Update Your Dining Room for the Holidays

Hot, muggy weather has finally arrived and it’s easy to focus on fun in the sun activities. However, before you know it, fall will be here and then the holidays. Remember last year when you wanted new accessories to perk up your décor for Thanksgiving and Christmas? Time just slipped away and nothing got done. A few simple changes – set in motion now – can guarantee a cheerier holiday season. A home’s dining room, often unused during the rest of the year, becomes your families’ focal point during these annual feast events. How can you update the look in this room? 1. A new tablecloth – or one for each of these occasions – with matching napkins can add pizzazz to the room’s furnishings and your customary dinnerware. 2. Sometimes, just the addition of a new cloth runner atop grandma’s tablecloth can blend happy memories of past dinners with the joy of this year’s gathering. 3. Reupholstering worn and stained chair seats gives new life to your existing dining room furniture. It is a relatively inexpensive update considering the “wow” factor it produces. 4. Replacing dated window treatments can revive the room’s old charm. Whether your taste runs to traditional draperies or modern blinds or shades, these windows should reflect your current lifestyle. 5. Lastly, adding complementary, seasonal floral or botanical arrangements completes your décor upgrade. Displays of gourds, pumpkins and bittersweet branches are perfect for Thanksgiving. Christmas, of course, isn't Christmas without evergreens, pinecones and holly berries.   On the steaming, waning days of summer, think how easy it would be to update your dining room for the holidays with these five easy tips.