Christmas on a budget!

[butterfly76]

Anyone have any ideas of how to enjoy christmas on a budget, for instance someone said go out to the woods and collect acorns and pinecones and spray them to put them on the christmas table. Any other good ideas especially for decorating the tree. Thxs.

[gpb]

Buy some cloves and stick them into an orange/satsuma (smaller. )Put a bright red ribbon around it. Gives a lovely christmassy smell. you can give them as gifts or use as decorations

[vehelpfulguy]

One simple answer is that you do not need to spend money to enjoy Christmas.

Give 100 pounds to a charity, and tell all your friends you have done that instead of buying them a present.

Dont buy tons of food and drink.   

Volunteer to help at a local hospital or other charity and make yourself feel good about xmas.

One year my wife and I set a limit of �10 for Christmas presents to each other. We had fun trying to find as many diferent things as we could for up to �10.00.

Amazing what you can get at "its a pound" or "Crash bang wollop" shops.   

[stoo_pid]

When we were kids I used to love making Xmas decs.  These are some of the things I can remember:

• Cut out symmetrical star shapes from thick cardboard (or paste 3 or 4 layers of cereal boxes together).  Stick shiny foil / paper on one side. Then on the other side, using a ruler & the back of a pair of scissors, score straight lines along the spines of the star from point to point.  This will make the star sort of 3-D shape.  Then paint the dull side with festive colours, red, green, silver, etc.
• Paint old table-tennis balls & then cover them in glitter.
• Make mini stained-glass windows by cutting out simple festive designs (e.g. angels, stars, snowflakes, etc) from colouring books (or, of course, download them).  Don't colour them in but, following the lines carefully cut out different parts of the pictures & stick tissue paper, or even better coloured cellophane, on the back.  Then hang them in the window.
• Make Xmas tree baubles by cutting up old Xmas cards into squares & making them into cubes. 
• Old twigs & thin branches sprayed silver and / or with fake snow bundled together can look great either standing on a hearth or laid along a mantlepiece.  Even better if you have a set of plain white fairy lights to drape over & around them.
• Wrap loads of empty boxes & pile them under the tree.

cont...

[stoo_pid]

...cont

• Make a batch of gingerbread biscuits cut in festive shapes to hang on the tree (you'll probably have to keep doing this cos they never stay on the tree for long!)
• Decorate an empty jar & place a tealight inside.  Perhaps make an acorn ring to go round the base.
• We also made a perpetual advent calender from green & red felt hanging from a little pole with 25 little numbered pockets stuck on.  We'd put little sweets & lollies in each pocket. 
• We once kept the plastic sweet tray from a chocolate advent calender (posh or what?!), and we used that each year as a mould to make chocolate sweets from melted Scotblock.  These were wrapped in bits of tin foil & put in the advent calender and hung from the tree.
• Another thing I've seen but not done myself are little decorations made using little figures stuck on old CDs (the freebie internet offers you get in the post or displayed at the supermarket checkouts are ideal) with the shiny side up with spray snow, twigs, cotton wool etc to look like little ice-skating scenes etc.
• You could also glue a couple of CDs back to back to hang as decorations.

Right, I'm off to get some crepe paper now! 
Merry Xmas!

[butterfly76]

Blimey stoo_pid I better start now ! your parents were very clever they kept you so busy making things you forgot all about the presents:-)
Thanks so much loads of brilliant ideas from everyone.

[Mistopheles]

Make your own wreath for the front door - you can usually get holly from patches of woodland, or pick up a bunch cheaply. If you aren't artistic, try tying some holly and mistletoe together in a bunch with festive ribbon. Looks lovely.

For cheap-ish presents, homemade stuff is always good. Homemade chocolates or biscuits in pretty boxes - shortbread is the cheapest and easiest thing in the world to make, and is always popular. You could even ice christmas shapes on each slice, or drizzle melted chocolate on them.

[KJN]

Just a thought, reading these answerbacks makes me ask why does christmas have to be so commercialised ? it just goes to show from these answers how much fun can be had on so little money, maybe time to turn the clock back and start enjoying christmas again rather than hear the usual yearly moans of "I am fed up with all this"