How to Decorate After Christmas for an Amazing Winter Welcome!

How are you when all of the Christmas decorations come down? Are you in the camp that shouts, “YES!!! MY HOUSE IS CLEAN AND TIDY AGAIN!” OR… are you one of the ones that looks around and says, “wow, this place looks so plain and empty.”? If you are the latter, I have just the project for you today!

After taking down the Christmas garland from my railings, the Christmas wreath and packing away my topsy turvy packages, my front porch looked pretty plain. Here in central Florida we don’t get a pretty dusting of snow, so I wanted to add something to transition for now.

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I picked up some white pool noodles from Dollar Tree and used cable ties to attach them to my railings on each side of my front staircase. I am very careful not to use wires or even pipe cleaners to attach things to my railings. Wires can scratch the wood and rust against the paint in the shortest time out in the weather.

After using the cable ties (also known as zip ties) you can trim the loose ends of them with some scissors or wire cutters. Do be careful, as the ties can be very sharp after cutting them.

Add as many noodles as you need to cover your staircase railing. For my railings, I used one full noodle and one half noodle. Three noodles completed my project. Pool noodles cut easily with any craft knife.

The next step was to add a glittery silver garland on top of my pool noodles. I did use white pipe cleaners to attach these to the zip ties, BUT, I kept the wires up on top of the noodles, not where they could touch the wood railing. Slip the pipe cleaner under the zip tie and pull it up to the top between the zip tie and the noodle to use it to secure the garland.

I found this great silver glittering garland on sale this time of year but you might find a glittering white one to use. The great thing about the white noodles is that they just disappear as you add silver and white decor items to the top and sides of them.

Head out to your local Dollar Tree and buy all of the little trees you can find! Throughout the year I will be showing you all kinds of projects using them. For this project, I used a total of four of these little white ones. You could use eve more if you want to.

Open up your tiny trees and set aside the bases. Tuck the end of the tree under the silver leaves. Use an additional zip tie to secure the tree to the pool noodle, wrapping the tie around the noodle, the railing and the silver garland before tightening it securely. Fluff up your tree!

Find some snowy blooms! I found these gorgeous snow covered hydrangeas, some poinsettias and some peonies.

With zip ties so tight against the noodles and the railing that all you need to do is to tuck the stems of the flowers into those zip ties to secure them to the noodles.

Another Dollar Tree find was these fun foam snowflakes! There are so many fun projects you can make with these, but they were just right for my staircase railing!

Greening pins are just the thing to attach these snowflakes to the pool noodles! Simply push them right through the foam as shown below.

You can use the greening pins to secure the snowflakes right to the noodles. Attach as many snowflakes as you would like to your railings.

I love long needled pine, be it green, or in this case, silver! These snowy silver ones were a perfect way to finish off my staircase railing.

The stems on these long needled picks were very thick wires, so I was able to stick those wires right into the pool noodles and they held securely.

Here is my beautiful wintery welcome! Since we don’t get any snow here in Florida, I have created my own magical snowy world!

The wonderful thing about this decor is that everything was a bargain from Dollar Tree, OR on sale! This has been holding up wonderfully in the rain, so I know it will hold up in your weather, be it rain, or snow! This is also something you might want to do for an indoor staircase when you take down all of those pretty Christmas garlands!

If you are looking for some winter tablescape ideas you might want to look at these:

A classic winter white tablescape with hints of silver is perfect for a dinner for four this season.

Warm to the radiance of these unique glowing snowballs at this exquisite table set for a snug dinner out of the bitter winter weather.

A silver swan swims in a silver frame on a pond of sparkling snow for this opulent table set for a wintertime dinner party.