Decorate the entire house for $30.00

Decorating for holidays is one of my absolute favorite things.  I have box upon box of decorations filling up my garage.  Yet I always am on the hunt for more.  More.  More!  Bwahahaha!  Ahem.  Sorry.  As I was about looking for some sort of garland for my windows I came across a poinsettia garland that I loved.  It had pine boughs. It had poinsettias.  It had fake snow.  It was $30.00!  $30.00 to decorate one window?  I think my wallet cried a little.

I looked upon this $30.00 garland as a challenge.  I was going to decorate not only my window, but as much of my house as possible in the $30.00 budget.

Here's what I bought:
2 simple, pine garlands $5.00 each ($10.00 total)
11 poinsettia Christmas tree clips $.69 each ($11.04 total)
1 jingle bell wreath hanger $7.00 (I splurged a little)
1 packet of suction cup hangers $2.00

Grand Total = $30.04

Behold, my decorated house.  First we have the front door:

I had never made a garland before, so I found some inspiration on Pinterest.  Here is the video for making a deco mesh garland.  I used it to help me space the flowers and add what I thought was the right amount of ribbon.

Here's a little closer look at the garland I made.

I had some left over ribbon from past Christmases that helped me spruce it up.  The wreath was given to me as a gift and it tied everything in nicely.

Next I found this blog that showed tons of different Christmas porches.  I liked the 3 boxes stacked on top of each other in the flower pot.  I thought, "What better way to use up some of my boxes than to wrap them up and stick them on my porch?"

Boxes = free.  Wrapping paper and bows already on hand = free.  The vase and flowers from earlier dollar store purchases.  Awesome.

On to the inside of the house.  First there were the two windows (the reason I was looking for a window garland in the first place).

They are not fancy garlands.  Maybe next year I'll add ornaments, birds, ribbon...the possibilities are endless.  Remember, I was working with the $30.00 budget I had given myself.  (And yes, the kids decorated the tree and I don't have the heart to rearrange the ornaments.)

I had an extra poinsettia, so I made another flower arrangement for a little nook in the front entry way.

Finally, I had lots of left over garland, so I decorated our balconies.

Garland, left over ribbon from another Christmas, and homemade stockings.

Bonus, the garland came with the extra trimming of black garland that didn't belong.  I couldn't just let it go to waste (yes, I'm one of those people).  So I used it as padding around my teddy bear nativity set.

Perfect.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the outcome.  $30.00 and I decorated my entire house.  What can you do with $30.00?

Need some fun activities to do this Christmas?  Try some of these:

Grinch Feast

Family Polar Express Ride