Coastal Christmas: Front Door Design

We live at the beach. I try to take down a lot of our "beachy" decor when September arrives. It helps us remember that seasons are changing, even though often times our seasons do not really change much. Our beach things, well...most of them, have been packed away for a few months now. That was, until an innocent trip to the store with my kids to the Christmas aisle.

As we were walking, I was imagining how I could decorate with each of the different "themes" they sold. PLEASE tell me other people do this too! I go through and mentally decorate an entire house with each new concept. While this was going through my head, my daughter pipes in with, "What color are we going to decorate for Christmas THIS year Mommy?"

My initial thought was, "What in the world?" WHO thinks like that? You don't change your entire decor from year to year. And then I realized where she got the idea... I am the pot, calling the kettle black. Of course she learned this from me!

And then my initial freak out turned to great admiration. I have a feeling that my little girl is going to grow up to be FAR more creative than I am, and I can't wait to see what she will create! Don't get me wrong, I adore these years when she is little, but the future is going to be pretty fun too!

So there we were, in the middle of color coordinated aisles, with my 8 year old dreaming about what color we would use. It was then that I became a kid in a candy store right along with her. I jumped on the band wagon, purchased several packages of pale blue bulbs and we decided that we would have a full blown Coastal Christmas this year!

We started our decorations outside, right around our front door. Have you seen any of this fresh garland?


Home Depot sells 15 feet of it for $5! It just might be one of the best bargains of the season! I started by draping it around my doorway.



Next, I took a roll of burlap ribbon from Michaels. It is really quite amazing stuff. It even has wires in it to beautifully hold its shape. I purchased it with the intention of using it for Thanksgiving, but never did. I will have to go and pick up some more for all the Christmas ideas I now have!

I started by creating my bow. I cut a large piece of the burlap ribbon and looped it around to form a large circle. I laid it flat on the ground and tied the center together with a piece of twine. This connected the ends together and created kind of a figure eight shape.


I cut a small piece of ribbon and wrapped it around the center of my figure eight. I tied this piece on the back with another piece of twine.


When you flip the bow over, you have a lovely bow that will hold its shape very nicely.


In order to have the look that I actually tied this bow from a giant piece of burlap ribbon, I took the ribbon left on the roll and cut it into two equal lengths. I tied them together with twine and attached them to the top corner of my greenery.


Wherever I wanted the ribbon to tuck in, I tied a piece of twine around the ribbon and tied it onto the garland.


I tied my bow onto the corner of my garland with another piece of twine.


You would never know that was pieced together instead of carefully tied!

Now, to make the look coastal, I took out several of my pencil starfish and tied twine around the center.


I already had these on hand, and I can simply cut the twine off at the end of the season and put them back with our beach decorations. It is so functional!


Functional and cute! I made sure to tie the twine on the back of the starfish and use the extra to tie it onto my garland.

The next step REALLY personalized the look for us. My kids and I have spent HOURS walking the beach collecting sand dollars. It is so relaxing, and yet exhilarating at the same time. Who wouldn't love an afternoon treasure hunt? I took several of our sand dollars to use as additional ornaments.

I turned the sand dollars upside down and placed a large glob of hot glue on the back side. While it was still hot, I placed a strip of twine into the hot glue. I squeezed another glob of hot glue onto the top of the piece of twine, so the twine was in the middle of the glue blob. When they dried, I simply used the twine to tie my new sand dollar ornaments onto the garland.


I love how it looks!


It is simple and sweet, natural and outdoorsy. But our type of outdoors...coastal outdoors.


It is the perfect decoration for our Coastal Christmas.




Charming Coastal Cottage Christmas