9 Tips For Christmas Decorating On A Budget
Whether you disagree with spending more on holiday decorations or are simply short for cash, there are plenty of affordable ways to celebrate Christmas in style. Decorating your house for Christmas doesn’t have to be expensive – with a little bit of handiwork and creativity, you can make your home feel holiday-ready.
Below are several ways to minimize your Christmas decoration cost.
Reuse Old Christmas Cards
If you adore collecting Christmas cards, you already know how hard it is to throw them away because of their incredible designs and sentimentality. The good news is you don’t have to discard them – instead, you can use them as an inexpensive Christmas decor concept.
Cut out all the artwork or drawings, and attach them to your refrigerator using double-sided tape. You can also embellish a huge mat board with multiple cutout images and decorate the tree, doorway, or wall.
If you have old Christmas cards with family photos on them, you can also collect them and turn them into meaningful gifts. This is one of the best parent Christmas gift ideas for sentimental families!
Repurpose Old Packaging Boxes
Do you have a lot of old packaging boxes from gifts and deliveries? While you can reuse them to wrap your presents for the year, you can also use packaging boxes to decorate your home.
Set aside a few packaging boxes for decorating. Then, get some arts and crafts materials, and go wild! You can even make decorating them a fun bonding activity with family and friends.
Get Natural Cuttings From Your Backyard
If you like the great outdoors, consider foraging for fresh cuttings for inexpensive Christmas decorations. Fresh cuttings stay fresh longer than store-bought ones, and they’re totally free!
Common backyard plants include pine trees, magnolias, boxwoods, holly, and branches.
Below are some yard cuttings decor ideas:
- Put cuttings in a jar and leave them around your home.
- Inflate worn-out garlands or provide depth to fake trees with fresh cuttings.
- Wrap a snip with a piece of string for a quick and easy DIY napkin ring.
- Tie cuttings to plain pillar candles with string.
To keep them fresh for longer, spritz your cuttings with water on a regular basis.
Create Mason Jar Christmas Lanterns
After you’ve finished decorating the Christmas tree, use any stray pine twigs to make charmingly rustic jar Christmas lanterns. Decorate the mason jar using Christmas ribbon, other seasonal decorations such as pine cones, and a tea light on top of the twigs. Turn off the lights and revel in the brightness of your handcrafted lanterns!
Make A Happy Holidays Banner
This Christmas banner is a great way to greet visitors at your Christmas celebration. Cut burlap (or a similarly strong fabric) into triangles, then glue felt or letter cut-outs that spell out “Merry Christmas”. After the glue has dried, attach them to thread or string and display the banner in your home. To make it more festive, use fabric in the traditional Christmas colors of red and green.
Put Snowflakes On A String
Make it snow, make it snow, make it snow – all without having to go outside in the cold. Draw a pattern of a snowflake on a piece of wood, then mark the points with pins. Using white string, craft web-like designs until you get a lovely string snowflake. This Christmas ornament is not only beautiful, but it’s creative, too!
Decorate Using Food
Traditionally, home-baked biscuits were hung on the trees as ornaments, then consumed on Christmas morning. If you don’t want cookies all over your home, salt dough decorations are a good substitute and a lot of fun to prepare with the kids.
You can also use dried fruits, spices, and threading popcorn to create a garland. to create inexpensive Christmas decorations. If you prefer something sweet, you can create inexpensive Christmas decorations out of cheap candies or sugar canes.
Scale Down
A large, fresh tree can get quite expensive and will likely just wind up in a woodchipper by January. To save money, reduce the size of your Christmas tree.
You can even use simple twigs, which are significantly less expensive than a whole tree. Place a bundle of twigs in a container of water, then wrap colorful twine around its points to make a small but nicely decorated “tree”.
Alternatively, put a sprig of evergreen pine or fir in a shallow pot with compost. Lightly water the sprig every now and then to keep it healthy. Plant numerous sprigs and arrange them to make a miniature Christmas forest.
Modify The Christmas Dinner
While the Christmas feast isn’t a decoration per se, it is the centrepiece of your Christmas celebration. What you serve on the table adds to the ambience and aesthetic of your holiday.
A turkey with all the fixings and sides can get pretty expensive. If you want to save some money, throw convention out the window and prepare non-traditional food for Christmas dinner.
Consider offering a variety of salads in different colors – this will add some much-needed brightness to your festive feast. A vegetarian casserole, robust risotto, or spicy curry can also feed large groups without breaking the bank. Plus, the leftovers will be even better the next day!
Conclusion
While it would be nice to walk through the mall aisles and buy new decorations every year, budgetary constraints prevent many of us from doing so. Thankfully, creating attractive and festive holiday environments doesn’t have to be expensive. Most of the items on this list can be created from scratch with items around the home, thrifty decor, or bought on sale for much cheaper. We hope these DIY Christmas decoration projects help you this holiday season!
