How to style your holiday cottage

Have you been on holiday – or are you planning a late summer break this year?

This year I decided to ‘style’ our holiday rental – it gave me a huge amount a pleasure and made the place seem more like home. Read on for some easy ways to turn your holiday cottage into a holiday home

What you need to bring with you

I packed a few flower arranging essentials:

  1. floristry scissors,
  2. dry cleaner’s coat hanger and a
  3. ball of bindwire.  This looks like garden twine, but is actually paper-covered wire.

In hindsight I wished I’d packed washi tape as well – we could have taped our tickets, local maps and tour itinerary to the walls of our accommodation.  I’ll do that next time.

How to style your holiday cottage
How to style your holiday cottage

Things to bear in mind

Any home comforts you introduce to your holiday cottage need to be 100% reversible and must not damage the structure or contents of your rental.  Please do check the terms and conditions of your lease agreement.

Forage for greenery

After you’re settled in to your accommodation you’ll need to forage for greenery. Hopefully, you’ll have a well-stocked garden, or country lanes to explore. Whenever you forage don’t forget you mustn’t cut from private property, or take more than you need to complete your project.

I chose a variety of materials – oak, skimma, hebe and rosehips.  If you’re lucky enough to discover a farmer’s market you could add flowers as well.

Wall hanging (aka door wreath)

I made a simple coat hanger door wreath binding my fresh greenery onto my wire coat hanger. It’s really easy to do. I worked outside – it’s a great way to switch off and take some time out.  I find this sort of creative activity really sets me up for enjoying my hols.

Check out this short video for details of the technique I used.

 

The vase

I took off the sticky wrap to my ball of bindwire and sat a tumbler of water inside to make a unique vase.  You can add the leftover trimmings from your door wreath to make a simple, casual arrangement

How to style your holiday cottage
How to style your holiday cottage

Re-arrange the furnishings

I took the liberty of unhooking the picture that had been hung centrally over our living room fireplace. Propping it up on the mantelpiece instead - and offsetting it - gave a more relaxed feel to the dressing of this part of the room. And it gave me a hook from which to hang my door wreath.

Think about grouping items to add extra interest – I used a bright yellow citronella candle and then made a feature of my yellow-handled scissors and the box of bright yellow matches we’d bought to light our barbecue.

These little touches work well in any room – provided you have some shelf space to work with.

I’d love to hear how you’ve made your holiday cottage feel more like home – leave me a comment in below.

Until next time, happy flowers!

Julie

*I’m an Amazon Affiliate – if you buy the products I’ve recommended I received a small commission.

5-day FREE mini-course

If you're planning to find your happy with flowers this week don’t forget you can amaze your friends with your knowledge about getting your flowers to last longer by signing up here for access to my FREE five-day mini course.

Have you heard about #FlowerStart?

I’m an award-winning florist. I run an online flower arranging course you can fit around your busy life whilst creating beautiful arrangements to gift to your friends or family (or don’t tell anyone, keep for yourself). You’ll have something Instagramworthy in no time.

If you’d like to join #FlowerStart my 4-week online flower arranging class you can find out more about it here - click through to my post on Frequently Asked Questions - or email me julie@juliedaviesflowerworkshops.co.uk

FlowerStart World on Facebook

If you love having flowers at home make sure you join FlowerStart World on Facebook - a place where you can share your flower arranging successes and pick up hints, tips and advice

How to style your holiday cottage
Share this post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestmail

Leave a Reply