cheap holiday decor

I have a confession to make … 

Last week at Target, I impulsively shoved about $96 worth of holiday decorations into my cart. After all, I reasoned, we moved to a 2,000-square-foot home a year ago (from a 1,100 foot shoebox) and so well – we have a lot more to decorate! 

So I went to town … I had tall, metallic cone decorations for the top of our TV room entertainment center, bow- and bulb-adorned garlands for our front staircase, a cranberry wreath, I'm sure Martha Stewart would be proud of, a red-velvet tree skirt (we've been using a red dog blanket) and a poinsettia floral centerpiece for our dining room table.

Then I realized there was no room in the cart for the gifts I actually came for. In a cold sweat, I dumped the items kinda near the holiday section and started thinking of ways to save on decor. 

Here are a few ideas I came up with:

The ol' cylindrical vase trick

You can put almost any seasonal item (in quantity) in a tall, clear, glass cylindrical vase and have it look good. This time of year, it could be pine cones (these I collected from the back yard), decorative sticks and twigs, holly, pine boughs or Christmas ornaments you already have. You could even use cranberries or coffee beans and nest a white candle on the top. Or, you could buy fake, glittery, "snow" from a craft store and top with a colored candle (perhaps red or green for Christmas, blue or silver for Hanukkah?) Sometimes, just to soften the look, it helps to have a decorative ring around the bottom of the vase. Here, I just used a wreath that I couldn't quite find a place for this year (the scale was right in our smaller home, but not here).

Evergreen boughs set (and soften) the stage

I was ready to spend $10 to $20 each on contemporary-looking trinkets for the top of my entertainment center at Target. Problem is, my house is so new and – well, contemporary looking – that it actually needs some of the organic, beautifully imperfect earthiness of nature to soften and offset all the hard lines and mass-produced look of many of our new furnishings. I'm so glad I just broke off some boughs from one of our evergreen trees in the back. Can't beat the design of Mother Nature! All the boughs needed were a little bit of sparkle (which was easy to do with our overabundance of ornaments already collected and handed down to us through the years). As a centerpiece of the design (and to cover up where the branches met in the middle), I put one of our stocking hangers, cleared the crap from the shelves and added the stocking.

Easy holiday centerpiece

Evergreen boughs + interesting-looking sticks (curly willow and grapevine here) + borrowed fake poinsettia bloom from another decoration = holiday centerpiece. 'Nuff said.

Spray paint it gold!

Most anything foraged from your back yard or the side of the road will be full of holiday cheer – ready to add to any seasonal floral arrangement or nativity scene – with a quick hit of gold spray paint. Here's a collection of items I found out in the farmer's field where I walk my dog. But I actually got the idea from my friend Kate, who turns such items into artsy little gift toppers. Among her suggestions for items to try are: hydrangeas, wishbones, walnuts, pine cones, maple-leaf "helicopter" clusters, sand dollars, shells and milkweed.

Well, enjoy – and have a cheap and easy holiday!