Holiday Home Decor | All Is Merry and Bright

Long before December rolls around, Christine Chitnis is in her studio, working on the theme for this year’s holiday decorations. Playing off the bright color palette of her home in Providence, Rhode Island, this talented crafter and blogger creates a collection of ornaments, wreaths, and accents from the finds she collects throughout the year at antiques shops and craft fairs. (As author of the popular guidebook Markets of New England, she knows where the good stuff is.)

This year’s display is all about light: the sparkle of vintage mercury glass, the sheen on velvet-ribbon wreath ornaments. “I wanted to keep a vintage feel throughout,” Christine says. “A lot of my ornaments and props are vintage, and most of the crafts use repurposed materials, such as old thread spools and sheet music.”

Now you can follow Christine’s instructions to bring these holiday treasures into your own home–they’re easy to create, even for the novice crafter, and ready for your adaptations. It’s a homespun holiday with a retro twist.

Holiday Crafts

Felt and Yarn Wreath
Paper Topiaries
Velvet Ribbon Ornaments
Christmas Terrarium
Button Garland

Amy Traverso

Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee and cohost of the public television series Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with GBH. Previously, she was food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in The Boston Globe, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on Hallmark Home & Family, The Martha Stewart Show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.

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