Most young families struggle with their budget, especially around the holidays. But creating stunning Christmas decorations doesn’t have to break the family budget. The key is to keep it simple, and stick to a color theme throughout the house. Here are some cheap christmas decorations ideas for your home, from the front door to the Christmas table.
Cheap Christmas Table Decorations
This idea came from epicurious.com’s “Winter Holiday Table Settings” feature. While showing a Hanukkah table setup, this could easily be adapted to Christmas. In lieu of a floral centerpiece, the table is set with a pyramid of beautifully wrapped packages. You could set a theme depending on your assortment of papers — from traditional red, to monotone shades of white and silver.
The stemmed bud vases shown here, could easily be replaced by teacups or tea light holders (from the dollar store) holding single-stem blooms.
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Outdoor Christmas Lights
Don’t have enough lights to blind the neighbours? No worries. Even a single strand of lights can be effective, if used right. Focus on a single element of your house, such as the front door, the windows, or a tree.
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Christmas Wreath
Purchase an inexpensive wreath, and add a bold red ribbon for a huge impact.
Cheap Christmas Tree Decorations
First of all, keep the tree small — it will be cheaper to buy, and you will need fewer decorations. Buy inexpensive decorations, such as this set from Ikea ($10/62 pcs.), or from the dollar store. While the kids are young, you will learn to appreciate inexpensive and shatterproof ornaments.
Homemade Christmas Tree Decorations Of course, you can make your own Christmas tree decorations with a variety of materials, including craft paper, felt, clay, or even cookies! Here’s a quick list of
- Make ornaments or garlands from felt or craft paper. We are very fond of these garlands from landofnod.com. In fact, many commercial Christmas decorations are crafted to give them the impression of being homemade, so go ahead, browse retail stores for inspiration.
- Make and decorate Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments
- Decorate your Christmas tree with candy canes
- Done with all your christmas baking? Attach pretty ribbons to the cookie cutters and hang them on the tree.
- Wrap small boxes in festive paper and hang them up!
- Use small toys (animals, large puzzle pieces, toy tea cup sets) to decorate the tree. Top it off with a multi-colored craft paper garland. It will result in a colorful tree the kids will love. (In fact, the kids make a mini tree like this for their bedroom each year)
- Make paper snowflakes. For best results, use thin typing paper, or for a transluscent effect, onion skin or tracing paper.
- Have you been saving tissue paper from presents all year? Now it’s time to use it. Decorate your tree with tissue flowers. For instructions, visit kaboose.com.
- Go traditional by stringing popcorn and cranberries (onto dental floss) for a garland.
- Make miniature picture frames, attach photos of your friends and loved ones, and hang them on the tree.
- Go Natural! Do you have pine cones in your area? If so, grab a basket and send your kids on a pine cone hunt. Once you get them home you can dust them with fake snow. Then using hot glue gun, attach a loop of ribbon to the pine cone for hanging on the tree. You can also fill a basket with cones, tie a ribbon around the basket, or to its handle, and place it by the fireplace.
- Display children’s art or christmas card on a festive home made garland, like this one from Crate & Barrel’s landofnod.com
Make Free Printable Christmas Ornaments
Make Christmas Pomanders
When we think of pomanders , we usually think of clove-studded oranges. However, apples were often used since oranges were scarce and expensive. In fact, you could use a variety of fruit, such as oranges, apples, lemons, limes and crab apples. Whichever fruit you choose, pomanders will add a wonderful scent to your home. You can use these for your table settings, on the fireplace mantle, coffee table, or attach a ribbon and hang them on the Christmas tree or in the hallway.
Christmas Coloring Pages from illustrators of children’s books:
Elizabeth Dulemba provides weekly coloring pages according to seasonal themes, and posts completed kids’ coloring pages on her blog.
Roberta Baird has Christmas coloring pages and free printable Christmas crafts for kids (Millie the Mouse and her Christmas Costume).
Patricia Polacco, the American author and illustrator of children’s picture books has a number of free-to-print winter and Christmas themed coloring pages on her site.
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