Christmas Garland on a Budget

This year it will be the 5th Christmas we have lived in this house and I have never decorated my staircase. Can you believe it, one of the things that sold me on this house was the flowing staircase! yet I have never decorated it. This is probably due to the fact that since living here, Christmas has been a time where there have been a number of not so good events going on in our lives and I just did not have the time to do it, or even think about it!

Well, I decided this year, especially seeing as this will probably be our last Christmas in this house that I would decorate it. Now, I am a bit of a tight wad when it comes to decorating, I am one of those people who waits until the sales, I love Hobby Lobbys 90% off sale! and last year I scored a very large wreath that was originally $79.99 for only $7.99 and some stocking hangers for only $6.99, originally $69.99. However, I did not think to get some Christmas garland for the stairs, so I had to resort to doing it on the cheap. Off I went to Michaels, where the garlands were on sale at 60% off their original price but even then they would be about $15 a garland and I have 3 bannisters I needed to decorate. So looking around the shop I found the ideal basic garland and this is what I came up with:

• 3 X basic garlands $2.49 Michaels = $7.47
• Daily special Poinsettia flowers @ $0.99 x 5 (3 colours, white, red and a plum colour)Michaels these are normally $2.99, and have about 5-6 flowers on them = $5
• A bag of pinecones $2.49 Michaels, which I strung on wire
  Bird Picks 2 for $1 Dollar Store I bought 3 of these =$3
• Gold Baubles $1 from Dollar store I bought one tube that contains 15 balls and I already had a few left over from my ball wreath. I strung these together in sets of 3.

TOTAL SPENT $18.96, so each garland cost just over $6.00 to make.

I am feeling pleased with myself, can you tell?

Here are some photos of the finished garland, I can definitely see myself adding to this garland over the years, especially when I hit those sales, I already found a few berry picks and added them, but for now it will do.

Please excuse the photos, they were taken at night and for one reason or another I had a difficult time trying to get decent photos.

Father Christmas

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DOLLAR STORE CHRISTMAS WREATH

I was at Pier1 yesterday, just browsing, like you do!!! and I came across a Christmas ball wreath, which I did not buy because I really could not justify the price of it, I think it was near the $50 mark!!! insane!!!! there is now way I would ever spend that amount of money on a wreath, especially when they are easy to make and fun. So with the help p of good old Pinterest, I came across some fantastic looking wreaths, I cannot find the links to the wreaths I found but if you Google ornament ball wreath I am sure you will find plenty out there in blog land, with much better tutorials than mine. I took a couple of pics along the way and to help you get the supplies right here is a list of what you need if you want to make your own.

To make my wreath I bought all the supplies from the Dollar Store:

• :1 willow wreath but you could use any type of wreath that you have on hand, the one in the picture below is 21” in diameter when finished, so this was one large wreath!
  
• Assorted Christmas ball ornaments , how many you need depends on the size you make!!!
  
• 1 9ft length of Tinsel or spray paint (this is optional, see TIPS)
  
• Ribbon
  
• Hot Glue Gun

This picture below shows the back of the wreath, glue balls to the inside of the wreath with the little hanging bit sticking up, then do exactly the same and glue balls to the outside of the wreath, flip the wreath over ad then add balls randomly until you are happy with the placement and look of the balls.

TIPS AND THINGS I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME ROUND:

I would have spray painted the wreath before gluing the balls onto the wreath, but if you forget like I did, or do not have the correct colour spray paint then just wrap tinsel around the wreath instead.

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