Room for Improvement: Christmas Dining Room

Martin: "Are you ready for today?"

Martin: "Big family, big table."

Wendy: "Big family on both sides. We like to get everyone together for the holidays and have a nice, festive celebration."

Martin: "And, obviously, we just don't have time with the birth of your baby daughter."

Wendy: "She was born just a few weeks ago and takes up all my time, but it's a special Christmas with her this year."

As you can tell, Wendy has a good eye for decorating. We just want to punch up the entire space with some more traditional colors for the holidays such as reds, greens and golds. So, first up, let's dress up the windows.

Now, you can still decorate this further with pine cones or ornaments but I like the understated elegance that it has. But, for a magical touch, it must always have lights.

I love the extra sparkle the room is starting to have, but I'm going a step further. I'm adding a berry garland to the chandelier as well, just to enhance the focal point of the room.

If you have any extra chairs around the dining table, you're not necessarily using, go ahead and pull them up against the wall to frame a window, a side board or, in this case, a mirror. It just helps to fill up some otherwise dead space.

I found this console table in Wendy's kitchen that I'm bringing over to the dining room just because the extra space will be nice to put her serving dishes on or even to create a dessert station.

We now have the perfect backdrop. Let's set the table.

For the centerpieces, I just took some clear vases and filled them up with Christmas ortaments.

If you want to dress up plain, white dinner wear, just use a decorative charger for a pop of color.

You can even take some of your glasses from your cupboards and use them for candle holders. In this case, this is a truffle bowl. I'm just turning it upside down and using it's base as a stand for my pillar candle.

Now, for place card holders, I just took a simple gift tag and inserted it into the needles of a pine cone.

All right, we're done.

This looks OK, but, for entertaining purposes, it's always best to use a plate rack.

OK, the dining room is now ready for a party.

This morning when we started, we already had a beautiful dining room, but it lacked the decorative touches to reflect the holiday season. We dressed up the space with garlands, ribbons and ornaments, and now Wendy's home truly captures this magical time of the year.

Wendy: "Wow, it's amazing. It's beautiful. I love it. It's elegant, and it definitely looks like Christmas now."

Martin: "OK, Wendy. Do you think you could create beautiful memories around this dining table?"

Wendy: "Absolutely. It's just gorgeous."

Martin: "On behalf of Room for Improvement, we would like to wish you a happy holiday season."