Decorate Your Christmas Tree Under $100

The holidays are a good blizzard or two away and it's time to start decorating your wonderful Christmas tree. You want to be classy, but you're financially savvy and would rather not spend too much on the tree. Think $100 is too little to make an awe-inspiring statement? Think again. I'll show how you can make a great Christmas tree for under a $100 - tree and all.

Let's first start with the tree. Right now Target is having a great tree sale. I bought my 6' feet tall, clear lighted tree for $45. It was the Prelit Alberta Spruce. Online it is listed for $51. You can purchase the same type of tree with multicolored lights for $51 as well. This tree is easy to set-up. It took maybe a half hour to separate all the small branches, but it looks great! Put some Christmas music on to get you in the mood to decorate! That half hour will speed by. If you already have a tree, then you're set and can save more cash! So, let's move onto the decor. My color scheme for this year is gold and white.You can adjust to your own color choices. If you already have some pieces you can reuse for the tree, feel free to do so! I will be using all newly purchased decor, but that doesn't mean you have to! Save more, give more!

For the garland portion of the tree, I decided to use ribbon. Jo-Ann Fabrics has a sale of 50% off on ribbons. I bought gold ribbon (3.75 In wide and 50 ft in length) for $7.49. Normal price is $14.99. You can purchase another color of ribbon, pair the two together, and create a sophisticated look playing off the two colors instead of one. I wanted to keep it simple this year so I stuck with just the gold.

Now the fun part! Blubs and other ornaments!
I was originally going to purchase my blubs from the Dollar store, but after a bit of research, Target offers a much better price per blub. Since I needed a lot of them, I purchased a 50 piece set from Target for $15. That gets the price down to 30 cents per blub. Not bad eh? I also purchased ornament hooks for $1. I ended up not using all 50 blubs, but I used about 30. I recommend that if you are looking to get a couple of blubs, the Dollar store is the place to go.

In addition to the blubs, I did pick up some varied pieces from the Dollar Store. I selected a couple of gold and silver pieces shaped as glittering reindeer, angels, bows, flowers, crosses, and icicles. I spent $9 for about 20 extra pieces. These brought the whole project together, but I wasn't quite done yet.

For the top, I picked up a large gold star from the Dollar Store. If you have left over ribbon from the garland portion of decorating, you can choose to use that and make a bow for the top instead of buying one. It can create a neat affect, appearing as if the garland ribbon is flowing down from the top.

And finally, the tree skirt. I dabbled on the idea of making my own tie blanket version of a Christmas tree skirt, but decided against it. Instead I picked up a bag of stuffing from Jo-Ann Fabrics. It was only $6.99 and it graciously covers the surrounded area of my tree bottom. Plus it will look great when presents are arranged on top.

So, there you have it! With tax, we have a fully decorated Christmas tree for $90.21! Under budget bliss! Decorating your tree on a budget this year? Send a photo to me at lydialharrrer@gmail with a description or comment below! I'd love to hear your ideas on DIY decorating ideas or how you strategized for decorating on a budget.