Great ‘Decorate your house for under £20’ Hunt

My Mum hung paper snowflakes from the ceiling, with cotton, last year. Looked brilliant and it was very toddler proof. Not even my adventurous son could climb up and pull them down!

Popcorn garlands left natural colour or sprayed silver or gold
Fireplace garland made of slices of orange & lemon (dried out in the oven)
cinnamon sticks tied together with ribbon

Cut out large pieces of card from wine boxes or suchlike, cover with cheap shiny gold,silver, purple,green or red giftwrap (try Asda) depending on your colour scheme and what cards you have.

Mount last year's nicest cards on them - arty picture style - and blutak them to walls.

They look best against plain walls - very effective going up the stairs. Make in assorted sizes and shapes depending on what cards you have. You could also use this year's cards. Mine are kept and added to each year.

Another trick is to make your own big stars out of smallish (12 to 18ins or so) green garden canes tied together. Then cover in cheap tinsel and add a few cheap baubles or bows. Hang on a wall or in the window. Again maximum impact for little cash. If you are feeling very good you can paint the canes white or gold first rather than green - this way you can use less tinsel and try for a more minimalist look.

For outside - I saved last year's door wreath frame with the moss attached out in the garden and it is still OK. Am going to use the rosemary cuttings from the leggy bush I cut down (which have been in bucket of water outside for the past month) to make a rosemary wreath. Hopefully it should smell nice as well. Will have to screw it to the door again though to deter thieves.

Also on the cardboard front. Frozen pizza boxes with brown card inside cut in reindeer shapes are very effective as a frieze. Remember to paint on eyes mouth and nose. Also tree shapes painted green using the cheap poster paints in such as Early Learning Centre and the Works. You will need green plus black for the tree colour. If you use brown card you don't need to paint the trunks. Angels can be done this way too. Quite a lot of the craft mags have templates but the library will have books if you get there before everyone else.

:beer:

Me and my children always spend an afternoon making lots of snowflakes from white paper and stick them over the windows and porchway doors and it look really effective. (Plus it keeps overexcited children busy for a while ).

1 pack of foam sheets - (about 99p off Ebay). Get the kids to cut out star shapes/stocking shapes etc, then let them decorate them with glitter pens. Attach a piece of thread and hang from the tree.

For a cheap but beautiful shaker style Christmas:

Popcorn garlands - 1 bag of popcorn, 1 needle, and 1 reel of cotton. Can be put on the tree, around a fireplace etc. To carry on the theme, you can also decorate your tree by buying a few felt sheets off ebay (cost minimal) and make your own decorations by sewing 2 identical shapes together with a blanket stitch. Buttons can be added for a nice effect. Instead of tinsel, use gingham ribbon. Finish off with a set of very cheap Tescos own white fairy lights.

For the table, buy a cheap couple of metres of red gingham fabric (ebay again) and cut out placemat sized squares. Fray all around the edges.

Make napkins in the same way and instead of using napkin rings, tie using some cheap rafia (Ebay).

Tie a bow of raffia around the back of your chairs and "voila" you have yourself an entire shaker style Christmas for about £15 at the most.

I did this a couple of years ago and got so many comments about how beautiful it looked.