When I first moved out on my own my mom gave me a big box of all of my Christmas ornaments growing up. While that was a great starter for my first tree on my own, I had big dreams thanks to pinterest of my small apartment being changed to a glittery christmas wonderland every year. This of course never happened, but every year I get a little closer. So today I am going to share what I have learned so far and what tricks I have picked up to save some cash when first starting out with holiday decorating.

1. Cover your house in snow!

Batting – This is the stuff quilters use inside quilts for fluff. It also makes great snow to put on ALL THE THINGS! I just cut it to fit different pieces of furniture and cut some wavy edges on the sides that show, to give it a snowy look.

My TV stand all snowy!

The Top of my bookshelf snowy and nerdy!

This stuff works great for christmas villages also (If you are so luck to end up with one that your husband has had for years!!!)

BEWARE!
A lot of stores start selling something very similar to batting around christmas time each year. It usually is covered in glitter and it is almost always cheap and useless. I made the mistake of getting some of the cheap glitter fluff this year because I thought it would save me a trip to the fabric store. It started falling apart as soon as I opened it and I will not be able to roll it up to use again because of how thin it is. It rips very easy and the end result isn’t even close to the non-glitter quilter’s batting I bought years ago that I am still using.

2. Wrap your picture frames

This trick I learned from my grandma. She has a photo in her dining room that she wraps every year (I think with the same paper) All you have to do is grab some of the photos or art hanging up in your house and wrap them all pretty like you would a gift, then hang them back up! You probably already have the paper and ribbon for wrapping gifts so it won’t cost you anything extra!

Cut some paper to size – You don’t have to wrap the whole thing like a normal gift. You only need enough paper to wrap around the to the back.

Tape your paper to a safe spot on the back of your picture. For me I taped to the wood part of the canvas so it wouldn’t hurt the artwork.

Next add some ribbon. I added some white and a blue bow to match the paint in the rest of the painting.

Hang it back up where it was and you are DONE!

If you want to see how me and my hubby made the art I wrapped, Here is a Link!

3. Display your christmas cards

Every year I like to tape all the cards I get to the back of my front door. It is easy and only costs you the price of some double stick tape.

4. Have fun with ornaments

You can find cheep plastic ball ornaments just about everywhere during the holidays. If you buy a few boxes of little ones in your favorite color, you can sprinkle them any place that could use a little festive fun. They also fit anywhere so if you buy a cheap set for your tree one year, the next year when you have some nicer ornaments you can toss these somewhere else. If you move and they don’t quite work in the place you had them before, there are a ton of other places they can still go. A few dollars goes a really long way with these guys! Here are a few Ideas where I put mine this year. They are also up in my snowy TV stand picture above!

5. Put some ribbon on it

The pack rat in me that always wants to save wrapping paper, can’t help but save nice ribbon on gifts I receive. Over the years I have ended up with a whole bag of nice wire ribbon that never seems to get used. This year while on a decorating binge that sparked this whole post, I dug out that bag and put that ribbon everywhere!
It turned out WAY better than I had thought AND IT WAS COMPLETELY FREE!

If you decide to go all out this year and do all five of my tips you will probably end up spending about $20 to decorate your whole place! That is more cash put towards gifts, or something fun for you since you saved some cash on your chrismas budget!