DIY Decorating for the Holidays: Non-Traditional Dining Room Inspiration

A few weeks ago, I flew out to New York City for a couple of days to take part in a really awesome event put together by Lowe’s, called Deck the Halls. I was there on behalf of Curbly (catch my posts on Curbly a few times a week, right here), along with Gabriel of The Artful Desparado, who also writes for Curbly’s brother site, ManMade. We were asked to design and style one of seven rooms. Each room had a different blogger/ designer and, as a result, a totally different feel. It was a really neat project to be a part of.

So together, Gab and I designed a holiday dining room from top to bottom that could easily transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We had so much fun putting everything together, and although it was definitely a challenge to design a space from scratch from across the country and in two different time zones (Gab lives in Canada, I’m in Florida, and the space we were designing was in NYC), we love how it turned out.

The theme that we decided to run with was Scandinavian cabin. And this is what we started with…

The main pieces were already in the room when we arrived early in the morning – the walls were painted, the curtains were hung, etc. But there was still a lot to do.

We went with a neutral color palette of black and white and then I bought a dress that matched our room perfectly added in a few pops of color for fall/winter to balance things out and warm up the space. Paint colors: We used Bear Claw, Desert Travels, and Redstone Blue Spruce for the installation boxes. And painted the wood chargers Cathedral Stone. 

One thing that we knew we wanted to convey right from the start was a minimal, modern look that didn’t feel overly holiday. For that reason, we went with a very non-traditional color scheme and included subtle holiday accents, like vintage ice skates for winter and painted gourds that acted as sculptures to bring in fall.

We sourced a bunch of items from Lowe’s, and were able to DIY a handful of things as well, using Lowe’s materials of course. The box installation on the back wall, the plywood chargers, the plumbing pipe planters, and the centerpieces were all DIYed. Oh, and our dining room table was actually an outdoor furniture piece that we had painted in Ultra White. You can’t even tell that it’s not a regular dining table, can you?

Of course, one of my main priorities, as far as the styling goes, was the flower arrangements. So Gab and I hit the streets a few hours before the party to find flowers. As we were running around, I spotted a bunch of cabbage plants from a street vendor and thought it would be a perfect low-lying centerpiece because it felt so sculptural. I removed the bottom leaves to create more of an elongated stem and planted it in a shallow copper bowl that Gab had sourced for the table. There wasn’t a lot of extra room, so I added two small arrangements on the left and right of the cabbage centerpiece, as well. They’re inside enamel mugs to bring in the cabin vibe and keep things casual and cozy.

Instead of standard napkins, we decided to use tea towels because you can always find cool tea towels in great patterns, but with napkins? Not so much. Plus, they’re huge when unfolded so your pretty holiday dress won’t get dirty at the dinner table. Win-win!

So that’s it. A subtly decorated space that hints at the holidays, without being overbearing with seasonality. You can shop the lookbook from the entire event right here. And be sure to check our livestream video with the HGTV Kitchen Cousins too.

Big thanks to Lowe’s for flying us out there and inviting us to be a part of such a cool event. Let’s do it again sometime!

Photo credit: 1,3,5, and 8 by Patrick Schneider  for Lowe’s // All others by Brittni Mehlhoff