I am cheap. LOL It started out of necessity (didn't have the money) but now that we make more, I still find myself cutting corners! The first few Christmas' DH and I were together, we bought a few cheapy things from Wal-Mart and the Dollar Stores and took hand-me-downs. I started crafting about 8 years ago so I took a lot of the hand-me-downs and messed with them to make them something that I liked. I'm still buying cheapy stuff at the TS and dollar stores the only thing is I come home and doctor them up a bit. Sometimes I just change bows to more country looking things or the hangers to something nicer like twine or raffia. I cover old glass and satin covered balls with scrap pieces of homespun. I look at somethings for the "bones" of it and paint them up so they don't look so cheaply made. I LOVE doing this. I love the looks on others faces when I tell them where that particular ornament came from or how I took their old wreath and made it into my new wreath....It makes me so happy!

I don't like spending a ton of money for solstice decorations either- rather spend it all on my family and friends.

So the little pathetic pine and spruce trees in my neighborhood get a major trimming come holiday time. We have lots of poor-doing and diseased trees, so I don't feel bad about taking some of the prettier branches for my decorations. I also trim my own holly tree at that time. I also collect pinecones.

I am pretty set in my ways as far as decor is concerned- I like my style and color scheme, so over the years I've collected a lot of decorations. I still add and change stuff yearly, but it's never a total re-do. My 28 wreaths are grape vine, so they get re-used every year, as do most of my indoor decorations (trees, lights, candles, pillows, table linens, etc). The only thing I buy every year is pointsettias, because I love them but cannot get them to rebloom in this house like I could in my last house. That, plus my decor isn't usually widely available commercially (fuschia and lime green color scheme, southwestern decor) so I usually end up making most things myself, which is usually less expensive than buying premade items. Or I do what sweets98 does and buy inexpensive items and fix them so they go with my decor. It's fun!

I use as much natural greenery as I can but that's just me, the gardener. If I don't have enough in my garden, I go to the farmer's market and get it. It is inexpensive and for the most part, leftovers from pruning and/or pruning the trees that were cut for sale that did not make the cut, so it is a great way to add fresh greenery to one's home at little cost. I have trees that I like to cut greenery from as well as shaping the tree when I do, so I save pruning evergreens until time to decorate. This year, the drought has taken a big toll on my garden and I have lost trees, so not sure I will be able to get enough from my garden so off to the farmer's market I go.

Funny you should mention lime green!! -- I've seen MUCH more of that wonderful color in the upcoming holiday decorations in shops like Target, T.J. Maxx etc. We have dark plummy-burgandy in our decor -- and I try to use that color (along with weathered gold, copper and bronze) in our decorations.

Many years ago when my parents were first married for just a year or so (1948-49) they would always have a small but longer white-barked birch log drilled out for candles and decorated with fresh greenery for the dining table. Their version of the classic Yule Log.

My cheap-and-cheerful hint is to re-use and re-decorate wreaths by simply spray painting them in a different color. I've changed the look of a fall wreath (with acorns and leaves) by spray painting it into copper and bronze. I plan to do the same to a faux hydrangea wreath I just purchased at Target -- and turn it into bronzey-copper for the front porch.

A bag of cranberries, a few oranges, some cloves...couple of $1 ornaments from Big Lots...yep, pretty cheap.

Up North a quick trip into the woods for some greenery & pinecones fit the bill nicely, too. No more of that for me.

Oh, almost forgot...I also cut out snowflakes for the windows...extra cheap! lol: (Old pic of the front of our place)

We have a lot of mature boxwoods and two enormous holly bushes, so I take advantage of those for greenery when making wreaths and garlands for inside and out. The holly requires gloves though, it really rips your hands up!

I love pine cones and fresh greenery, especially evergreen, boxwood, nandina, and Southern Magnolia (the darker, waxy-leaved variety that has also has great cones).

You can get wonderful ideas from looking at photos of Christmas at Colonial Williamsburg. They have always used natural elements in very classic designs. I never tire of looking at those.

I was cleaning out the cellar the other day and finally decided to throw out an old artificial christmas tree. Than it hit me to save some of the branches and add them to real ones and use them for center pieces, vases, etc. It's not that I am cheap but I actually like to make things with things I already have. I feel like i'm recycling my junk! LOL

Find inexpensive spools of pretty ribbon and go to town putting bows on your chandeliers, stairposts, etc...

I love all these ideas!

Thank you so much for sharing them - I'm really getting inspired to see how I can adapt some of my inherited decor to fit my own tastes.

