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10 Tips & Tricks to Make Your Home Beautiful for the Holidays with a Tight Budget

Tough economic times may mean your holiday spending is restricted this year. Holiday decorations should not break the bank. There are many ways to create a warm and festive environment with limited resources.

The holidays bring out our creative urges. Decorating for the holidays is a fun and exciting way to bring the holiday cheer to your home. But, it can also be very costly. I have found one of the best places to shop for inexpensive accessories such as pictures, lamps, mirrors, centerpieces, and holiday decor is at Kirkland's Home.

I've met with many clients who are unsure what direction to go or what colors to work with when wanting to change the look of their home or transitioning into the holiday season. It's hard to go wrong when shopping at a place like Kirkland's. They inventory up-to-date styles and colors making it easy for the consumer to keep up and know what the trend is.

The ideas are endless when it comes to holiday decor. Here are some decorating tips & tricks to help you get started.

1. An early advice to home decorating, you must keep in mind for the holidays, is the art of simplicity. There are so many beautiful decorative objects available that it can be easy to go into the water. If you try to cram all your decorations into your house, they overshadow others and create a cluttered look. Choose a small number of pieces which each can stand on their own or add to a larger piece of decor you already own to spruce it up.

2. Head outside to collect pine cones and put them in a decorative bowl or basket. Fill baskets with glass balls, leaves, mini pumpkins, gourds, acorns, and other natural autumn items. Tie ribbon around the basket and add candles of varying sizes in the center. You can create a beautiful holiday centerpiece on your dining room table or console and end tables.

3. Napkins: I buy inexpensive cream linen. The color goes with everything. I also try to pick up red, green, orange or gold, to mix and match for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. These linen napkins are useful as breadbasket liners, runners on the table (place at a diagonal, in a diamond pattern) and to add splashes of color around the room (try placing them as mats underneath vases, or lamps).

4. Get several spools of wired ribbon in holiday colors. Then have fun decorating with bows. Tie them around your hall coat tree, your banisters, your candlesticks, your patio door handles. Tie them under your door knobs, on your door knocker, on the back outside spindles of your chairs. Just about anything can benefit by a tasteful bow.

5. Pull out all the vases that you have or buy inexpensive ones at Kirkland's. Then go to a fabric or craft store and buy silk poinsettias to fill them. You can re-use them every year.

6. Place some table scarves in holiday colors on your coffee or end tables. If you can't find any holiday patterns you like, use solid red or green. Go to a fabric store and pick out a material that you like. Then buy a package of double-sided no-sew or iron-on hem tape.

7.Cover your existing throw pillows with holiday covers (fabric). More than money, this tip saves SPACE! Who wants to have closet space filled up with holiday pillows all year long? This way, you just zip off the covers and fold them up for neat storage.

8. Throw blankets: Drape them artfully over chairs and sofas. This helps with the warm and cozy look and feel that we usually want during the holidays and nice to have them handy on cold nights.

9. Replace your curtain and drapery tiebacks with holiday garlands.

10. Replace the candles in your candlesticks with holiday colored candles.

Since the holidays are a warm, comfortable and loving time of year, we should strive to cultivate this feeling through our decor. Traditionally, green, gold, red and white colors have played an important role for the holidays. Other holiday colors are becoming increasingly popular. For example, the use of black and silver.

As many of you may decorate for Halloween, remember to carry forward some of the same items. Such as pumpkins, gourds, corn, hay straw figures, etc. These items you will use for Thanksgiving as well.

Kian K. Dwyer

Design Consultant

Order in the Home

www.orderinthehome.com

651-353-2116

Kirkland's Home:

www.kirklands.com

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Owner/Founder Kian K. Dwyer at Order in the Home:  Professional Consulting Services your Resource Network

20-years experience:  Generating new strategies to meet current market needs, identifying today's trends, initiating resolutions and implementing organizational and time management skills for a lifetime.  Order in the Home consulting services will meet your individual needs with 100% satisfaction guaranteed.

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