Christmas Decor On a Dollar Tree/WalMart Budget!

I've been a stay at home mom for about a year and a half now and although the money is a lot tighter than it used to be when I was working, I have to say I love being at home with my little guy:)  We cut corners a lot nowadays, I clip coupons a lot more than I used to and I mostly shop at Wal-mart, Target and Kohls, oh and The Dollar Tree has become a personal friend of mine.  So when the Christmas season came around I kind of made it my own personal mission to do as much decorating as I could as inexpensivley as I could!  I have learned  a ton by reading other ladies blogs but I still have much to learn.  Here are a couple of projects I've done for our home for the Christmas season.  Happy Holiday's everyone!

I bought 3 of these trees not knowing what I would do with them or use them in my decor.  I actually am not a fan of the disco mirrored look but loved the height and look of the tree and for $1 how could I resist.  It wasn't until I stumbled across a blog entry from the Let It Shine blog (love her blog so much), http://let--it--shine.blogspot.com/2009/11/christmas-topiaries.html, she actually had the same tree and actually put some sort of glaze on it to tone down the bright silver I think.   I decided to use a couple strands of pearl garland from the Dollar Tree and hot glue it around the tree form.  Unfortunately I ran out of garland as I was almost at the top, I'll have to run out tomorrow and get more so I can finish it..

Here it is on my linen chest along with a photo of my two oldest boys taken years ago, a silver wreath made with all Dollar Tree stuff and the white tree skirt is also from Dollar Tree. The silver tree was made with a cylinder vase  from Dollar Tree filled with snow from Michael's and the snowflake oranments I believe from either Dollar Tree or Wal-mart.  I spray painted some branches from my yard silver and stuck them in the vase with the fake snow and just hung the ornaments from them. I originally wanted to get curly willow branches because I am so in love with curly willow but I ran out of money that day so had to settle for branches from our yard.

Here is a photo of our current Christmas tree.  We decided to go with a table top tree this year after trying to put our 6 footer up and our 16 month old trying to yank all the lights off!   Most of the Christmas balls are from the dollar tree, a few we got from Michael's on sale. The apothecary jars are from the candy bar we did for my son's first birthday party, candy canes and all christmas balls in the jars are from the Dollar Tree.  The little angel on the table was something I won from a raffle at a little community festival here in Alexandria a couple years ago.  I put everything up on a little shelf we have and covered it with a red tablecloth.

After looking at it I just thought it needed a little something extra on the table and remembered I had some ivy from Dollar Tree that I hadn't used yet so here it is after adding the ivy to the tabletop, I think it looks so much better!

I had also been trying to figure out how to find some nice table setting without spending a fortune and lo and behold while Jerry (the husband) and I were wandering through Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving I spotted a set of white porcelain dishes for $12!!! I was so excited because I had just seen some red chargers that I wanted to use with white plates.  I had been thinking of those dishes since the day after thanksgiving so tonight I gave in and made a run to Wal-Mart and got those dishes and the red chargers to go with them.  I paid $12 for the dishes and $5.99 for the charges so for under $20 I got some nice place settings for Christmas Eve dinner. I would like to add some napkins and dress up the table a bit with a runner but so far here is what I have,

I threw the centerpiece together using a vase I purchased a while back from A.C. Moore for $9, some votives I had from Thanksgiving, some fake snow, a berry garland from last years Christmas decor and 4 $1 bunches of white poinsettias from Michael's.  I think it turned out nicely especially since it wasn't thought out very much.  Okay and here is one last photo I had to share of my little one Brendon checking out the Christmas lights that Jerry had plugged in to make sure they still worked before hanging them outside.  He was so enamored with those lights, it was such a cute moment:)  Thanks for checking out my blog, I really appreciate it!

Kelly