This year is my first Christmas in my own (rented) home. Hooray! Whilst I am still spending the Christmas week back at my Mum's house with my family, I was still excited to decorate our little flat.
Money isn't "beans on toast for tea" tight, but we haven't got lots of money to throw around on Christmas decorations, so here's our Christmas on a budget!
We picked up an artificial tree for £20 in Argos. We're big fans of their express delivery, which is especially useful considering we currently don't have a car and our nearest Argos isn't within walking distance. It's not the fanciest of trees (the lower half looks a bit bald without decorations), it does the job and was easy to put together. I love the smell of a real tree, but it just wasn't feasible to buy one considering we're not going to be home after the 22nd December.
As for decorations, we went to Wilko. For £6 we picked up a 50 pack of baubles, including a star for the top of the tree. Yes, they're a little bit on the tacky side (there was a lot of glitter fall out) but that's what you want at Christmas. It came with a variation of red, green and gold baubles, as well as a gold bead garland (which was literally about 20cm long, we bought a 3m red one for 80p and used that). I also impulsively picked up a 6 pack of silver baubles from Waitrose, which are really lovely. They will probably stand the test of time a little bit better than the Wilko ones so I think, at £2, they were a good buy.
For wrapping, I used up some of the paper left over from previous years, then bought a 25m roll of brown paper from Amazon for £7.09. I really like using brown paper because it's simple, and durable if you're travelling around visiting family to give them their presents (plus, it's easily recyclable). I also bought a roll of red curling ribbon from Paperchase for £1and 10m of candy stripe string for £1.79 from Amazon. For tags, I used a cheap pack from Asda, as well as Paperchase's recycled kraft tags.
I really love wrapping presents, and it's exciting to see them all piled up under the tree. One week to go!
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