I’ve always loved decorating for the holidays. Even as a kid, my mom let me have my own bin of decorations for my room. After having kids, it’s gone to a whole new level though! If you don’t want to invest in a ton of shit but want some tips on how to make your house look a little more festive, then hang with me for my tips and tricks!

1. Pick your color theme. My cousin, Mary has her Christmas decor all in white with pops of gold and blush pink. My pallet in our house for Christmas is always standard red and green. Once you commit to the color pallet you can begin your collecting of shit!

2. Know WHEN to shop! Hobby Lobby has half of their store on sale every other week. So if you go online and see their Christmas decor isn’t on sale yet, it will be next week! Then you’re guaranteed to get at least 40% (often 50%) off anything you buy from their holiday shop. What I tend to do is collect new decorations the day after Christmas. I always take a Target and Hobby Lobby run on December 26th and load up on decorations as well as a couple of basics I know I’ll use no matter what the next year. (Think: wrapping paper, bows, ribbon, gift tags, and since we have fake trees, I also buy the pine-scented “scentsicles” like these.)

3. Along these lines, know WHERE to shop. The majority of our decor comes from Hobby Lobby but I get the smaller accents from Target. The “Wondershop” at Target is a great spot for cheap, small strands of lights to decorate mini trees, and basic decorations like small trees, ornaments, and the like. “Bullseye’s Playground” aka – the dollar spot at Target is also a great place to start. You can buy their little wooden houses and make your own Christmas village if you don’t want to buy the expensive glass village houses. Hell, you can puff-paint that shit and make them look like gingerbread houses, and they come in a pack of 3 for $3! Just have a vision before you walk in or you’ll buy a ton of random items that you have no idea what to do with once you’re home.

4. If you want to go a stretch further, you can pick a theme within your color story. We have some mish-mash Christmas shit we’ve collected through the years so I have a different theme on each floor of our house. The main level is all gingerbread men, the basement is all snowmen, and our upstairs is a mix of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas in my daughters’ rooms, purple Christmas shit in our room, and my office is pink and teal vintage/candyland looking Christmas decor. So if you’ve inherited some vintage items from your parents but also have your own style, you can just give each room it’s own theme.

5. For those of you who don’t have kids and want a more “grown up look” I would stick to a more neutral color pallet with small pops of color, or just a generally subdued pallet. Our basement is all snowman themed but since we finished our basement with a farmhouse look to it, I chose muted evergreen and dark red snowmen to mix in with the neutrals.

6. If you prefer a minimalist look without all the dust collectors, you can choose a few key pieces to decorate. (Think a coffee nook, a book case, a wine bar.) You can also just buy a few pieces and decorate a tiered tray and sit it on your countertop, and put up your tree and call it good! We love Christmas in this house so we tend to go all out.

7. For the outside, I would be remiss if I didn’t share my husband’s tip. Buy a fuck-ton (that is the actual measurement) of inflatables and set them up in your yard. It takes him a day to set it up but it looks pretty astonishing once it’s lit up. And it gives off major Griswold vibes, if that’s your thing.

8. If you want to go all-out just know that it takes time! It takes time to collect all the crap, and it takes time to figure out where to put it all. To be completely transparent, I spend an entire day BEFORE decorating removing all the books off my book cases (that’s where I put our Christmas village), and taking pictures, candles, and knick-knacks down so that I have physical room for all the Christmas shit. Not to mention I deep clean my house from top to bottom before decorating since I don’t like sitting decorations on top of layers of dust. So know that to go all-out, it’s a process. And you’ll need storage to hold all this shit for the remaining 11 months of the year! We have an entire storage closet in our basement full of bins of holiday decor and all the inflatables are kept in their boxes in the garage. If you don’t have the storage, you don’t want to buy all the shit, just trust me on that one. I hope this helps and Merry Christmas!!