Five Inexpensive Christmas Decorating Ideas

If you're anything like me, you've been there: standing in Homegoods or Target, or flipping through the Frontgate catalogue, thinking, "Holy moly, I could easily spend my whole Christmas budget on decorations in one fell swoop." Each cute sparkly pillow is $30, and the best wreaths are around $50, and that really cute Christmas tree skirt is over $100... before you know it, you'd have no money left for presents!

This year, I decorated a home for the Three Village Historical Society Candlelight House Tour on a teensy budget. For my own home, I always want to have the most Christmas-y festive decor, but don't want to spend hundreds of dollars every year. So over the years, I've figured out a few ways to create a really festive look on a limited holiday decoration budget. 

USE NATURE

Nature is free! Or at least, cheap! 

Stick baby's breath in your tree - it adds a really pretty natural element, especially to a fake Christmas tree. The heat of your home will cause the baby's breath to open up beautifully. 

If you're lucky enough to have boxwood in your backyard, you can cut it and place it around the home or make wreaths out of it. If you're really lucky, you have a holly bush in your backyard and can use fresh holly all over your home! 

GET INEXPENSIVE CHRISTMAS ART

Find inexpensive holiday-themed art, like my Christmas watercolor and Cocktail Recipe prints.  

PUT CANDLES LITERALLY EVERYWHERE

You don't need to get fancy candles. Tea lights are really inexpensive. Ikea and Michaels both have small votives for 50 cents each. For five bucks, you can fill up your whole home with beautiful flickering candlelight! 

GET THINGS YOU CAN REUSE

One of the reasons I like glam Christmas decor is that if I want to, I can use it year-round. I got a bunch of mercury glass votives last year during the holiday season and ended up keeping them out all year since they didn't scream "Christmas!"

GET A BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

The best discovery I made this year were these battery-pack Christmas lights.  If you want to put lights on a smaller space and don't want to run extension cords everywhere, these are PERFECT. I got them for $8/each at Target a few weeks ago!

Want more fun Christmas decorating ideas? Follow me on Instagram!