For years I bought Christmas decor in matching sets.
One December it was 48 champagne-gold balls, all the same size, all from the same aisle, and my tree looked like a hotel lobby.
A nice hotel.
Nobody was having any fun in it.
The tree that finally made me happy was the opposite.
It was a pile of thrift-store glass, a felt mushroom my neighbor made at her kitchen table, and a pickle ornament I still can’t explain.
People stood in front of it and pointed at things.
That’s when I figured out what whimsical Christmas decor actually is.
It’s the storybook version of the holiday.
Candy colors instead of a strict palette.
Mushrooms and gnomes and little houses.
Ornaments that don’t match, on purpose.
It looks like the picture book somebody read you as a kid, and it’s very kind to a budget, because the whole point is that nothing has to match.
So here’s how I do it, spot by spot: the tree, the mantel, the window, the table and the front door.
Our whimsical decor guide covers the rest of the year.
This one is all Christmas.
Start With a Tree That Doesn’t Match (On Purpose)
Mismatched isn’t the same as random.
A tree with nothing tying it together looks like the ornament bin exploded.
A tree with one thread running through it looks charming, even when no two ornaments are alike.
My thread is usually color.
This year it’s pink and aqua with a little gold, so a teal glass ball, a pink glitter bird and a strand of fake pearls all read as one family.
Another year I did everything in wood and felt and let the colors go wild.
Pick one thing that repeats, and you can break pretty much every other rule.
Almost all of my ornaments are thrift.
My best haul was a $4 bag at a church rummage sale with about 30 old glass balls in it, half of them scuffed on the cap and perfectly fine from the front.
Estate sales are good too, especially the last hour, when nobody wants to haul a box of ornaments home.
Hang the heavy, shiny ones deeper in the branches and the light, silly ones out at the tips where they catch the light.
That one change makes a mismatched tree look layered instead of cluttered.
If pink and aqua aren’t your thing, our colorful Christmas tree ideas have plenty of other pairings.
Mushrooms, Gnomes and Other Woodland Folk
If whimsical Christmas has a mascot, it’s the mushroom.
Red caps with white spots, velvet ones in sage, glass ones from the 1970s if you get lucky at the thrift store.
They look like they wandered out of a fairy tale and sat down on your tree.
The clip-on velvet ones are my favorite, because you can put them anywhere, not just where there’s a branch to hook.
Mine are about 3 inches tall and they live on the lower branches, like they grew there.
Biscuit has stolen exactly one.
I found it in the dog bed in February, so either keep the low ones sturdy or accept a small loss.
Want to make your own?
A mushroom is just a painted ball on a stubby log, and it’s the easiest ornament I’ve ever made.
Our air-dry clay Christmas ornaments guide walks you through the clay part, and one evening plus drying time gets you a whole little patch.
Then there are gnomes.
I resisted gnomes for a long time, because the internet went a little overboard with them a few years back.
I’ve made my peace.
One small gnome on a stack of books, or one tucked at the base of the tree like he’s guarding the presents, is plenty.
A whole gnome army is a lot.
Two is a party.
Give him a little world, too.
A bit of moss underneath, a pinecone, a log slice from the craft store as a riser.
Now it reads as a forest scene instead of a figurine somebody left on a shelf.
Candy Colors You Can Almost Taste
Nothing says storybook faster than candy.
Peppermint red and white, pastel pink, mint green, a little lemon yellow.
You don’t have to commit to a full candy land theme.
A handful of sweet colors mixed into what you already own does the job.
The cheapest trick I know is real candy canes on the tree.
A box of 12 runs me about $2 at the grocery store, they come with their own hook, and a flocked tree hung with 40 of them looks like a bakery window.
It’s ridiculous in the best possible way.
If you have a dog, hang them above nose height.
Ask me how I know.
A gingerbread house counts as decor too, and a crooked homemade one is more whimsical than a perfect bakery one.
Give yourself about 2 hours on a weekend afternoon, with coffee.
Royal icing is the glue.
Gumdrops and candy buttons are the shingles, and nobody needs to know there’s a soup can holding up the back wall.
Then display it somewhere it can be admired and not eaten.
Chocolate is toxic to dogs, so mine sits on top of the fridge until Biscuit forgets it exists.
Which is never.
A Bottle Brush Forest on Every Flat Surface
Bottle brush trees are those little sisal trees that look like they came off a vintage cake.
They’re cheap, they come in sizes from about 2 inches to 12 inches tall, and they turn any flat surface into a tiny forest.
Group them, don’t line them up.
I do odd numbers in at least three heights, with the tallest a little off center.
Mix a few greens with one white flocked tree or one pink one.
If all you have is green, you can strip them in a diluted bleach soak, with gloves on and a window open, which takes anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.
A dip in fabric dye after that turns them whatever color you want.
Rinse them well and let them dry overnight on a towel.
Where they go: the windowsill, the bathroom counter, a tray on the coffee table, the top of a bookshelf.
In my living room they sit on a cake stand under a glass cloche I paid $3 for at the thrift store, and it’s the one thing every guest picks up.
