Holiday Decorating Sans the Tree

We’re going out of town for more than a week this Christmas for a big family get-together in New Mexico, so we’re debating whether to get a tree. Since we still have one kid under the age of I’m-too-cool-to-care — and because I’m a bit of an ornament junkie — chances are that we will get a tree.
In the meantime, we’ve done a few things to ease us into the holiday spirit. These are simple decorating ideas that really make the room feel festive, with or without an evergreen tree in the corner.

We have a set of blocks that spell Merry Christmas on one side and Happy_New Year! on the other. This year we decided to use only some of the blocks, and mingle them in among some milk bottles filled with dried plants from our yard. Any alphabet blocks could be used in various scenarios to spell out holiday greetings and wishes. Don’t tell my husband, but I’m thinking of having us temporarily remove the dried clippings and fill the bottles with redwood branches and pine boughs. Festive!

By far, my favorite decorating scheme we’ve come up with is hanging big round ornaments from the beams in our living room. We intersperse the balls with some wire stars I got at a garden shop several years ago. Sometimes we add twinkling white lights to the beams, and sometimes we don’t. Either way, the effect is dramatic yet simple, and it gives me an excuse to search for huge round ornaments at after Christmas sales.

What holiday decorating tricks do you have up your red-velvet-with-fluffy-white-trim sleeve? I’d love to read about them in the Comments!