Chickory, I am not even sure if you can buy them now, but remember those boxes of matches that once sold for a penny, they were a little rectangular box with an area along the side to strike them, about 2-inches long. I once bought 200 of them, ($2.00) and removed all the matches and bought a roll of cheap wallpaper, (I think it was on sale for $2.00 at the local wallpaper store in a red/gold paisley look) and wrapped all the boxes with them and bought a skene of gold yarn and wrapped all the boxes with the wallpaper and tied them with yarn and made pompons as bows. Then I found some cheap ribbon in that sort of coordinated with the wallpaper,on sale at Hancocks, made bows to tie to the end of each branch of the tree, did popcorn, cheap red balls and red lights - pretty and almost expense-free tree, almost.

Acorana

I did the same thing to my windows. I hosted Christmas last year and used my livingroom since my furniture hadn't arrived like it was suppose to. I went with a winter theme but I think I'm going to try and figure out how to merge the silver and gold in with the traditional red, white and green look. All the things Chicoryflower mentioned I really love. I use to string popcorn for my tree it lasted for about three years.

{{!gwi}}.

{{!gwi}}.

Oh...my gosh...that is BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!

Black thumb -- Gorgeous dining room!!! Really clever and wonderful!! :)

I love to buy holiday decorations from the craft stores on black friday. Believe me, people are NOT lining up here the way they do at the electronics stores. I usually go in time to get the early bird specials but not right at the crack of dawn and have gotten some really inexpensively priced faux greenery, berries, things of that nature. Usually they are already on sale and extra $$ off before noon. I looked the last few years and sometimes the prices are even better that day than after the holidays (and certainly the selection is less picked over). Also you can get great buys on things like picture frames at these sales too.

I wanted to put lighted "evergreen" garland on my front porch and need a lot of it - could not stomach the price of premade prelit stuff so I bought several lengths of the plain stuff at joanne's, put my own lights on them (more thickly than the premade ones), fluffed like crazy and they look pretty good for what amounts to a few bucks per length of garland. Indoors I have some that I added ornaments to (plain glass balls and the like) and for another dollar or two I have something that looks like the very expensive pre-decorated garlands. If you want to make it look more full and rich you can even wire in some random smaller sprigs of stuff to the base garland.

Blackthumb: where did you get those chairs? We've got the big crowd coming for a sitdown and I'd like to find some great chairs like that.

As for my cheap decorating: the male deer love to rub their antlers on my southern magnolia, so I pick up the branches and wire them together. (This year, I put a fence around it, so I'll have to figure out another source). I look for greenery on our property. I have a eucalyptus tree. While not a holiday thing, it adds some extra grey-green color. I use greenery on the mantle, around my hall mirror; I put lights on my boxwoods by the front door. I also get out my crystal nativity after Thanksgiving.
Our greyhound has taken too much interest in our tree decorations in the past. So many of our ornaments are home-made by friends and family or gifts. She doesn't chew them, but she could get hurt, especially with glass. I'm actually thinking about putting a tree on the screened porch this year out of her reach! It's right off the family room and the tree will stay fresh. Our winters aren't terrible here.

Cameron

At the office we had a box of old glass ball ornaments that were scratched and we were finally too ashamed to use them anymore. One day we grabbed some spray glue and iridescent glitter and had a ball :) Some of them we added lace trimmings to, some we left plain, some we used glue to write words on. Another one we bought a really tiny pearl rope and just wound it all around the ball (I think we used a styrofoam ball for this one). I can't even remember all the different things we did, but every year when we dig them out of the box we still talk about the fun we had re-doing the balls.

Lisa

One year at work 2 sections of cubbies pooled monies & gave to me to decorate our area for Christmas. I bought 100's of those snowflakes & icicles from Party City in all sizes in white & silver. I tied varying lengths of fishing line to them & used T pins to suspend them from the ceiling. It looked like snow was falling all over us! We gathered bunches of skinny 6' limbs from trees outside, spray painted them white & tacked them to the fronts & entrances to our cubby area. I brought my computer speakers in & we hooked them up to a computer in an empty cubby & streamed Christmas music from Sirius Satelite.

Our winter wonderland cubby area was dead in the center of the 1st floor when you walked in & was the first thing that anyone entering the building saw. When counselor's got off really stressful phone calls they would come over just to relax in the empty cubby w/ music & snacks that my team would bring in daily.

That was my last year there & truly one of my best memories from there & the materials cost all of $50!