Decorating your home for any holiday need not require a shopping trip. These ideas are a starting point for some simple decorations that cost next to nothing, just a little time and the use of some things you already have around your home.
Christmas Decorations
Cut out paper snowflakes to tape to your windows for basic winter decorations. Fold a square piece of paper several times and cut various shapes out of the folded edges to create unique snowflakes. Use dots of glue and glitter to add color. You can cut out circles and create snowmen, and you can also print out coloring pages for your children to color.
Instead of purchasing garland or lights for inside your home, string popcorn up instead. Use several strings together to make wreaths, and add glitter for color.
Easter Decorations
To make your own food coloring to dye Easter eggs, use the following recipes:
- Red: use the juice from beets or boiled cranberries mixed with a little vinegar.
- Yellow: use the skins of yellow onions boiled in water
- Blue: use boiled blueberries or chopped red cabbage simmered until dark green. The water will then be blue.
- Green: the juice from cooking red onions or water from cooking grass, moss or spinach.
- Brown: strained water from cooking teabags of coffee.
Halloween Decorations
For general pumpkin decorations, print and color pumpkin pictures to hang on your door or windows. If you want to get into the more "scary" decorations, use a white sheet on a bush in your yard to create a ghost, and save drier lint to thin and hang for spider webs. Cut out black construction paper spiders to add to the spider webs.
Thanksgiving Decorations
To decorate for Thanksgiving, create small turkeys by using an apple for the turkey body and a small piece of construction paper folded like a fan for the tail. Use a marker for eyes and other facial features.
Gather colorful leaves with long stems to put in a short vase or decorative bowl for a center piece for your table. Add acorns or pine cones as well. Allow your children to gather leaves as well, place under a piece of paper and use different color crayons and color over the leaves to create a unique fall picture.
When decorating your home for the holidays, you need not spend money. Instead, look around at what you already have, and, with a little bit of ingenuity, you will be able to create great holiday decorations anytime of the year!
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