How to Save Money While Decorating This Christmas

Hey!

I hope everyone had a great #Thanksgiving!

Although I was missing my family this year, I had so much fun spending the holiday with Chris and the gang. I DIY-style brined our Turkeys in Lowe's buckets and Chris smoked them in our new does-everything contraption. It doesn't hurt my eye-balls like some grills so it can live out on the back patio.

I woke up Friday morning my typical, psychotic holiday self. Chris is equally 'spirited' because he was missing when I woke up. That fool went #BlackFriday shopping in the middle of the night. I went the night before and scoped out the #Walmart situation (terrifying) and then did almost all of my Black Friday shopping online. How is it that online shopping is still stressful this time of year? Half of the stuff I put in my cart would disappear and go out-of-stock before I could pay for it. There can't be that many humans who need a Fancy Nancy doll, can there? Shopping is supposed to be a relaxing, zen-like activity and instead we all end up playing tug-of-war over that cashmere scarf for Pappy. I digress...

Anywho, I've been listening to #MariahCareyChristmas music pretty much around the clock, baking cookies, and #decorating since I woke up Friday morning with a belly full of tryptophan. The house is looking so festive! Because there is a baseball team to buy #Christmas presents for this year, we didn't want to blow the budget on decorations but we did need some.

The first thing we did was go through our boxes of decorations, combine what we had, and then donate what we didn't plan to use.

The second thing we (I) did was make a list of what we (I) wanted to do in each area. Chris had purchased a bunch of stuff on super sale last year after Christmas. A couple things I was really excited about:

1. 20 plain, thin wreaths

2. Boxes for decorating

3. Glittery Eucalyptus leaves

The wreaths needed a little something to make them stand out, but I didn't want to spend a fortune on fake flowers this year. My thinking was that this year I would put a big bow on each wreath, and then next year I could add in some holiday flowers. The big bows at craft stores were around $10 a pop, and spending $200 on half-crushed bows alone seemed really ridiculous. I searched around for some DIY bow tutorials and found this one from the blog Mommy Suite:

http://www.mommysuite.com/diy-burlap-bow-tutorial/

I stuck fairly closely to the tutorial for my first bow and then adapted my own method. Instead of just making rings with the ribbons I glued the rings flat in the middle each time so there was less coordination required. Basically, every time I had to hold things together I just glued instead. If you try making these you'll get what I'm talking about.

**Be extra careful with your glue gun if you're using fabric ribbon -- the glue goes right through and my fingers look like Deadpool's face.

Next, I fluffed my ribbons, fluffed my wreaths, and glued the ribbon directly to the wreath. I chose to glue rather than wrap with wire because a. I didn't have any wire, and b. I wanted the bows to be straight. We used Command Strips to fix the wreaths to the windows and doors. I purchased gold wreaths from Homegoods for the front door of our house, so I made burlap and gold ribbons for all of the exterior windows. The interior of the house has silver, gold, and red decorations, so I used silver/ blingy ribbons for the interior windows and doors.

There were six of those cute little 'for decoration' boxes but they didn't really coordinate with the Christmas decor I had. I purchased white craft paper, brown tags, and gold ribbon from Michael's so I could inexpensively wrap the multicolored boxes. Instead of using bows for the tops I used the eucalyptus Chris had from last year --I think that's what it is? Don't bother correcting me. I don't care, I'm not a fake flower gardener, and no plants naturally grow with #glitter so you don't know either.

All in all, both of these projects cost $35 total. The ribbons were 50% off at Michaels for the #holiday, Chris purchased the #wreaths for $.25 a piece, and the #craft paper was only a couple of bucks a role. These little projects were super fun, and the three girls even helped me fill out the tags on the packages! Cute, right?

Bottom line, you don't have to break the bank buying decorations when you can pretty much recreate anything purchasable in the store. All you need is a little imagination, and some time: these projects don't take too long but I know most of you are as busy as I am this time of the year! If you have a project you really want to try, but can't find a tutorial, then challenge me! I will do my best to make it as close to store bought as possible, and share my steps with you.

The house looks super cozy. Here is a shot of our tree midway through the decorating process. Still no stockings on the mantle but those are getting hung today!

I just love this time of year. Expect a ton of obnoxious posts, and obnoxious sentences like, "I love love" within those posts in the coming weeks. I can't help myself.

Merry Christmas for the first of 1,000 times!

xoxo Cindy Lou Who Wannabe