The Mantel: Let the Stockings Disagree
Matching stockings are lovely.
They’re also not whimsical.
Hang one polka-dot, one striped, one chunky knit your aunt made, and suddenly the mantel has a personality.
The trick is the same as the tree: give them one thing in common.
All red and white, or all knit, or all about the same length.
Then they look like a family instead of a lost-and-found bin.
Above them goes a garland with warm lights, and here’s the hill I’ll die on: turn the overhead lighting off.
All of it.
Overhead lighting flattens a mantel into a photo of a mantel.
Garland lights plus a lamp on the side table and a few candles make the stockings glow the way they do in an old illustration.
My garland runs on a timer for 6 hours every evening, so I never have to think about it.
Then add one odd thing.
A ceramic poodle, a vintage Santa mug, a nutcracker with a chipped nose.
Something that makes people ask where on earth you found it.
A Tiny Village in the Window
A Christmas village is the most storybook thing you can own, because it’s literally a little world.
Mine started with two houses from Facebook Marketplace for $15, and now it takes up a whole windowsill.
Build it in a window if you can.
From the sidewalk at night, a lit village behind the glass looks like a snow globe, and from inside it gets daylight all day.
Put books or upside-down boxes under a sheet of cotton batting to make hills, so the houses sit at different heights.
A flat village looks like a parking lot.
Add a frozen pond made from a small mirror, a few skaters, a bridge and a scatter of fake snow.
Battery tea lights work inside houses that never came with a cord.
Our Christmas village display ideas go further into risers and backdrops.
Shop for village pieces in January.
People list them the week after Christmas, when they’re packing up and tired, and I’ve never paid full price for a single house.
Set the Table Like a Storybook Supper
The table is where whimsy gets cluttered fast, because people need room for actual plates.
So I keep it low and loose: a patterned cloth, two colors of taper candles, and something small and silly down the middle.
Buffalo check is a good base, since it already feels like a cabin in a picture book.
Red and green tapers in holders that don’t match, a few bottle brush trees borrowed from the living room, berries in a white pitcher.
That’s it.
It took me 15 minutes and I didn’t buy anything new.
Keep the centerpiece under about 12 inches so people can see each other across the table.
Keep candle flames well away from dry greenery and paper, too.
If that makes you nervous, flameless tapers have gotten very convincing, and nobody at my table has noticed yet.
The Front Door Gets the Old-Fashioned Bulbs
The front door is the first page of the story.
My favorite whimsical door is a big, full wreath wrapped in old-fashioned multicolor bulbs, the fat C7 or C9 kind, with gold balls and a red bow.
It looks like a 1960s Christmas card in the best way.
Size matters more than people think.
A standard front door is about 36 inches wide, and on one of those a wreath around 24 inches across looks right.
Anything under 20 inches looks lost.
On a dark door, go bright and big.
On a white door, the colored bulbs pop on their own.
Use lights rated for outdoor use on an exterior door and put them on a timer.
Battery strings are fine if there’s no outlet nearby, and they’ve saved me from running an extension cord through the mail slot.
Thrift the Old Glass (and How to Date a Shiny Brite)
The real prize in whimsical Christmas is vintage glass: figural ornaments shaped like churches and angels and Santas, plus the striped and stenciled balls of the 1950s. Thrift stores and estate sales still have them, usually in a shoebox, usually underpriced.
The American brand you’ll see most is Shiny Brite.
Max Eckardt started it in 1937, working with Corning, which adapted its light bulb process to make clear glass balls that were then decorated by hand.
Eckardt had been importing hand-blown ornaments from Germany since around 1907 and saw the war coming.
You can roughly date one by its hanger.
The first ones had the usual metal cap and loop.
During the war, metal was short, so the cap was swapped for a cardboard tab you hung with yarn or string, which puts those in the early 1940s. After the war came a metal hook with two lengths, so the ornament could dangle into the gaps of a real tree.
Aluminum trees showed up in 1958, had no gaps to fill, and the long hook was dropped in 1960.
One more thing before you pay vintage prices: Christopher Radko has reissued the most popular designs under the Shiny Brite name since 2001, so look at the box.
Check old glass for loose caps and for silvering that’s flaking inside.
A little wear is charm.
A crack isn’t, and a broken glass ornament on a wood floor is a vacuum-and-bare-feet situation nobody needs.
Where to Start If You Only Have One Weekend
You don’t have to do every room.
Pick the spot you look at most, give it one weekend and a small budget, and let the rest come later.
If I were starting over in a rental with no budget at all, here’s my order.
Candy canes on whatever tree I had.
A thrift bag of mismatched glass.
A few bottle brush trees on a tray.
Then the overhead light off and a lamp on.
That’s maybe $20, and it already looks like a storybook.
Everything else can come one thrift trip at a time.
That’s honestly the fun part.
And if a felt mushroom goes missing from the bottom branch, check the dog bed first.
Related read: Things I Wish I Knew Before I Decorated My First Home — Instant PDF + Kindle download. Secure checkout by Stripe