Decorating with Winter Botanicals

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Hello friends! I’m excited to join some of my awesomely talented blogger buddies for the Winter Botanicals and Gardens Blog Hop Hosted by my good friend Amber at Follow The Yellow Brick Home! I loved Amber’s idea for this hop as it is a new and refreshing way to approach decorating in winter!

If you’re coming over from The Tattered Pew, didn’t you love Kelley’s gorgeous style?

At the beginning of the year I decided that from now on I am only going to use natural elements on the blog that are available locally and in season in Central California. One one hand that won’t be too hard since we can and do grow just about everything here! But on the other hand our long and hot summers will make some of what I post here will be out of season for other parts of the country. For example, our fall comes late compared to other parts of the country, and often our leaves don’t start turning until the end of October. But last year I got tired of essentially fighting our seasons to decorate my home like everyone else is in cooler climates, and then it dawned on me – who said I had to? And there are plenty of people who live in the same type of climate I do that would enjoy decorating inspiration that fit our shared climate.

I wanted to do more for this hop, but we’ve had some bad rain and windstorms over the past week – the strongest I can remember – and our power has been off more than it’s been on. No power and a dark house doesn’t make for good decorating or taking pictures! But I did manage to pull a few things together in my dining room so I hope you enjoy them!

I started by putting together a little centerpiece on my dining room table, but I couldn’t make up my mind about which one of the two above I liked best. What do you think? The greenery in the mason jar in the first picture and the ammonia bottle in the second picture are ornamental rosemary. Ornamental rosemary smells like rosemary (and I assume even though it’s “ornamental” you can cook with it, but please confirm that using a reputable source (in other words, not me (How many times can you use parentheses in one sentence before it gets weird?(All these parentheses are starting to remind me of math problems)) before you try to use it in cooking)).

I then moved over to the corner of my dining room and decorated there. Can you guess what those are in the crock jug on the right?

Give up?

They are seed pods from a Texas umbrella tree. Texas umbrella trees are gorgeous shade trees that grow the most delicate little purple sweet smelling blossoms in springtime! However, in the winter the tree is covered in these little seed pods. Once the tree starts blooming and growing it’s leaves back in spring, these seed pods drop and they blanket the ground underneath the tree. Stepping on some of these downed seed pods is like stepping on a bunch of marbles – your feet will be skyward before you know what happened. And if we don’t rake the seed pods up in a timely manner, they will start growing and we will have 10,000 baby umbrella tree sprouts that we will have to nuke with weed spray. I call the little pods “dingleberries” for no particular reason other than I like saying “dingleberries” (don’t judge).

The branches in the crock jug on the left are from our Bay leaf tree. Not only do they bloom as well (you can see the buds if you look close) the Bay leaves smell amazing in the house!

I used blooming redwood branches in the grapevine wreath. Did you know redwoods bloom? In the springtime our redwood trees are covered with bees working the blossoms and the sound of bees buzzing can be surprisingly loud!

So by now you are all probably saying to yourselves “Shut up about all the green stuff and tell us where you got that card catalog!!!) I got it from Decor Steals. Isn’t it sweet? And yes it’s a vintage knockoff, but it’s a good vintage knockoff – so good that probably most people wouldn’t know it unless you told them. And the price is MUCH cheaper than I’ve seen for the real vintage deal, so I can live with it not being authentic!

I love Decor Steals and I’ve bought so many goodies from them I’ve lost count! But their more popular items (like this card catalog) sell out super fast and this is out of stock at this writing. However, you can sign up on their waitlist to be alerted via email when this comes back in stock!

And if you’re wondering – this isn’t a sponsored post from Decor Steals. I just really love them and I have their stuff all over my house. (But I won’t be upset if they send me some stuff as a thank you for the free plug.)

I used ivy in the pitcher on the left and more decorative rosemary in the pitcher on the right.

(I got the pitchers from Decor Steals too).

That’s it for me! Next up is Stacy Ling – you will love her gorgeous gardens and how she uses plants in her indoor decor!

Here’s the entire Winter Botanicals and Gardens Blog Hop lineup for your viewing and inspiration pleasure!

Thanks for stopping by to check out my winter botanical decorating ideas!