My First Dollar Tree Christmas

Anyone that knows me, knows that Christmas is my most favourite time of year. I start celebrating the day after my birthday. Yes, you read that right, I start listening to Christmas music in October. It’s after Thanksgiving and I don’t celebrate Halloween so nothing is holding me back from singing all my favourite Christmas songs. 

This year I also started watching a lot of DIYs on youtube. I started with tree decorating because it’s all I can usually do based on my budget. While going through these types of videos, I stumbled across a genre of videos called Dollar Tree DIYs. I instantly fell in love and spent way too much time being mesmerized at the beautiful things people were creating. I decided I was going to try to do Christmas garland from my mantle. I didn’t know that ‘garlands’ were even called ‘garlands’, I always just referred to it as ‘what the fancy people have on their fireplaces and lovely stairwell banisters’. This is exactly how I explained it to my sister when she asked me what a garland was, to which she then responded: “why didn’t you just call it that in the first place?”

Finished product

I’ll insert one of the videos I fell in love with and tried to follow. Hers turned out beautifully and next year I hope mine lives up to that. This year was more of a trial for me. I went to a dollar tree and started looking for things I could use to decorate. The first Dollar Tree had some things but not a whole lot I could use or could see a use for. According to some of the videos you have to go as early as October to gather Christmas supplies before they run out. A big fat thanks Youtube! I couldn’t find the garlands nor many of the things that I saw on Youtube and wanted to try. I couldn’t even find the garland itself! It was the middle of November and I was already too late for this particular location. I bought a few things I thought could be useful and made up my mind to check out other dollar stores. I finally managed to find a pre-lit garland at a dollar general but it was $5 and thin. The DIY I was following had used three or four garlands together so I checked a different dollar tree and it was inspiration heaven! I got three garlands at a dollar each and some other things I thought I would use on my garland. After this, I also took a trip to one of my top 5 favourite places in the world, Michaels! They had everything else I wanted for my garland at prices of 1 to 2 dollars and I had a coupon for 20% off my entire purchase including sales!

Now it was time to put it all together. The women I followed made it look effortless. To be fair it wasn’t that hard deciding where things should go as I was using her as a step-by-step guide. The problem I ran into is that she has a lot more patience than I do. I already have plans for next year on how to make it more to my liking but I was being lazy and impatient to get it done. I didn’t end up using all the garlands I bought; I only used about 2 and a half. The pre-lit garland was a different length than the other ones I bought at the Dollar Tree and I decided I didn’t care enough to use all of them. I wish I had. Even while I was doing it I was already wishing I had used all of them but didn’t anyway because...lazy. This took a lot more time to do than I thought. I tied most of the decorative pieces into the garland with floral wire and hot glued the things I couldn’t tie into it. I hope that by tying in most of the pieces instead of gluing them, it’ll make it easier for me to add to the garland next year and maybe even adding me the extra garlands for the fuller look that I crave.

Let me know what you think of my garland, as well as any suggestions on how to decorate my living space for Christmas! I’ll be following up on this blog with other DIYS I’ve already done and hopefully, I will get more ideas as Christmas nears.

Love always,

Flings