Christmas

To fit in with our minimal Christmas decor style, I thought I’d try making some homemade salt dough ornaments and loved how they turned out! They couldn’t be easier so here’s how to make them:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup water

Directions:

1. Combine flour, salt, and water in a mixing bowl. Mix with a fork. Once combined, knead mixture with your hands for about a minute until it forms a non-sticky ball of dough (similar to playdough).
2. Roll it out with a rolling pin until it’s about 1/8″ thick.
3. Use cookie cutters to make your desired shapes.
4. Use a straw to make a hole near the top to hang the ornaments from.
5. You’ll have lots of scraps left over so roll those back up into a new dough ball and make more ornaments. I did this process 4 times until I was out of dough.
6. Bake at 350 on a lined baking sheet for about 10-11 minutes.
7. Allow to cool for at least 30 mins before moving them, and allow them to completely cool for several hours (overnight would be ideal) before hanging them on the tree.

One ball of dough made me a total of 55 medium size star ornaments and I only ended up needing 50 to fully decorate our tree as per the picture at the top of this post – granted I only decorated the two sides visible from the room since our tree is placed in a corner, but that should give you an idea of quantity.

Cookie cutters (I’ve had mine for ages but these are very similar ones):

• Holiday sets: Amazon | Crate & Barrel
• Star shapes: Amazon | Williams Sonoma
• Snowflake shapes: Williams Sonoma | Williams Sonoma (mine is an older version of these)
• Gingerbread man shapes: Williams Sonoma

To hang them you can either use ornament hooks or for a more rustic look, you can use:

• Twine: Amazon
• Baker’s twine: Amazon (red/green/white/natural) | Amazon (black/white)

I kept my salt dough ornaments all the same shape for consistency, although I also think it would be super cute with variety so you can have a lot of fun with different ways of decorating. I also added in some starbust and wire ornaments to my tree as well so I’ve found some similar ones if you like the look:

• Starburst ornaments (similar): West Elm | Target | Crate & Barrel
• Wire ornaments (similar): West Elm | Crate & Barrel | Target | H&M Home
• Tree topper (I didn’t use a tree topper this year but I would have used one of these if I was planning to do one): Crate & Barrel | Crate & Barrel | McGee & Co
• Other ornaments I love: McGee & Co (gold) | McGee & Co (black) | H&M Home (paper) | Target (snowflake) | Target (snowflakes)

Sources from our mantel decor:

• Round mirror: Amazon | Wayfair | Urban Outfitters (same mirror)
• Black modern Christmas trees: DIY Tutorial (Very similar: Crate & Barrel)
• Striped vase: Crate & Barrel
• Greenery mix: Michaels | West Elm | Michaels
• Gold reindeer (similar): West Elm
• Fireplace: Amazon | Walmart
• Mantle: real barn beam
• For more, visit our Living Room sources page

Sources for our Christmas tree box stand:

• Tree box stand: DIY Tutorial
• Alternative tree collars: Crate & Barrel (wicker natural) | Crate & Barrel (woven black/gold) | Crate & Barrel (textured gold) | Crate & Barrel (galvanized metal) | Target (metal) | Home Depot (metal) | BarnwoodUSA (Etsy) (wood crate) | Pottery Barn (basket) | Wayfair (gray crate with X) | Wayfair (dark crate no X) | Target (basket w/handles) | Target (black poplar) | Target (white rope)

For more info, please visit our Living Room Sources Page.

For our Christmas mantel decorations this year, I really wanted to try building some of the decor myself and I’ve always adored the look of minimal almost nordic-style wooden Christmas trees and also loved the look of these gorgeous black Crate & Barrel “Chalet Trees” so I decided to try making some.

I wanted to play with the geometry of having two triangular trees beside my favorite big black round mirror (many sources, same mirror: Amazon | Wayfair | Urban Outfitters) so I decided to make my new DIY wooden Christmas trees with minimal black frames to reflect the same design direction as our mirror.

While I’ve done several woodworking projects, any angles (other than 45*) always made my head spin so these trees were a bit of a brain tangle for me, but I persevered and my little trees turned out just as I’d hoped! They’re not perfect, but they still gave me exactly the look I wanted! So here’s how I made them:

Materials list:

• 1x2x8 board: Home Depot (the amount you need will depend on how many trees you make, I recommend getting a slightly “nicer” grade of wood for this project)
• 1×4 board: Home Depot (you only need a couple feet of this for the base)
• Wood dowel: Home Depot (you may only need one, or none if you don’t want to hang ornaments)
• Miter saw, ours is like this: Home Depot (note: this is small enough a project that you could do all the cuts by hand using the next type of saw on this list, which you will need anyways)
• Back saw: Home Depot (you could do all the cuts with this if you don’t have a miter saw)
• Power drill: Amazon | Home Depot (you only need this if you plan to put in the dowel to hang ornaments from, and you’ll also need a bit that’s the same size as your dowels)
• Wood Glue: Home Depot (if you use this, you’ll need clamps) OR Super Glue: Home Depot (if you get a fast enough drying one, you won’t need clamps)
• Matte black paint: Home Depot (+ paint brush)
• Sandpaper
• Measuring tape

