Help please - first Christmas in my house, need some decorations!

[twelv]

Morning

For the first time, my husband and I will be waking up together in our place with our son (who's 9 months old).

I would like to have a few decorations but I don't want to have to spend loads and I am very conscious of buying more plastic rubbish that we don't need.

I'm thinking of maybe getting a very small real tree and maybe a couple of lengths of tinsel? I have one special bauble that was bought for us last year with the baby's initial on it, so that would be front and centre.

Could you help me maximise a small amount of decorations?

Thank you!

When we were skint we went to town with paper chains and lanterns.

Very cheap, very festive (if you too enjoy the Chinese takeaway vibe) plus no need to store them afterwards.

Dried orange slices always look nice and are cheap and easy to make.
They look great with bundles of cinnamon sticks on the tree too.

Go minimalistic this year and then buy some nicer decorations after Christmas in the sales for the year after.

Places like Home Bargains & B&M bargains have lots of cheap decorations - some tacky but some are lovely.
Battery operated lights in a glass vase are effective and classy, or LED tea lights in holders.
I used to buy one new thing each year, the collection soon builds up!

If you got a potted tree that you keep in your garden the rest of the year your decoration collection could grow with the tree.

One good quality decoration each year would be so meaningful and over time your tree would tell a story. Look for silver, glass, tin or cloth decorations that can eventually be recycled (though hopefully not for generations)

In the meantime supplement with dried orange slices and maybe white salt dough decorations.

Now that I’m a bit more aware of the impact of my choices, I find myself backing away from decorations in shops and thinking I could make that from paper.

If you like paper decorations this book has some lovely prints and templates.

What about DS making some? Make hand prints with finger paint or similar. A few green ones cut out and overlaid would make a tree, and then add finger print sized coloured dots for baubles. Put on a large sheet of paper for the wall.

Cut out snowflake shapes for the windows, or to hang from ceilings.

Cut card into festive shapes - bells, stars, angels etc. Have fun with glitter or paint or crayons making them come alive, or just hang them plain (although do some decoration if they are from cereal boxes or similar, if plain coloured card they're fine). The individual segments from egg boxes can make nice bells when hung upside down and decorated (we have glued in the tips of cotton buds to make the "clanger" to ours, and painted them all, in the past - and they are still prized decorations almost 10 years later).

Bake hard cookies with a hole in the top to string ribbon through and hang those as decorations.

Or string popcorn or cranberries on a string to make garland for the tree.

And try charity shops too - they might not have loads but often they have something.

Thanks for all your wonderful suggestions

Get set of baubles in color you like from above or wilko etc or even wait till sales this year.

Then get a few special more individual pieces from places like home sense... Tk max etc. Wait for the sales as they go dirt cheap. Then build them up every year.

I've built my Christmas decorations up over years, and rarely throw any away. A decent general set in a colour you like - would be good to give a bit of coverage to your tree, and can be 'filler' baubles later on if you build up a collection of special baubles. Salt dough decorations are great too.

We usually buy a decoration whenever we go on holiday and also one at Christmas time. Cheap battery operated fairly lights are good dotted around the place.

It does take time, I have boxes full, but it's a collection built over 20 years!