The holidays are filled with traditions and when the Christmas season arrives, we have many we look forward to at Biltmore.  One of our most popular is the annual tree raising.  Santa delivers Biltmore’s holiday centerpiece, a 35-foot Fraser fir, to the front doors of Biltmore House on a horse drawn carriage. 

Another tradition we look forward to is the making of our grand scale gingerbread houses, one for Biltmore House and one for our Inn.  Each year, our talented pastry chefs create gingerbread replicas, covered in sweet treats down to the smallest details.  At Biltmore House, this remarkable creation can be seen by guests in the kitchen of the home.  And at the Inn, the gingerbread treat is a highlight of the lobby decor.  

You don’t have to be a pastry chef, though, to start your own gingerbread house tradition.  Our chefs suggest letting your creativity guide you, using a wide variety of treats to add sparkle, texture and color.  You will be surprised how graham crackers can turn into a walkway or boxed cereal can shingle a roof!  Use your favorite gingerbread recipe, or the one below from our chefs.

Gingerbread House Recipe

1/4 c brown sugar 

1/4 c molasses 

1/2 c light corn syrup 

1/2 c shortening 

1 1/2t. Ginger 

1 1/2t. Cinnamon 

3 1/2 c AP flour 

In a saucepan, combine brown sugar, molasses, corn syrup and shortening.  Melt over medium heat.  Mix dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl with the paddle attachment.  Pour melted syrup into dry ingredient and mix until combined.  Roll dough between two pieces of parchment to desired thickness (1/4” is usually good!).  Cut desired shapes from the dough, carefully removing the scraps and leaving the pieces for your house on the parchment.  This will keep your shapes from being warped. Bake pieces at 350 until light golden around the edges.  

 **this dough will bake very firm and will hold up well for gingerbread houses, however is is not the best for eating.

Guests who come to Biltmore before diving into their own holiday decorating can’t help but pick up some tips and ideas during Christmas at Biltmore.  There is just too much inspiration all around! Decorating for the holiday season can be a stressful task, but we are sharing our tried and true decorating tips to make it a little easier.

Choose a theme.  A theme repeated throughout your holiday decorating scheme will bring continuity of style, color and overall look.  Themes can be as simple as a particular color or color palette, or objects that represent memories of family events. Family photos and travel souvenirs are perfect for creating ornaments.

Be choosy.  Be selective and stick to your theme.  You don’t have to use every ornament or decoration you own each year.

Avoid the “This and That” Scheme. Random placement of glittery things scattered around the room lacks the impact you can achieve if you concentrate on three to five elements (embrace the design “rule of three”).  The Christmas tree is one, a mantle might be the second, and the third might be an arrangement on top of an armoire.  Within those elements you can go over the top. 

It doesn’t have to be red and green.  Let your year-round style and colors inspire your holiday look.  Take cues from your wall and fabric colors to make your seasonal decor unique to you and your home. 

Pack away the everyday.  Don’t be afraid to send some of your everyday decorative objects on a short vacation. Replace the mirror over the mantle with a fresh evergreen wreath.  Cover your neutral sofa pillows with vivid and bright shams (or replace entirely for the season). Bring out some of your china or silver.

Bring the outside in.  Spend an afternoon outside gathering woodsy elements to create a rustic and natural look. Collect pine boughs, holly berries, pine cones, dried flowers and grasses.  Add favorite ornaments for a pop of color, or purchase an inexpensive bouquet of fresh flowers, pull it apart and add your own natural materials to create a beautiful seasonal display. 

Create the Biltmore sparkle. For a dazzling tree, tuck shiny ornaments deeply into the tree, starting at the trunk, and work outward. This creates depth, color and super-sized shine. Hang special and more decorative ornaments close to the branch tips.  Mound your favorite ornaments into bowls on your dining table, or mix them in baskets with pine cones and greenery.  Accent your wreaths and garlands with clusters of berries and shiny glass balls of different sizes.

Punch up the glow.  Group candles in varying heights throughout your decorating scheme to generate the warmest effect. 

Cue the lights!  Our team has perfected a no-fuss light-stringing technique you can use on your own tree.  First, work each light strand from the top of the tree down, and in sections, rather than round and round. This cuts down on ladder-climbing time.  Second, work the lights in toward the trunk of the tree, and then back out to the tip of the next branch, securing the strand by slipping the tree tip between the two wires of the strand.  We suggest a 6-foot tree requires 8 sets of 50 lights, a 12-foot tree needs 26 sets, and a 14-foot needs 32 sets.  

Do the squint test:  To make sure the tree is evenly lit, step back, squint your eyes to make things look blurry, and look for dark or overly bright spots.  Rearrange or add lights as needed. 

Get Creative with Fun Holiday Framing Ideas

The holidays are quickly approaching, which means it’s time to deck the halls with cheer. This year, don’t overlook the walls when adding festive touches.

An easy way to start is by going through old holiday photos. Consider framing photos of the children with Santa, or showing off family portraits in an attractive grouping. When Christmas is over, you can keep the photos out and enjoy beautiful memories year-round!

The holidays usually mean a mailbox overflowing with Christmas cards. Pick out some of your favorites, and display them around your home in frames. It’s an easy way to create instant artwork.

Need help getting started on your framing projects? We recommend selecting frames from our Biltmore Frame Collection by Larson-Juhl.

Want to spruce up your garden, yard, or walkway this winter? The presence of unique statues can add beauty to your grounds during the cold months. When it snows, the pieces are truly eye-catching.

If you have outdoor containers, you can fill them with evergreens to bring color into your space—spruce, fir, magnolia, holly, and pine.  You can use Oasis (floral foam) to help arrange and hold moisture. The cuttings can go up to four weeks without water. If the container is in direct sunlight, the cuttings will brown out faster, even if they are watered and in Oasis. 

Hang wreaths or use garland to decorate other areas like your front door or other statues.  Add bows, berries, pinecones, or other pops of natural color to really showcase winter’s beauty.

Create an attractive arrangement in a container by using a taller evergreen surrounded by smaller plants around the outside.

Purchase a potted shrub that is slightly smaller than your container.  You can either remove it from the pot and plant it directly into the container in a potting soil mix, or place the pot into the container and use small pine bark nuggets to hold it in place as well as on top to hide the smaller pot.

Insider Tip: Our Venetian Urn is displayed at A Gardener’s Place, our garden-inspired gift shop, this winter with such an arrangement if you need some in-person inspiration!

The most important thing to remember is to water but not over water.  Plants still need water in the winter.  Once a week is a good rule of thumb for winter months, but check the soil moisture just in case!  If it’s staying dry, water more often.  If it is staying too wet, water less often.  You want the soil to be slightly moist but not saturated or powder dry.

 See our Unique Stone statuary for inspiration!  Unique Stone, a licensed partner with Biltmore For Your Home, carries on the visionary legacy left by Biltmore’s landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. Throughout Biltmore inspiration was drawn to craft outdoor statues, benches, pedestals, and various other architectural elements in cast stone. Items are then hand finished for an aged patina.