The Square Life

Decorating this holiday doesn't have to be expensive. With items found at a dollar store you can deck the halls for a fa la la lot less.

DOLLAR ADORE

Fill bowls, jars, and vases with the season’s
best colors. Star garland, crinkled gift stuffing, a package of red firemen
figures or bag of gift bows can fill a jar for $1.00 each.

With a pack of $1.00 crayons and a
$1.00 coloring book, you can have your guests help decorate. When your friends
and family have finished coloring their pages, place them into a $1.00 document
frame and hang. Remember the fun and have your guests sign and date their
artwork.

With $1.00 spools of ribbon, you can turn
closet doors, kitchen cabinets, and drawers into large gifts. To save ribbon,
cut and tape ribbon to make it look like it’s wrapped around the whole
door.

With a $1.00 package of twelve small red bows you can afford to go to
town, adding more bows than needed to anything like garland and wreaths.

TRIM THE TREE

Gift Bow Ornament

Sandwich a ribbon ornament
hanger ($1.00 for a package of 30) with two gift bows of the same size. You may
want to staple or glue them together as we found the adhesives didn’t hold them
together as secure as we would have liked.

Glue Flakes

Lay out a sheet of wax paper. If you don’t trust your
artistic instincts, you can draw your design on the wax paper with a pen or
find a design to trace by placing the design underneath the wax paper. Outline
your design with a $1.00 bottle of glue.
Glue will condense so go over thin areas several times with more glue.
Let sit overnight, pull off and add a ribbon hanger. You can also add food
coloring to the glue or buy glitter glue to achieve a different look.

Wiffle Balls

This one only seemed destined to end up on the tree. For $1.00
you can purchase a bag of four medium
size balls, a bag of six small wiiffle balls, or a bag of two large wiffle
balls. The latter may be too big, but we’re not going to keep you from
expressing your creativity. With a $1.00 bottle of Elmer’s Glue and a pack of $1.00
multi-colored containers of glitter you can add all sorts of designs and colors
to these blank “canvases”.

FROSTED WINDOW PANES
To deck the windows, buy a pack of sponges, a bottle of acrylic
paint, liquid dish soap, and aluminum plate all for $1.00 each. Cut the sponge
into desired shapes; i.e., star, tree, candy cane, dot. Cover the bottom of the aluminum plate with
acrylic paint. Add a small squirt of
dish soap and mix. Dip the sponge into the paint mixture, remove excess paint
by dabbing onto a paper towel or newspaper, and then apply to the window. Create
patterns and designs or let your inner Monet shine through.

LET IT SNOW
Nothing new here folks, you’ve been making paper snowflakes
as long as you’ve been making paper chains, but how about putting them all in
one place. Create a winter wonderland in the front hall by hanging snowflakes
from the ceiling. Give a more festive
flavor with a $1.00 pad of colored construction paper and turn it into the most
colorful snowfall you’ve seen all year.
And, if that doesn’t satisfy your decorating needs, just add glitter.
Everything looks better with glitter this time of year.