of the combination of gold and white in my Christmas decoration ( You can see this on our Facebook page as well where I posted the photo of our Christmas Tree). I feel this color scheme is festive but still elegant and subtle and doesn’t take away from the colorful holiday dishes especially when we are discussing centerpieces.

Also I opt not to use any fragrant lilies or hyacinths and such, I want to smell the food that is on my table and of course the many varieties of evergreens.

For example in this I used, Juniper with berries, noble fir, cedar, princess pine, douglas fir, fraser fir and seeded eucalyptus and lemon leaves which we sprayed in metallic gold which create a cohesive festive look with the golden ornament decorations.

The arrangement itself is about 16 “ long and can be purchased here : ILLUMINATE

I needed a touch of festivity for my coffee table so I added a wooden bowl which I filled with walnuts ( My mom’s favorite after hours snack) , pine cones with a few evergreens and a few clementines with cloves .

I also have a bunch of leftover votives from past holidays, past weddings and so on and it so happens a lot of them are in gold tones , I filled about 10 of them with mixed evergreens and placed them around the house, a few are by the TV in the living room, I placed a cluster of three in the bathroom right by the bathtub, another cluster went in the kids room and another in the master bedroom.

These were very easy and very inexpensive to make. All it took were two bunches of mixed cut evergreens which we sell at the studio for $7 each. Also any container would work, old cleaned out glass food jars, random bottles …a wine glass or an old candle container.

All of these were very fun to do and are so easy that became the ideal weekend projects to do with the kids.