I know this sounds tacky but I love to see those electrical candles in windows especially on a colonial. And when it is a historial colonial is looks great.

If you have paned windows spray a little fake snow around the window panes and put the candle inside. It's looks so Christmasy to me. Spelling is not my strong suit. lol

.......Jane

Paper snowflakes. (Esp. if you can get help from a kid or two :-).

Here is a link that might be useful: How to hang paper snowflakes

For something unique for your neighborhood, think in terms of swags and spheres. Swag a garland across each window. You can weave some mini lights in them. Also you can hang an oversize bell or an oversize ornament with a wide ribbon. If you like, add a bow. Or hang some boxwood that has been arranged in a spherical shape.

I dislike the tiny wreaths set at the top of the window. What I like is a good sized wreath at the center of the window, hanging from a good sized ribbon with a bow at the bottom.

In a former neighborhood, a neighbor had pink ribbon and pink bows. It looked SOOOOOOO elegant!

A swag-type evergreen on the sill of each window would be nice.

In my first home we copied the swags that I saw hanging on one of my favorite homes. There was nothing available in stores like what I wanted, and so we just used wire cutters to cut some fake greenery to width (I just eyeballed it - no real measuring), attached a few small red ornaments and a red bow to each. They tended to bend a little which I did not find pleasing, so I had my DH cut some small supports from wood that I tied behind each one. Voila! They were really nice but different.

Thank you all for your replies!! You should see my front door right now, it's got 3 14inch snowflakes made from some type of styrofoam (can you say elegant tacky lol!). I love snow and my neighbors know it but I'd prefer to be a little more elegant!

"learn as i go", do you have any pictures or samples? i could definitly talk dh into something like that but a picture would save us a million steps. it sounds so pretty!

i forgot to mention DN (dear neighbors) have the white light into the window to accentuate their pretty windows. I want something over the top awesome to show them!

Thanks again for all of your suggestions and help!!

I'm sorry, but no photos of my own. I've linked below to something similar so I hope that helps. There really wasn't much to making it. I just bought a long string of fake evergreen from Michael's, cut to length with wire cutters, spread the greenery so it spread away from the center, attached the straight wood peice (to keep it from bowing too much) using zip ties, attached a Christmas bow to the center, and then hung it at the bottom of the window. The hardest part was positioning it because my window sills were only a few inches deep; I had to attach fishing line to both ends of the wood piece and then tie them to a very small nail that was hidden under my interior window trim. Otherwise, the wind might blow it askew if I only tied in the center. I also used candles in the windows that were centered so that the light was right over the colorful bow which made a nice overall effect.

One thought - I realized when responding to your post this time that the reason I haven't used the swags since moving is that I've not lived in another home with true window sills. I thought it would just be a nightmare to keep something like that level (guess I would have to tie them really tight??) and anyway it might look odd since they'd just be "floating" at the bottom of the window. Something to think about if you don't have sills.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{!gwi}}