Last week, we showed you how easy it is to use Miss Mustard Seed’s® Milk Paint to create 3 gorgeous Thanksgiving tablescapes.

Since then, we’ve been as busy as Santa’s elves getting our home ready for Christmas gatherings. We created a nativity scene, refinished a rocking horse, painted our own ornaments, transformed wooden crates and more! Of course we used MMS MilkPaint™ for all of these festive projects.

Let’s dive into this cozy Christmas vignette we created, and see how we put our MMS MilkPaint™ spin on these holiday decorations!

Dip Dyed Pinecones

Do you have a real Christmas tree in your home, or are you #teamartificial? Whether your tree is real or not, it needs to be trimmed to your taste. We began our tree decorating by dip-dying pinecones, lotus pods, twig balls and other natural accents using MMS MilkPaint™

To dip-dye, we mixed up Schoolhouse Red in a ratio of 4 parts water to 1 part MilkPaint™. We used a larger bowl so we could roll everything around in the paint.

Oh, and make sure you wear some gloves too! (Unless you really want red hands. In that case, you do you, boo.)

Once your pods, cones and seeds are dyed, lay them out on a piece of wax paper to dry.

To give some of the pinecones a snowy and frosty feel, we brushed them with a bit of Ironstone. To see how we did it, watch our TikTok tutorial below:

Fun, huh?

To hang our dip dyed ornaments on the tree, we used these little hangers. You can also use floral wire, ribbon, or whatever you have on hand. We found these hangers to be more “finger-friendly” than floral wire. (Have you ever stuck yourself with it accidentally? Ouch!)

The frosty pinecones looked so lovely next to the Schoolhouse Red lotus pods.

MMSMP Tip: We recommend painting pinecones with big leaves - they’re easier to frost.

To round out our Christmas tree, we added some gold cherub ornaments and a buffalo check ribbon.

Wooden Train

Did you have a model train running laps under your tree when you were a child? We wanted to recreate that bit of nostalgia with this wooden train set.

Raw wood is a cinch to paint or stain with MMS MilkPaint™! This blog post explains why.

We stained our train cars in Typewriter, Boxwood, Ink Blue and Schoolhouse Red. Our stain ratio was 4 parts water to 1 part powder. To add a bit of glam, we painted the wheels using silver craft paint.

To seal everything up, we used our MilkOil™ Indoor Hemp Seed Oil. (We’ll share more about this incredible topcoat soon. If you loved our regular Hemp Oil, then you’ll loose your socks over this upgraded and improved version!)

You can see the train set off to the right behind our rocking horse. It looks so sweet nestled under the twinkle lights, doesn’t it?

Ooh! Let’s talk about that rocking horse next!

Rocking Horse

The raw wood rocking horse was stained using Curio in our 4:1 ratio. To ensure a durable finish (because let’s face it…kids are hard on toys), we sealed it with our MilkWax-Eco™. This wax cures to a hard finish that is not only durable, but scrubbable too!

A sweet buffalo check ribbon tied it back to the Christmas tree. (Pun intended)

Nativity Scene With Crate Stable

We like to have a nativity scene in our home during Christmas. (In case you’re curious why it’s called a nativity scene, the Latin root of the word nativity means to be born or birth. So a nativity scene is a little diorama of the birth of Jesus.)

This little wooden set did the trick nicely.

We used Schoolhouse Red, Boxwood, Mustard Seed Yellow, Schloss, Marzipan, Curio and Farmhouse White on our little scene.

Aren’t those block sheep the cutest things you’ve ever seen?

The “stable” is a wooden crate that we painted in Grain Sack. The bottom crate was decorated with this Funky Junk stencil.

Reclaimed Bifold Doors

Not everything in our scene was new. We had these bifold doors in our stash and thought they would make an excellent backdrop for our Christmas vignette. We painted them in Schoolhouse Red, matching our dip dyed pinecones.

They also look lovely behind this sweet wooden sleigh that we painted in Schoolhouse Red, Typewriter and silver craft paint.

Are you getting into the holiday spirit now? Think you can use any of these festive holiday decorations in your home this year?

Make sure you share your Christmas vignettes and holiday projects with us on social media. We love seeing how you’re moving mountains in your homes!