Pretty doesn’t have to be pricy.
In fact, with six possible exceptions, I decorated my entire house for Christmas with items that cost $12.50 or less. It wouldn’t have been possible without Hobby Lobby, Target, and T.J. Maxx. (Note: I’m definitely not being paid to tell you any of this.) Allow me to give you the tour.
Welcome to the dining room.
I decorated the dining room with a pinecone centerpiece, a few sprigs of fake, frosted leaves, and a small, zinc Christmas village. With the exception of two zinc houses and two bottle brush trees in the Christmas village, I guess that I paid $40 over three years to decorate this room. (I bought the bottle brush trees and a couple of the zinc homes a year or two ago from T.J. Maxx for not more than $25 each, but I can’t remember the exact price of any of those items.)
The aforementioned pinecone spread was created with pinecones I collected from my yard, chalky, white spray paint from Walmart, and glitter from my craft closet. I spread them out in a rustic, old compartment from a toolbox I picked up years ago at a yard sale. I guess that the pinecone centerpiece cost about $5. You couldn’t beat that price at the Dollar store, friends. I think this piece works for three reasons: materials, color scheme, and placement. Wood and aged metal are timeless, especially in contrast to the materials that would comprise anything you would find at a store in this price range. Obviously, my home has a dedicated color scheme, and this piece fits right in, which I think makes it feel intentional in my space. At a distance, this centerpiece looks like a simple line. I love that, and I think it makes the form really compliments the space between my lamps on the Buffett. (I spent a couple of hours painting the pinecones years ago and pull them out of a box to decorate each Christmas.)
I purchased a single stem of frosted evergreen leaves from Hobby Lobby and plucked pieces from its limbs to add to the three clear bottles atop the candlesticks in the middle of my table. It was a straight forward project, and it cost less than one stem evergreen leaves at half price.
Meet the mantel.
The Christmas tree and the mantel competed to become the focal point of my living room, but I’ll focus on the mantel. I paid about $12 for my string lights, probably $12.50 for the tallest of my miniature trees, and a price I can’t remember for the stocking (Target) on my Christmas mantel. Other than that, I didn’t pay more than $10 for any of the items I used to decorate my mantel. In fact, all but four of the remaining items cost $5 or less. Of course, all of these tiny $5 and $10 trees can really add up and I bought all but the two tallest trees in 2020 making this decor a bit of a splurge, albeit a relative splurge (If I’d picked these items up from a boutique I love, they would have cost at least twice as much.) In any case, I liked the way this bit of my Christmas decor turned out and I love that each piece cost so little.
Decorating around a T.V. can be tough, and I knew that I wanted to try using a row of low-profile zinc houses here. When I googled to find some, I spotted some really lovely pieces at prices I wasn’t willing to pay for before I found these gems for between $3.30 and $5 at Target. I decided to add in these pretty white houses, which were sold at Target for about $2.50 each (They came in packs of two for $5.) I later decided to add the frocked Christmas trees, also of Target, (prices ranged from about $3.30 to $10.) I threw in the trees at the bottom, and the containers and stands they sit on after a Hobby Lobby run.
Don’t miss the odd ends.
The dining room, the living room, the kitchen, and even the bathroom were decked with the decor at my house this year. But not each of these spaces is worthy of sentences, so I’ll focus here on a few odds and ends, taking special time to highlight anything that was new or especially cheap.
I think my favorite feature was a grouping in the entryway. It is a trio of stumps that was topped with rounds of fake snow and three frocked trees dressed in battery-powered string lights. This entryway set up cost about $35. What I loved about this setup is that it began as a pile of debris in a neighbors yard. Ever the scavenger, I spotted the logs piled near the road after a storm and loaded them into the back of a pickup truck for firewood. After they were offloaded and stood up on their ends in my garage, I got the idea to lug them inside and use them as Christmas decor. I found these sweet little frocked trees at target for $10 each and added them to the tops of the logs with the aforementioned additions. It turned out to be a fun addition to our Christmas decor this year.
I used an assortment of faux trees, painted pinecones, and zinc homes to accent tabletops. With the exception of one piece, a three-story zinc home, none of these items cost more than $12.50 and most were less than that. I loved the consistency of using these pieces throughout the house and I love the price points too. Adding decor to these otherwise forgotten spaces made the rooms appear finished.
Oh … Christmas tree!
For some, the Christmas tree or Christmas trees blind seamlessly into the rest of the decor. I love that look, but it doesn’t happen at my house. No, here, the entire house is decorated inexpensively in shades of whites and neutrals — except for the Christmas tree. At my house, the Christmas tree belongs to the other humans in my home. These humans prefer real trees, imperfect though they may be. They prefer colored lights and do not mind when half of them go out. It is less important to these humans that the topper matches the color scheme than it is that the ornaments remind them of our best moments. And so, our Christmas tree is meaningful, maybe even magical, but is in no way designerly. I doubt if anything on our tree, save the tree skirt, which was picked up at Kirckands for $25 during a half-off sale, costs as much as $12.50. I'll love it as long as the people I love are reflected in it.
