After the beauty and excitement of the holidays with festive colors and twinkling lights I like to continue to keep our home looking cozy and magical for winter using greenery and garlands. Today I am excited to share a preview of our nearly finished sunroom and how I am cozied it up for the winter with a beautiful pre-lit Dandan Pine Garland from Seasonal LLC. *I received this garland for review from Seasonal LLC. All opinons are my own. 

A couple of weeks before Christmas I was contacted by Seasonal LLC and asked to pick a product for review from their holiday collection. As soon as I saw the Dandan pine garland I was in love! Since I was already using norfolk pine garlands on the mantels in my foyer and living room, I really wanted a different type of realistic greenery for the mantel in the sunroom so I chose the Dandan pine garland.

We were just wrapping up the major renovations on our sunroom right up until Christmas and I knew it wouldn’t be completely furnished or styled before the holiday, so I wanted to keep any seasonal decor simple. The garland arrived just in time for adding a little holiday glow, without going overboard in the room. 

I love how realistic it looks, and the generous nine foot length provides many options for draping the garland. I chose to position mine up higher on top of the mantel with a little drape in the center, so the moldings on the mantel could still be seen. By the way, this is a faux fireplace that is actually the backside of real fireplace in the foyer. I think my husband did an amazing job creating a mantel with historic character and charm as well as dressing up some very plain built in shelves on each side of the fireplace with beautiful trim and mouldings.  

The sunroom mantel is much smaller than my living room mantels, so I decided to fold the ends of the garland up to make it a little shorter on the sides so it was more in proportion to the mantel. However, it can easily be styled with the full length draping over the sides. 

I typically don’t like the modernity of LED lights because they seem too bright and harsh, but I was pleased with the warm white pre-lit bulbs. The lights are very bright but they aren’t a blinding-blue white or even greenish toned like some of the pre-lit garlands and trees today.

Garland specifics:

• Measures 9ft long with 7in diameter
• Pre-strung with 300 warm white LED lights
• 560 branch tips
• Plug in
• For use in indoor or covered outdoor locations
• LED lights are energy-efficient and long lasting
• Fire-resistant and non-allergenic

The fact that the garland is non-allergenic is very important to me. Over the past few years, most of the “real touch” technology being used in holiday greenery/artificial trees is highly toxic and some of these products have a very strong chemical smell that I am unable to tolerate at all do to autoimmune conditions. To be 100% honest, I expected the garland to have that same chemical odor. I decided to take a chance and collaborate with Seasonal LLC by reviewing the garland. I just figured that if  I opened the box and it had an odor, I would just use the garladn to decorate around the front door outside on the porch.  As you can see, I am in fact using the garland indoors because it doesn’t have any noticeable odor at all! It’s beautiful, well, made, and doesn’t “off-gass” any noticeable chemicals. Score!

Next year I might add some bows or orange slices to the garland for Christmas, but I really just love the beauty of this garland unadorned and how it can work for traditional, farmhouse or modern styles.

The garland arrived well-packaged in a box but it wasn’t too smashed. It didn’t take long to “fluff” it and the lights were strung very evenly, so it was only a few minutes before I had the garland on the mantel, plugged in ready to enjoy. 

Now that Christmas is over and our tree is packed away, I love to just come and sit in the sunroom and enjoy the beautiful of the garland and lights while sipping tea and reading a favorite magazine or book.  The Dandan garland truly adds the most magical winter coziness and if you are looking for a new garland I highly recommend it!

Winter Sunroom in Progress

 Reviewing the beautiful mantel garland has given me an opportunity to share the first real preview post of the sunroom. I am saving the full reveal for spring, but here are a few more pictures to give you an idea of how it is coming along.

Although it isn’t finished entirely, the sunroom is definitely at the useable point and when the sun is out it is definitely the room that helps beat the winter blahs! In the evenings I love to relax in here…but sometimes it’s hard to relax because I look around the room and think about what else still needs to be finished, like painting the ceiling!

I am also making a wish list of decorative items, such as a rug that actually fits (we are temporarily using a small jute rug we have turned horizontally which looks strange since it has fringe, but it does anchor the seating area until we find something else.)

In addition to the winter mantel garland, I have styled this gorgeous thrifted Magnolia homes basket with some items that can be enjoyed from winter through spring. The mantel garland and the styled basket tray are keeping the sunroom feeling bright, welcoming and cozy, even on dreary snowy days.

Speaking of snow, here is the first picture of the brick entry area we created for the sunroom door which will is now used similar  to a mudroom entry area since the entrance is from the back yard and driveway. We are definitely getting a lot of use out of it already with all the snow we have had! We choose a beautiful French farmhouse style wide plank hardwood the rest of the sunroom, but I really wanted to incorporate my beloved brick too, and with it’s durabilty it is a good choice for this area. The brick will eventually extend over into the breakfast nook window seat area which is the last thing we will do to finish the sunroom completely. I will share more about this side of the sunroom and our plans for it in an upcoming post.

I hope this post has given you ideas of how to to simplify your after Christmas decorating with a beautiful unadorned pine garland with lights on a mantel, buffet or console table. I also hope you have enjoyed seeing the first pictures of our sunroom which I will still call ” in progress” although there are no pressing issues with the room at this time.  After two years of constant renovations, the sunroom is serving it’s much needed purpose as a place to just relax and enjoy the beauty of winter whether sunny, rainy or snowy!

Thanks for visiting!

Amber