Unique Ways to Decorate with Gingerbread!

Want to add a vintage touch to your holiday decorating? Here are several ideas for Holiday decorating with architectural salvage! 

It is not too late to decorate your home for the upcoming Holiday season!  Do you plan a special theme ?  Do you have certain items you love to use that bring back memories of holidays past? For a unique twist, why not consider holiday decorating with architectural salvage?

Welcome to my spin on decorating for the Holidays!  I call it Kim Style!  Today I am sharing a post I wrote about how I incorporate one of my favorite decorating elements into my Holiday decor!

I hope this post will spark your creativity !

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Holiday Decorating With Architectural Salvage

What Most People Think of When they Hear the Word “Gingerbread”

What I think of

My take on the word gingerbread comes from the house I grew up in.  In architecture & design, gingerbread refers to detailed embellishment like the painted lady style of architecture that is famous in San Francisco.  It was quite prevalent in the late 1860s and 1870s in America.

The house I grew up in was built in the late 1880s.

and the first house that I bought on my own was a Sears house build in 1904.  The picture below is after the current owners painted it in a style similar to the Painted Lady style.  The exterior wasn’t nearly as cute when I owned it!  I am looking forward to seeing how it looks now.  I am planning a trip to the Cincinnati area for mid January and I will have to drive by and see it! 

Where Did Those Big Pieces of Gingerbread Come From?

Thanks for asking!  The large triangle shaped piece of gingerbread as well as the pieces shown in the two pictures below it were actually found in the barn at my family homestead.  After I finally made the decision to sell the family homestead, I had to get serious about cleaning out the out buildings.  You can read all about it here: Look What We Found in the Barn

When the guy helping me clean out the barn told me what he found, I almost burst into tears.  I honestly had no idea those pieces were in there.  Had I know they were, I definitely would have drug them out sooner! I am still not convinced that they came off of our house.  My Mom was a stickler about keeping things as original as possible and I am pretty sure they would have been put back if they had been taken off for some renovation project.  Regardless, they are awesome and I love them!

Sadly, the three largest pieces are still in my van.  Yes, 4 1/2 years later they are still bounding around in the back of my van. They are wrapped in a moving blanket and tied to the sliding door.  I tried to measure them without actually climbing into the van.  They are roughly 6 feet long and approximately 32 inches tall!  I think I found the perfect places to hang them in our home but I am still trying to convince my husband! 

Now That You Know Where they Came From, Let me Show You What To Do with Them!

Let’s start with the big triangle piece. See how it is missing some spindles or spokes?

Fortunately, they were also in the barn.  Here’s what they looked like before and after I cleaned them up.

 

I am planning on hanging the big piece on the wall or putting it somewhere in our house at which time I will attempt to glue the spindles back in.  Until that time, I am using them in a dough bowl arrangement.

A Creative Way to Decorate A Dough Bowl for the Holidays

I love dough bowls and gingerbread so I decided to use them together for this arrangement.

Dough bowls come in many shapes and sizes.  This square one is a reproduction.  I love the hand hewn look of the inside with the painted outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gather Additional Elements to Use

For this arrangement, I was able to “shop my home” meaning I walked around and gathered some elements that I thought would work together nicely.

This round ball is actually a vintage mistletoe kissing ball that my Mom had.  My Mom was a true collector, some might call her a hoarder but she wasn’t. She just liked her things.  I think she may have passed that trait on to her daughter!

I love this greenery.  It has a bit of sparkle to it and is accented with silver jingle bells.

A selection of pine cones including a few glitter pine cones that were left over from the flower shop days.  I was a florist for a number of years before I bought a pizzeria and went from flowers to flour!  If you are interested in learning more about my background, you can visit this post : Sprout, Grow Bloom 

Place the greenery in the dough bowl to form a base and then layer in the elements.

Finish the arrangement by adding a sparkly silver toned bow and nestle the pine cones around it.

Save These Pins For Later!

 

Snowflake Wishes & Gingerbread Kisses

I ordered a few pieces of gingerbread from a vendor on Etsy.  I didn’t read the description and they were much smaller than I anticipated.  That is kind of a bad habit of mine, especially when I am in a hurry.  I need to slow down and pay attention to the dimensions!  While they didn’t work for the project I had in mind, they actually were the perfect size for this 2nd dough bowl arrangement.

To make this one, I used these three candy themed snowflake ornaments.  They do have a gingerbread cookie accent if you look closely.

I had originally planned to use them in these spindles but I couldn’t get them to stand up straight and I was running out of thyme! Update: I did get them to stand up fairly straight.  Although that one on the end does seem to be leaning!  Here is the link to the post: Repurposed Snowflake Spindles for the Holidays

Back to the dough bowl…..

To make the white dough bowl arrangement, I layered some faux greenery in the bottom of the dough bowl and then added three of the small spindles and some pine cones.  I tucked the gingerbread snowflake in and I was done!

More Holiday Decorating With Architectural Salvage 

By standing this piece of gingerbread on its end, it looks like angel wings!  The details about how to make the footed tray it is sitting on as well as how I put the arrangement together can be found here:  Quick & Easy Way to Make A Footed Tray. 

That same small piece of gingerbread also looks so sweet with this snowman!

Coastal Farmhouse Holiday Vignette

A Few More Ways I Use Gingerbread in My Decorating

Those two matching pieces were originally the end pieces of one of the linear pieces we found in the barn.

I asked my handyman to cut that front piece into three pieces so that I could have the matching pieces and the longer piece.

Another way I used the matching pieces as a backdrop for this vignette

and here they are flanking this pizza sign:

Here is the middle of the piece after the sides were cut off.  It looks like angel wings, doesn’t it?

This is how the display looked once I got it finished.

Originally I was going to keep all the pieces that we found in the barn but I finally decided that I didn’t have room for all of them.  I sold the 2nd linear piece to my cousin’s granddaughter.  She turned it into a headboard.   She & her husband also bought the barn wood that I had.  I “talked” about how she turned it into an accent wall here: From a Pile of Barn Wood to a Beautiful Accent Wall!

Thank you for stopping by today!  I hope you have enjoyed these holiday decorating with architectural salvage ideas!

For More Ways to Incorporate Gingerbread (Architectural Salvage) in to your decor:

Coastal Shabby Chic Office Refreshed for The Holidays

Architectural Salvage Decorating Ideas

 

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