Decorating a Christmas Tree on a Budget

As you can see from the title of this post, I'm going to show you how to decorate a Christmas tree spending very little money.

When I first started showing you the ornaments I was making, did you guess I was doing an experiment? Probably not as I didn't mention why I wanted to make the decorations for my tree. It isn't like I haven't amassed a gazillion ornaments by now. For heaven sakes, I've been decorating trees for decades. 

The object of my experiment was to see how inexpensively I could decorate a 7 1/2 foot tree. I wanted to see if there was a way of making ornaments by using the materials that I and many of us who do crafts or sewing have on hand. I also looked in other areas of the house, namely the pantry for inspiration. Although the majority of the ornaments were made using materials that comply with the above criteria I still ended up making one type of ornament that I had none of the supplies on hand because I really like the way they look.

Since I have a rather large stash of fabric finding a way to use some to make ornaments seemed like a good idea. Thus the little fabric heart shaped cushions got put on my list. I had the buttons and the fiberfill  in my supply cupboard. The "ribbon loops" are torn muslin. Cost with using what was at hand? $0.  If I had not had the fabric, buttons, lace and fiberfill on hand I might not have made these. 

Most of the photos I'm going to show you are repeats but are being shown now so you can see the ornament along with the cost of making it.

Appearing here with the hearts are the clothes peg Santa ornaments which were the most expensive part of my ornament making since the only thing I had on hand for these were the paints. Cost of making thirty ornaments was $5.98. That was for the clothes pegs and for the bells so this is still a very inexpensive ornament coming in at less than 20 cents apiece.

Next, using supplies from the pantry I mixed up a couple of batches of salt dough and using my cookie cutters cut out several different shapes. Since I've never used salt dough before I wasn't sure what to expect and wasn't altogether pleased with the results. Maybe someone with more experience with this stuff would have had better results.

Besides the gingerbread men with the torn fabric scarves and the "Stuffy" gingerbread men, there are puffed stars and little puffed trees and angels, Santas and snowmen made from the salt dough. In all I think there were 7 or 8 dozen ornaments that turned out nice enough to be given as gifts and end up on my tree. The cost for these ornaments was about 50 cents for salt, I already had the flour.

Then, me being me, I had to have some paper mache ornaments somewhere on the tree so I designed the Santa and elf ornaments. They were made from less than one batch of paper mache clay and the cost for 24 ornaments was less than $4.00 I know that not everyone is into making paper mache but since it's my "thing" I had to include it.

At the last minute I made these little angels and they were the least expensive ornaments of the lot. Each is made with 3 basket style coffee filters, a cotton ball, a bit of white cotton string and some Tacky glue. Cost was mere pennies.

This little experiment was fun and I wanted to see for myself what could be done with very little money to make a uniquely decorated Christmas tree.  Who would believe you could decorate a tree this size for just over $10.00? I may go back to using my other ornaments next year but this was a challenge and I'm pleased with the outcome.

I'm keeping busy baking and making candy and working on finishing up some gifts. I am however not working so hard that I'm not enjoying some free time here and there. Today I'm making candles. The supplies were purchased last year but I never got around to them and nearly forgot that I had all of the materials. I wonder what else I can make if I look inside some more boxes.

This is the time of year for watching all of my favorite movies. Watching a Christmas movie puts me into the spirit of Christmas like nothing else can. We have a huge collection of movies to chose from. I honestly don't have a favorite but there's a joke around here that my favorite Christmas movie is, "A Long Kiss Goodnight." If you're familiar with the movie which stars Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson you may not think of it as a Christmas movie but since it takes place at Christmas the movie is stored in the drawer with the more Orthodox selections.

Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? There seems to be new ones coming out every year but some of the older ones will always be up there among my favorites. I could watch, "It's a Good Life" every year and not get tired of it.

Warm wishes for good cheer and happy memories to all of you this holiday season.

As always, thanks for stopping by.