Christmas Clearance…

Christmas is all packed away and our house, like it always does this time of year, feels so bare. It’s got me itching to do some projects, as well as some major organizing and purging. I spent the end of last week and a lot of this weekend cleaning out drawers, closets, and working on a few of the little projects on my ever-growing list.

I don’t go shopping the day after Christmas, but last week, I managed to still find some awesome deals on some stuff for next year. So much great stuff, that I’ve decided I won’t be able to wait until after Thanksgiving this year to decorate, I’m starting in November.

Every year, I try to add a few things to my decorations and I’ve made that a habit since we got married. Now, almost 8 years later, I’ve accumulated a pretty good stash. But, I’ve never added this much in one year. The deals I got, though, were so worth it.

I can’t believe how much money you can save on Christmas décor by buying the week after. Most of my stuff I got for 90% off!!! That just blows my mind…

I don’t want to be one of those people who buys something just because it’s dirt cheap, never mind that A.) I’m never going to use it or B.) its dog-ugly and that’s WHY it’s marked down 90% off. We all know those people, and Lord, bless them, but I don’t want to be them. So that’s why before I put anything in my buggy from the clearance section, I thought LONG AND HARD (as long and hard as you can think when your shopping buddy is two years old), about how and where I would use the item next year. When it was all said and done, I think I scored big time and made wise choices.

One of the things I was most excited about was the shatterproof ornaments from Target. The big boxes of silver ones were regularly priced at $15.00! I got them for $1.50! I almost squealed when I saw them, because I knew right where I needed them!

Last year, I fell in love with Pottery Barn’s decorated wreaths and garland. The six foot garland was I think, like $69.00! So,  I decided I would make my own. We spent about $50.00 on shatterproof ornaments and some garland. We ended up with enough garland to do a pretty swag on the roofline and do 4 wreaths.

Not too bad, but I just felt like the columns needed to be wrapped, too…they just looked naked. We didn’t want to spend the money on it, though, because we’d figured it up and it would cost us another $100.00 or more to do it. This year, when we were hanging it all back up, I loved it as much as I did last year, but I was still wishing for some ornament-decorated garland for the columns.

Last week, I got the garland 90% off at HobLob (it came out to be 79 cents each) and will use the ornaments to decorate it and wrap the columns, too! I got all of the stuff to do it for less than $20.00!!!! Yay! No more naked columns! I can’t wait!!!

I focused on two rooms in the house this year, when adding to my décor: the formal dining room and the playroom.

I chose these ornaments for our dining room. I don’t really do much in the dining room, so I’ve been wanting to add to it. I fell in love with the muted gold and cocoa colored glass ornaments. At 40 cents a box, who wouldn’t!?!? The ones in the tubes on the left are plastic, and while I’m not really big on shatterproof ornaments inside, the glitter won me over! The colors look perfect with my curtains in the dining room, and I think it’s just “dressed up” enough for in there. I got enough to be able to fill jars with them and put them on the tree in there. I also love the bird ornaments with the tail feathers.

I didn’t do anything in the playroom this year, so I knew I wanted to look for some things for it. AB will be so into Christmas next year, so I want it to be super cute and fun for her. I got a few things for it, and chose bright red and green whimsical and fun stuff for the playroom. I got the ribbon for less than $2.00 a roll and the “W” ornaments for 10 cents each. I’m going to use to use the stuff in the bottom picture to add to some garland to trim out the window in the playroom. I love those big jingle bells, the felt snowflakes and the pom-pom snowmen picks.

The last thing I kept an eye out for were matching stockings. I want really cute, nice ones one day, but needed some that matched and were good enough for now. I don’t want to pick out and order nice ones yet, because I don’t know how many to buy. Hopefully, we will need some more someday. So, for now, I bought these felt ones from JoAnn’s.They were marked down to $1.00, so I just bought six, because I know we won’t need more than that! :) I think they’ll be cute monogrammed, and then I may be-dazzle them with some fabric yo-yo’s or something. Carrie inspired that idea. Then, in the future, when we know for sure how many we need, I’ll order our nice matching ones.

I also found stocking holders for .60 cents per box (of 2). I’m going to give them a coat of oil rubbed bronze spray paint and they’ll be perfect!

A few other random things for around the house including: 

This nutcracker and felt tree from Target. Both were 90% off, so I paid…$1.29 each.

Red berry garland from Hobby Lobby. Regularly priced $39.00, marked down to $3.99.

I couldn’t resist these pale pink Country Living glass balls. They’ll be so darling on AB’s tree in her room! And hopefully by next year, she can be trusted not to touch them, since they are glass…OR they may stay packed up for a couple more years… ha… 

I also got some great wired ribbon at Michaels for less than $2.00 a roll. 

 

It will be hard to pay full price for something for a while after those steals and deals. :)

~amw~