10 Free (or nearly free) Christmas Decorating Ideas
1. Make some potato stamped wrapping paper with the kids (or by yourself). Use for wrapping gifts, but you can also wrap up one of your framed pictures on the wall, and attach a bow for a frugal holiday decoration. Really cute in a child's room.
2. Fold old magazines or catalogs into Christmas trees. You don't even need to spray paint them if you're using colorful catalogs.
3. Fold Christmas cards into cunning cardboard boxes- use these little Christmas packages to decorate your tree, tie a ribbon them and add gift tags for place setting cards, use to hold gift cards, fold tiny ones and put them in the dollhouse, put them a Christmas village, make in graduated sizes, tie a ribbon around a stack of them and put on the mantel, or....?
4. Make a cardboard tube Christmas village- my cheater method? Don't use paint, cover the tubes with paper and draw the details on with markers, adding puff paint (if you have it, or maybe you have the ingredients for making it) for a few details
5. Recycle old crayons and bits of candle ends to make these pretty tree ornaments- as simple or elegant as your cookie cutters (or use objects with a raised pattern to imprint the still warm wax with a design).
6. Glue, flour, cornstarch, and food coloring- the ornaments made from this home-made mixture are better (and more long lasting) than salt dough.
7. Recycle an old songbook, sheet music, or print out sheet music to make these sweet decorations.
8. and 9. If you can tear up a book (or maybe a catalog), this wreath and pennant are charming. I think for Christmas, I'd use rubber stamps and stamp something like JOY! on the pennant pages.
10. Nothing warms a home like loving acts of service, kind hearts, and cheerful smiles. You can probably come up with plenty of those on your own, but if you want a little help, there are some ideas here, and also here.
Have any frugal decoration ideas to share? Good ideas for acts of service this season or any time of year? Share in the comments!
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5 Responses to “10 Free (or nearly free) Christmas Decorating Ideas”
December 9th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
I bought 2 dozen candy canes at the grocery store for $2 and strung them on my tree for ornaments. My tree looks great and it smells good too.
December 9th, 2011 at 11:39 pm
A couple of years ago I got a large evergreen branch at a Christmas tree place for free I stood it up on end and decorated it just like a tree, I thought it looked real good and very frugal too, free!
My wife and kids hated it, they tore it down and threw it away. BAA Humbug!
I tried to use white out to cover up the greetings written on last year’s Christmas Cards and resend them again this year, they did not like that idea either, some people have no appreciation for a Frugal Christmas !
December 12th, 2011 at 1:07 am
LOL! Maybe this year they’ll get into the spirit of things and rewrap last year’s gifts and give them to you all over again, Joe.=)
December 12th, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Id love that it would mean Ive instilled a little Frguality into them.
December 14th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Dont forget about stringing popcorn on thread…. this is pretty close to free. Christmas is a time where it can be very easy to stray away from living frugally, but it also can be a time when Uncle Scrooge can come out. Depending on your situation, remember that X-mas is also about giving… perhaps not giving foolishly, but about giving. This is something I have to keep myself in check about.
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