If you're looking to add some cheer to your home during the holidays, Christmas decorations are a fun way to give your living space a festive air. Below are a few easy and inexpensive holiday decorating ideas, and they're great projects for people of all ages.
Glitter On Gourds
Pumpkins aren't just good for Thanksgiving decorations. Squash, pumpkins and cucumbers are all excellent canvases for glitter. To add some sparkle to them, simply paint a layer of glue on the surface of whatever gourd you've chosen. From there, sprinkle glitter over the gourd. Doing this over a newspaper or paper plate will help reduce cleanup time.
Once the glue has dried, which takes about an hour, just shake off any excess glitter, and paint the stem with acrylic paint. Glittered gourds can last for months, so you won't have to worry about replacing them after a few days.
Christmas Trees Everywhere
If you don't have room for a full-sized tree or you just want to add some holiday cheer to a room that doesn't have a tree in it, you can make trees out of ornaments and ribbons. All you need to do is to create a triangle outline. You can pin or tape ribbons, garlands or boughs of real or fake holly to the wall or a door to create a tree shape.
Once you've got your outline, you can use clear packing tape to attach ornaments and decorations to your tree. If you set up a posterboard behind your tree outline, you can draw on your tree or color it in.
Colorful Ice Balls
In addition to, or instead of, stringing up lights to decorate the outside of your home, consider adding some color to your walkway with frozen colored ice balls. As long as it's around freezing outside or has snowed, they won't melt, and even if they do, they're cheap and easy to replace.
Just fill up a balloon with water and add a few drops of food coloring, and then freeze the balloon. Once it's frozen, you can peel the balloon off of your ball of ice. If you're feeling truly adventurous, you can drill a hole in the balls of water and place tea candles in them, creating a lighted and colorful path to your door.
Pretty Up Some Pine cones
Much like gourds, pine cones have a special place in many people's end of the year decorating plans because there are a variety of things that you can do with them. If you're looking for something basic, consider filling a bowl with pine cones and putting a hurricane lamp in the middle for a centerpiece.
For something with some more sparkle, you can also easily paint pine cones or apply glitter to them. Pine cones already have a surface that takes to paint readily, so there's no real prep work involved. You can either spray paint pine cones or dip them in paint. Sticking a bamboo skewer through the bottom of a pine cone will make it easier to submerge it in a bowl or a cup of paint.
If you want to apply glitter to pine cones, you can paint glue onto the pine cones using a brush, but it may be easier to use spray glitter glue, which you can find in craft stores. Once you've got your pine cone nice and sticky, you can roll it around in glitter or sprinkle glitter on it. It's usually a good idea to use paper plates or tin foil to make cleanup quick and easy.
Let It Snow Anywhere
Many children learned how to make snowflakes by folding a piece of paper and cutting out sections of the paper in school. This is still fun to do as an adult, but instead of just using white sheets of paper, you can also use colored sheets of paper and Post-it notes for smaller snowflakes. You can buy paper in a wide variety of colors at craft stores for just a few dollars.
Once you've created your flurry of snowflakes, you can attach them to walls, windows and doors. Alternatively, you can dangle them from the ceiling or doorways by threading a string or wire through them and taping the wire or string to the ceiling.
