There’s nothing that can put you in a bad mood quite like taking down the Christmas decorations and realizing you have at least two more months of cold, dreary, weather ahead, with no twinkling lights or holiday cookies to provide a distraction.

January is generally the saddest time of year as far as my house is concerned. We have fun decorations for fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, and in the summer time we’re outdoors so much that we don’t really pay attention to how it looks inside.

But in January, once the Christmas decorations are down, we don’t have a whole lot to look at. The house is suddenly bare. And cold. And sad. And we’re stuck inside, trying to deal with it.

Until now.

This year, I finally decided to act on an idea I’ve been wanting to try for ages.

This year, I turned our post-holiday house into a Winter Wonderland.

Part of the fun was finding deeply discounted Christmas decorations that would work for our winter theme. I found this icy wreath at Kmart.com, on sale for $9.87.

Overall, the best deals came from Michaels, one week after Christmas. By that time, every Christmas item was eighty percent off. EIGHTY PERCENT OFF, PEOPLE. I loaded up a shopping cart with fake snow, snowflake ornaments, mercury glass vases, silver ribbon, and snow-sprinkled pine cones and spent next to nothing.

Why hello, snowy staircase!

This is what’s currently on the table in our foyer.

And these icicles are hanging from our dining room chandelier. I found them on Etsy. The pearl strands came from a shop near my parents’ house in Atlanta, also reduced to 50% off after Christmas.

But my favorite decorations are in the kids’ rooms. I picked up a few packages of paper and tinsel snowflakes from Party City and transformed their rooms into a snowstorm of flakes while they were at school.

They literally screamed when they got home and saw their rooms.

More icicles and pearl strands hanging from the mantel…

And mercury glass vases, finials, pine cones and icy branches on top. I’m paranoid about fire, so I put LED votives inside the vases. You really can’t tell the difference. We turn them all on each night and feel very cozy.

In the kitchen, snowflakes hang from the chandelier, winter-themed potpourri is on the table, and I picked up the snowflake place mats from Target for $1 apiece.

More paper snowflakes from Party City. I had initially thought we’d make our own, but these were so inexpensive that I saved myself the headache and bought them instead!

Dennis and I found this reindeer head for $15 at an antique mall last week. I LOVE it!

 I also put vinyl snowflake decals on our kitchen windows and on the windows in the kids’ rooms. We are thrilled with our winter wonderland and plan to make it an annual tradition. And who knows? Maybe the real thing will fall outside before the month is over…

January.

It’s not so bad after all.