Christmas decorating, newlywed-style

Being newlyweds and having little-to-no storage space does not leave much room or budget for holiday decorations. While I settled on a spooky kitchen towel and sparkly pumpkin for my only Halloween decorations, I really wanted to make the place festive for Christmas this year. With the help of Pinterest and the dollar store, I've been able to successfully decorate my whole living room without spending a fortune. 

Our wall collage was simple to make Christmas-y, as I just replaced a couple of the pictures with free print-outs from a link I found on Pinterest- http://akadesign.ca/.  They have so many cute prints, it was hard to only pick two! (To print them, I simply ordered them off of Walmart's photo department online. It was about $2.50 for each print- so much better than having to purchase quality photo paper and using up your own ink!) The reindeer print on the very right is a white canvas that I painted a reindeer on and glittered myself. Okay, my brother-in-law created a reindeer stencil for me. I'm not that good. I got the inspiration for the project here: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/353954851938167264/.

These are my two canvases that I painted, and as you probably guessed, the ideas came from Pinterest, here http://www.pinterest.com/pin/33636328443135033/, and here http://www.pinterest.com/pin/232568768232912549/. The darling fabric-covered cork board is a gift that my mom made me for Christmas last year, and I decided to jazz it up by hanging a row of ornaments on fishing line. All of my ornaments came from Dollar Tree- I was pleasantly surprised by their selection this year! For a row of 12 medium-sized ornaments, it was only $1. As for the reindeer print on the top right- I purchased the PDF for only $3.99 on Black Friday from http://www.groopdealz.com/. (I highly doubt it's still there, but they always have amazing home decor for awesome prices.)

Our tree decorations were not costly at all. While in Richfield, Kendrick's mom was sweet enough to give me a box full of pinecones from the mountains behind their house, which I spray painted silver and gold. The acrylic crystal strands are actually from my wedding reception, and those were only $1.98 a strand over at www.orientaltrading.com. The rest of the ornaments were all from Dollar Tree! Like I said above, for a tube of 9-15 ornaments, it's only $1 (the amount of ornaments depends on how big they are. I got a good amount of each size). I purchased 8 tubes of ornaments, making them all only $8! Compared to Walmart, that's a steal (I made sure to check beforehand to make sure I was getting a good deal, and for the same amount, it's around $18 at Walmart). Also at the Dollar Store, I got 5 bouquets of those gold flower-beaded bouquets (what are those called?) and some fun ornaments to add variety, like the glittery K's and gold glittery bow's (2/$1.00).

This is another fun and free printout that I got off from Pinterest:  http://sandandsisal.com/2013/12/mistletoe-chalkboard-printable.html. I also decided to fill up all my apothecary jars with mini ornaments- Dollar Tree has a tube of 15 mini ones for only $1.

I also filled up the apothecary jar on my coffee table with the same mini ornaments. In the white vase I added a small bouquet of glittery flowers beads (?) that I got from Dollar Tree as well.

I wanted to get higher quality wrapper paper this year, as I've gone cheaper other years and the paper always seems to rip in the middle of wrapping (or perhaps I just wrap presents too intensely?) Either way, it was worth it to me to spend a little bit more. I found this darling gold striped and silver polka dot wrapping paper at Joann's for around $4 a roll, and can happily report that there has yet to be a gift-wrapping incident.

I hope this post has helped illustrate that decorating for the holidays doesn't have to be pricey! Happy decorating!