Christmas Garland

     I LOVE Christmas. It's been one of my favourite holidays since I was a little kid, but now that I'm an adult and able to decorate my own house full of decorations, lights, stockings and sparkle there's a new wave of excitement for me about this particular holiday. And on top of that...imagine the amazing stuff that we get to do now that we have a child! I'm excited at the neverending possibilities of making wonderful holiday memories and traditions for Mya and our family.  What I love most though about Christmas is the fact that it's a holiday that is designed to bring joy to people. Giving, getting, parties, family dinners, church services, caroling, cookie baking and exchanges...the list goes on forever. I never understand how people can say that they don't like Christmas.
     Don't get me wrong though, I really love all of the holidays--Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day...I just love something to look forward to in the weeks ahead, and the decorating, the family time, the parties and all of the excitement that comes along with each particular holiday. So I figured I should have a dedicated section to holidays to show you how I decorate on a dime and how I try to make each holiday a little special for our little family.

    Here's a start to the holiday decor in our house. I used to just put up garland with little white lights (and although it definitely looks nice..it's nothing too exciting). So this year I decided to add a few details to make it stand out a bit more and it was easy as pie.

Here's how I did it, after I had already wrapped the little mini white lights around the garland:

1) I started by choosing 3 colours for the decorations on the garland (gold, silver and red)--and the only reason I chose these 3 colours is because I had an overload of Christmas balls from my buying frenzy last year after Christmas when everything was like 80% off. So choose whatever 3 colours you like most (or whichever you already have on hand to make it even cheaper).

2) Add those little metal hooks to each ball (I bought a box of about 100 at Walmart for 90cents)

3) Start at the bottom of your staircase and start attaching each of the balls to the garland (it looks nicer if you spread them out in a zigzag pattern (so they're not in a straight line up the garland)- and make sure that you spread out the colours so that you don't have a bunch of red balls all together, for example.

4) Keep adding the balls/decorations until it looks how you want it to and voila! done! So easy, so cheap (especially if you already have decorations kickin' around--it cost me a whole 90cents this year to make it, just for the little metal hooks).

BEFORE

AFTER!