Have you ever pulled out your Christmas decor from storage and thought, “Well, these have seen better days!” I did that for a few years before finally tackling some updating– without replacing everything, and while keeping it within a small budget! Let me show you a couple of simple tricks for adding life to old greenery, and making it look like you spent way more than you did!
I spent literal years saying I was going to fix up our Christmas wreath.
I bought the wreath without any decorations on it, and found a few picks and a ribbon that matched our decor to create this wreath one of the first years we got married. But truthfully I was never totally happy with it.
I told myself every year that I would go to the craft store after Christmas and get more wreath picks on sale to fix it up the next year. Only most years I never made it to look, and the couple of times I did, there was barely anything to pick (heh) from.
But last year I was finally fed up. Blame the need for something fresh after quarantine, but I was determined to level up my Christmas decor game.
One Simple Trick To Refresh Your Christmas Decor
After looking for some inspiration online, I realized something. All the wreaths I liked best had a variety of greenery.
My original wreath is of the “super budget, old school fake greenery” variety. And if you’ve looked at buying yourself a mixed-greenery wreath ready made, you’ll know it can easily cost upward of $100, which I’m just not willing to do.
And I didn’t have to!
Wreath
This is the same base wreath. It’s at least 10 years old (and I know it looks like a slightly different color depending on the lighting, but I assure you it’s the same one!) and I bought it at a craft store.
While some of the wreath picks looked pretty decent when I bought them, they had suffered from years of storage and were definitely showing their age, especially up close. And honestly this ribbon never looked great. This “before” picture was actually after making this wreath look as nice as I could get it, if you can believe it.
As you can see from the “after” photo, I stripped the wreath down to its original greenery, then added a variety of different “sprigs” of other greenery. Not only does the new greenery give it way more dimension, it fills it in and makes it look more lush.
The biggest change for me was to stop looking in the holiday wreath pick section. I’d checked there for years and was never thrilled with most of the stuff I found.
The majority of the new decorations and greenery were from the regular floral section. I also repurposed some of the pinecones that were still in good shape from the original iteration, as well as a few of the gold leaves.
The roses were actually on long wooden stems. I just cut them off at a few inches and stuck them in.
I secured everything with floral wire. You can also use hot glue if you want. This will work well to secure the decorations, but makes it more difficult to change in the future.
I also definitely suggest getting a wreath box! These roses are pretty delicate, so I knew I needed to protect it well in storage. It also makes for less work in perking it up before hanging!
Garland
I applied the same principle to the garland we hang between our living and dining room every year. It had begun to look pretty scraggly. In the past I just had a Christmas ribbon wrapping around it, but after several years it was just looking super sad no matter how much I tried to fix it up.
I knew I didn’t want to put a ton of effort into the garland– putting smaller pieces of greenery in it and trying to secure them long term sounded like more work than I was willing to do. So I found this eucalyptus garland on Amazon for $11. For the length of my garland, I needed two of these.
Once I got them, I just wrapped them around the original garland, twisting the two around each other to secure them. I also decided to cut the garland to better fit our space so it didn’t hang down on the ends.
I may decide to add another type of greenery to it at some point, but even this one change made a huge difference!
Save Money
What do you think? Do you feel like you can give your current decor a facelift now?
Here are some extra tips for saving money on these projects:
- Price things out. This one seems obvious, but depending on any given sale, things might be cheaper online or in the store.
- In general, I found the floral picks to be cheaper in-store, since I didn’t have to buy a whole set of 12 or however many you find online.
- On the other hand, at least when I was looking, there were many cheaper garland options online.
- Check the dollar store! Most dollar stores have at least a small floral section! And even if they’re not the highest quality, you might be surprised at how mixing different types together makes them all look better.
- Check different craft stores! They can have very different options. I found the majority of my floral picks at Hobby Lobby, but stores near you may carry different selections!
Now go forth and give your Christmas decor the refreshing it needs!
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