French Country Cottage Christmas

In this cozy outing, French Country Cottage blogger Allison (French Country Cottage Inspired Gatherings) serves up ideas for rustic holiday decor. She showcases 25 ways to dress up a Christmas tree, with standouts including the “Mingle of Blues” frosty-flocked artificial tree with white and blue ornaments, and “Romantic Floral Elegance,” which features hydrangea, rose, and snowberry bunches tucked in among the branches. Suggesting ideas for sprucing up each room of a house, Allison notes that she drapes a garland on her entryway banister and places decorative bowls filled with baubles on surfaces throughout her home. When entertaining, “delicately detailed plates, gilded wine stems, and flatware tied with satin ribbon... offset with country linen napkins” give table settings a “French country feel,” according to the author, who also delves into embellishing a home’s exterior, showing how she outlines the roof of her barn in colored Christmas lights and mounts a Christmas tree on a rolling stand so she can move it outdoors or indoors depending on the weather. There’s little explicit guidance, with Allison instead focusing on displaying scenes she’s designed, but the pastoral-inspired arrangements would please even Scrooge. The result is a festive guide for the cottagecore set. (Aug.)