How to build them:

1. Decide how big you want your trees to be. You can literally make them any size you want. For size reference, the smaller of my 2 trees has 26″ long sides, a 12″ bottom side, and a 5.5″ base plate.
2. Cut your pieces to the right length: 2 long sides + 1 short side for every tree. Plus a wider bottom plate to stabilize it (to calculate the length of the bottom plate, just make it about 8″ shorter than the bottom side piece, 4″ on either side). If you want your tree to have the same angle as mine, then for the 2 long sides, back-cut the top 76.75 degrees, and the bottoms 13.25 degrees. But you could make your triangle wider, you just need to then calculate different angles. For the bottom side pieces, I actually didn’t do any angle cuts, I just left them straight because that’s how done with angles I was – don’t judge. To be fancier, you could do angle cuts on them if you want.
3. You can leave your wooden tree natural if you want, or you can either stain or paint it. But whatever you choose, now is the time to paint/stain. I chose to paint mine flat black to match our mirror.
4. Glue the pieces together. If you’re using a slow-drying glue, clamp them overnight. Note: you want to glue the 3 triangle pieces first, then once that’s dry, glue the entire triangle to the baseplate in the center/middle. I let my triangle dry overnight, then let the triangle dry to the baseplate the next night.

5. If you want to add dowels to hang ornaments from, just choose where you want them and drill holes on both sides of the tree at the same place on both long sides. Make sure your drill bit is the same size as the dowel you’re using and make sure you drill the holes straight across so the dowel can go in one hole on one side and through to the other hold on the other side in a straight shot. I chose to do dowels on my larger tree, but kept my smaller tree more minimal with just the frame.
6. Push the dowel through (I found that twisting it along helped) until it’s through on both sides.
7. Use a hand saw to cut off the extra dowel. Remember to angle the saw same as the tree.
8. Sand down the cut marks.
9. Repaint the sides with an extra coat of paint. You can also paint the dowels if you want. I actually just left mine natural to minimize them, though I also considered painting them white.
10. Hang ornaments and enjoy!

Below you can see both versions of the trees. I took the picture on the left the night I finished building the main trees, but before adding the dowels. Then I added the dowels to the big tree and took the pic on the right the following morning. Honestly, I like it both ways, with and without ornaments.

If you love the look of these trees but you’re not super into DIY projects, then definitely check out these Crate & Barrel “Chalet Trees” because they are almost the same look and even have cute ornaments you can choose to get with them! And to see more Christas decor ideas that I love this year, just click here!

This is one of the simplest little DIY projects ever because there are almost no rules to how you make these minimal little Nordic-inspired wooden Christmas Village houses and trees and they are super cute!

For the wood, you can literally just use up whatever scrap 2×4, 2×6, 2×8, 2×10 2×12 pieces you have (or even 4x’s)- or if you don’t have any, just buy framing lumber at a hardware store – it’s super cheap!

Once you have your lumber, make sure there’s one fully flat bottom side cut at 90 degrees. Then you can leave as much room as you want for the body (though I recommend staying under 10″ of total height so they don’t easily tip over) and simply cut the top side to whatever angle you want. And that’s literally it!!!

The top angles don’t have to be perfect or even symmetrical. If you want a perfect peak, just mark the middle of the wood, then cut each side back at 45 degrees. Honestly, I eyeballed most of my angles.

If you want to add little Christmas trees to the houses you’re making, just cut some of the wood pieces into a sharp triangle to make the basic 3-sided shape of a Christmas tree. You can do all sorts of sizes.

I used our miter saw to cut the wood (ours is like this: Home Depot) but if you don’t have one, and don’t mind putting in a little more work, you could do this all by hand with a back saw (Home Depot) too.

When you’re done cutting up the pieces, just sand the edges a little so that they’re smooth to the touch.

From that point you can either leave them natural like I did, or stain them, or paint them, or decorate them, or literally do anything you want to them! If you want to stain them, I’ve listed my personal favorite stain color down below (it’s the stain that I used on our dining table, console table, and Christmas Tree box):

• Pre-stain conditioner: Amazon (don’t skip this step!!)
• Gray stain (one coat): Amazon
• Matte top coat: Amazon

If you cut up a whole bunch of little houses and tree shapes in advance, then painting them can be a fun family (or friends) holiday activity to do together too! It’s like carving pumpkins but for Christmas 😉

If you prefer the idea of buying Christmas village houses instead of making them, I love the look of these ones: Pottery Barn (galvanized metal) | Crate & Barrel (white ceramic) | West Elm (white/gold)

More sources from our mudroom in the pic shown above:

• Wall hooks: CB2
• White cotton wreath: Amazon | (similar option: Wayfair | Pottery Barn)
• Black & white buffalo check pillow: Amazon (Similar: Pottery Barn)
• Faux fur pillow (similar): Pottery Barn
• Most Wonderful Time pillow (similar): Wayfair

Additional resources:

• How to DIY a Modern Wooden Christmas Tree: click here
• Christmas Decor Ideas 2019: click here