Decking the halls

December 1st is here and only 25 more days before Christmas is over. I am sure many people have had their Christmas decorations up for almost a month now but this is where the Christmas season usually begins in most homes so lets talk about how to decorate beautifully yet frugally.

The first step to nice decorations begins AFTER Christmas...thats right after Christmas. There are always such great deals on all those nice decorations after the holiday season is over. So start watching for the sales after the big day and into the new year. Also yard sales through the summer are another great place to get decorations. Even if they are tacky and from the 80's you can always make new things out of them.

I always start the decorating with my mantel. This year we put up a new wall collage to display all our beautiful family pictures that are talented friend Kait did. So for Christmas I decided to put in some pictures that we took last year of our family and neighbors making Christmas cookies. Also for the 4 5*7 frames on the corners I put in decorative scrap booking paper. The top 8*10 frame is patterned paper with the words A Very Merry Christmas cut out from my cricut.

A side self is decorated with tin cans; which will soon be filled with goodies, A glass bowl with cookies cutters, and a dip bowl which looks like a giant Christmas mint.

The mantel has lots of fun things that came from around the house. I have vases filled with pine cones and acorns, sticks, cinnamon sticks, mixed nuts and shinny ornaments (which I got on sale last year).

I love those little frames I have had for years from the dollar store. In them is a piece of off white paper stamped with some Christmas stamps I have. I love the recipe cards (cookies and sweets) which I did on my Cricut. And new to my collection this year are the 2 beautiful glitter trees which I did myself. I bought the cone shapes in this floral department at Wal-mart, painted them with glue and coated them in the pretty blue glitter I got at Michaels in the $1.50 bin.

There are so many things you can use around the house to give it a Christmas feel without spending a lot of money.

Most of the vases I have were bought at the dollar store or at yard sales. There are many different things you can fill in them for Christmas things like cinnamon sticks, Clementine's, ornaments, mixed nuts, Christmas candies, buttons, Christmas colored ribbon, cookie cutters, strands of beads...the list is endless.

So todays challenge is go around your house see what you got and try to use it to "deck the halls".