Company is Coming…a Christmas DIY

If you’ve ever visited this time of year, you’d know that usually, from late-November to about the second week of January, we don’t really use lamps at our house. We’re entirely lit by Christmas lights.

(If you don’t celebrate Christmas, you’re welcome to skip this post and go read about the puppy, I COMPLETELY understand.)

I’m off to a late start this year and while the trees are up and decked, I still have to put up our main tree in the family room. There are currently boxes of decorations in the hallway (either waiting to be unpacked OR unpacked and awaiting a trip back to the basement); packages arriving daily that need wrapping; two dogs and one puppy squabbling over food and toys; one turfy pomeranian who suddenly wants to “autograph” everything; a wonderful carpet cleaner that’s sitting in the Dining Room because I’m using it nearly every freaking day; and some days there is an old table that I’m refinishing in the back hall because it’s too cold to do it outside and I can suck the fumes out via the fan in the back hall powder room.

ALL THAT to say that if someone stops by to visit, my hospitality might be summarized by this door dec:

Friendly, aren’t I?

It doesn’t exactly look like we’ve rolled out the welcome mat, which is a quandary as this month’s “Where Bloggers Live” topic is “Company’s Coming.”

Um, they are?

Our kiddos are quarantining so they can all come home later this month and we’re excited about that, but it certainly will be a different Christmas for us this year. We won’t be having our extended family, and after a VERY close call for my elderly parents last week they are locking down with the hopes that “the jab” is just around the corner.

NEVERTHELESS, for those who celebrate it, Christmas IS Coming. And don’t tell anyone, but I say every year that I wish we could celebrate all the Santa HooHa, cookies, and gift bonanza from CHRISTmas on a different day so that on December 25th, we could just embrace the simple and humble birth of a child in a manger.

That’s pretty darn ironic coming from someone who has six Christmas trees.

Pandemic or not, company IS coming, and this year He is more welcome than ever… Each year we’re reminded that there was “no room in the inn,” and we’ve commemorated that for the last four years by making an outdoor manger from pallets and scrap wood to “prepare Him room.”

This is the first one that Mr D&D made several years ago; I wrote about it here and it’s still my favorite.

It was a pretty simple configuration, he zip tied some pallets together and used a few yard poles for support. We had just lost a lovely white birch tree, and Mr used the branches to trim out the pallets. I picked up some tree cuttings form Lowes and it was a humble and perfect place for the Holy Family.

We eventually moved it where we could see it better, and even thought the elements took their toll on the birch trimming, nature found a way to accent the scene:

And that brings us to 2020. We made some improvements…some additional square footage, an actual roof.

(YES… It would be TOTALLY and COMPLETELY inappropriate to cue the theme from “The Jeffersons,” and yet that’s what’s running through my twisted brain.)

It’s actually a pretty easy project, and you can complicate it as much as you like. But here’s how the 2020 DIY pallet manger was built.

Collect 6 pallets of similar size: Two for the floor, one for each side, two for the back.

Line up the back corners, and zip tie them together until secure.

Repeat for the other side.

Zip tie the pallets together at the center.

Also secure the walls to the base with zip ties.

In the past we’ve run boards across the top and screwed them in to the walls, then zipped pallets to the top for the roof. Cover with scrap greenery. You could also salvage fence sections and trim to size (or even purchase something like this if you’re feeling spendy):

This year we did things a little differently, We still ran 2×4 boards from side to side, securing them with screws at the corners:

We had these scrap angle braces from an old workbench and we decided to repurpose them as roof supports (screwed in). (They wouldn’t be too difficult to simplify and recreate if you didn’t happen to demo your workbench this year.)

We added boards to connect the angles at their base and at the top join. Repeat on the back.

We purchased replacement dog ear fence pickets, cut them in half

and fastened them to the top and bottom boards across the front and back.

We used a yardstick as a spacer…but it might have looked a little less perfect had we spaced the boards a little further apart.

And since the dang roof looked so swanky, we felt compelled to use the extra boards to trim up the front view of the pallets.

This is how it looked tonight.

I hoped to snag some pine or fir tree cuttings and add some string lights, and update this picture with one that includes a lovely covering of Buffalo snow. I wasn’t able to get the cuttings (thank you, pandemic), but the snow delivered!

Because the wood is new it’s a little pristine this year. I think it will look nicer once it’s had a chance to weather.

Want to check out some guest rooms or places that other bloggers host their company? Please visit

Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Em at Dust and Doghair
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After

Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Over the next few months, a group of seven bloggers will be sharing their workspaces, their homes, towns and more!

Make sure you visit everyone to see where the magic happens!