Recent realization: I thought I was a pretty easygoing person until I started letting our 4 year-old bake cookies and hang ornaments on the Christmas tree. I might have rearranged the cluster of glass balls Olivia stuck on the branches, but I’m still finding flour and sprinkles all over our kitchen.
Honestly, if I wasn’t joining up with Ashley from Cherished Bliss and some of my blogger friends for a Christmas tree tour today, I might have just left our lopsided tree exactly the way it was. “Imperfection”, when created proudly by a child, is absolutely perfect in its own way.
But here it is all symmetrical and grown-up like.
If you’re visiting from Nina Hendrick Design, welcome! I’m so glad to have you here!
The holidays officially in full swing at our house. So far, I’ve already shared our Christmas entryway, DIY tabletop trees, St. Lucia Day inspired sweets table, Christmas gift guide, and holiday hot cocoa bar.
I usually try to come up with ways to decorate our house for Christmas as inexpensively as possible (without it actually looking cheap), so here are a few tricks I used this time around. (You can find more thrifty decor ideas here too.)
- Print family photos to use as ornaments.
We really didn’t change up our tree very much from last year. I love carrying our tradition of nestling black and white photos of some of our favorite family memories among the branches. When Robert, Olivia, and I dance around our living room decorating to our Michael Buble Christmas CD, it’s one of my favorite ways to look back at our years together.
Our photos are nothing glamorous, just pieces of cardstock printed in black and white from our computer and tied up with twine. But they’re those important reminders that the presents under the tree don’t matter nearly as much as the friends and family in our lives who make Christmas worth celebrating together.
Sticking to sentimental decor is always my favorite. Nothing at a store could ever buy that.
2. Stick to classic garland.
We use wooden cranberry garland pretty much every year because it will never really go out of style. If we want to change up our tree’s look from year to year without breaking the bank, we switch out our ribbon. This year, we decided on this pretty burlap net wired ribbon to add some texture.
3. Utilize dollar store ornaments.
I love using simple dollar store ornaments and personalizing them with paint or Mod Podge. My favorites are these that we wrapped with sheet music scraps and twine. (We get extra craft happy this time of year.)
4. Have fun with gift wrap.
A lot of times, I wrap our presents in inexpensive shipping paper and add fun ribbon that I’ve saved from previous years. I usually add color with just a couple of boxes wrapped in the pricier paper instead of all of our gifts to break up the patterns.
And in lieu of a tree skirt to make it a little rustic, we use our barrel planter that usually doubles as an outdoor end table on our patio in the spring through fall.
Next week, I’ll be showing off more of our living room, which has been a super big deal for me this year since I finally have a mantel I can decorate without a giant TV above the fireplace! It’s the little things, ya know. I live a boring life. 
If you want to know any of our tree sources, here’s the full list: (Some affiliate links are provided below for convenience. For more info, see my full disclosure here.)
- Tree
- Rattan star topper
- Open weave burlap ribbon
- Wooden “cranberry” garland
- Berry picks
- Barrel planter
- Buffalo check wrapping paper
- Nordic deer print wrapping paper
The next stop on the Christmas tree tour is Setting for Four. Heather is always the queen of glamorous Christmas ideas.
If you want to start the tree tour from the very beginning to get lots of decorating ideas, you can start from the very beginning over at Cherished Bliss.
Have you already decorated your tree at your house? Do you have any money-saving tree decorating tricks you use? Or a little one who clusters all of your ornaments on your lower branches? Now that I’ve photographed our tree, Olivia has already redecorated it her way… as it should be.
The post How to Decorate a Designer Christmas Tree on the Cheap appeared first on Bless'er House.
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