Six steps to dress your window boxes (and mantel) for Christmas

Window boxes add a LOT to the outside of a house and go well with so many home styles. But decorating them for Christmas in a way that looks beautiful and noticeable from the road can be tricky. Here are a few easy steps for filling your window boxes—and these tips will work for dressing a beautiful mantel too.

Step one: Clear out the window box. Get down to the bare dirt because you’re going to use it to secure the things you put in the box.

Step two: Place an ornament garland inside. This is the easiest way to add ornaments to a window box because the bulbs are already evenly spaced with colors nicely dispersed, and they’re attached to something solid.

Step three: Place clipped evergreen boughs inside the box, working them in between the bulbs. Make sure you clip the branches long enough to hang down over the front of the box because that adds depth. And don’t be worried if you cover some of the bulbs because you’ll fix that in a second.

Here’s a closer look:

Also, if you don’t have trees to clip from, you can cut branches from an alley or ditch bank, or you can buy a small tree from a tree lot and cut its branches (you might want to ask if you can just buy or have their discarded branches too).

Step four: Add a variety of greens. I stuck some lovely juniper into the box too—it looks like this and adds more texture to the box, which looks nice for those who walk up to the door.

Step five: Add some height in the back. Use some shorties like the one above, and stick these in at the back of the box, standing up in front of your window. They’ll look like this:

Step six: Pull all the bulbs forward, working them between and around your evergreen boughs. Now your box will look lush and lovely!

One more suggestion: Choose bulbs that complement the color of your house. My door is yellow, and I like red as much as the next Christmas fanatic, but yellow and red belong together on a corn dog and that’s about it. So I try to steer clear of red outside, hence the blues and silvers that go better with my house. If you consider your house color and choose complementary shades, you’ll like it better too. Cheers! •