Free Outdoor Holiday Decor

DIY "Christmas Trees"

For the holidays, I love to decorate the large iron flower pots in front of my house. My idea this year was to purchase small evergreen trees. However, at $56.00 a piece they were a little outside my budget. So I began to look around the house and neighborhood for a more budget friendly solution.

Did you realize most stores that sell Christmas trees cut off the bottom branches? They often give these branches away for FREE! I am sure you can see where this is going... free is the seed of many great ideas.

I ended up using obelisk shaped garden stakes (lying around my backyard),

 grapevine wreaths,

 branches from a tree across the street and those FREE evergreen limbs.

First, I placed long evergreen branches on the bottom around the garden stake.

Next, I continued feeding the evergreen branches through the garden stake, using smaller branches as I went  up to create a cone effect.

The more branches, the more stable the tree (it won't fly away when the wind blows).

I filled in the bare spots with the berry branches from across the street.

I am actually quite happy with the final result and I saved $112!