Christmas decorations on a student budget

How to bring the Christmas cheer to your student home

So here we are. It’s nearly the end of first term, we’ve all had one too many last-minute assignment-based breakdowns, and it’s hard to remember the last time we had a good night’s sleep. Don’t worry, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, in fact there’s many. And they’re in a big green tree waiting for you in the living room of your family home.

But why should they be all the way back there? Christmas is for everyone isn’t it? Even if you are currently digging your way through that glorious thing called an overdraft.

Well I’m certainly of the opinion that it should be, which is why, when the 25th of November hit and it was officially one month until Christmas day, myself and my trusty partner in crime, made our way to Battery Retail Park in Selly Oak with a mission to make our little student house a winter wonderland. I thought it was about time there was some Christmas cheer in my housemates’ hearts, the stress levels were high, we deserved a nice reward.

Everything a £1

As any sensible student would, we started out at Poundland, and this was definitely a very successful trip. Our first move was to get some lights for the tree. There are a few options available, we briefly debated some battery operated white lights, but were unsure that these would provide enough light and cover a sufficient amount of the tree, so we settled on some multi-coloured, mains operated lights. These were unfortunately priced at £2 rather than £1, but given the length and power they seemed the sensible choice.

Poundland also had a generous selection of baubles on offer, including some little “jingle bells” and sparkly hanging snowflakes. We were eager for our decorations to be fitting to us, so we were delighted to find some named tree decorations. We managed to find the names of two house members pre-written and then two blank ones that we could fill in ourselves with sharpie. Tree decorations sorted!

In Poundland we also managed to pick up a couple of general house decorations including some Christmas garlands, paper snowflake decorations and small stockings, complete with stick-on felt letters so that we could personalise them and each have our own.

The perfect tree

The next step was finding the perfect tree! Luckily, Battery Retail Park is home to a large Homebase where they are currently stocking a plethora of both real and fake trees, ranging in price from about £5 upwards. We knew that we wanted a fake tree and we knew it needed to be fairly small, so with a size of about 4 foot in mind, we got searching.

We soon found a pair of cute looking fake trees of the right size, one being £15 and one being £8. After looking them both up and down for a couple of minutes we decided there was very little difference between them and went for the cheaper option. A pretty great find if I do say so myself!

Homemade

Last but not least, and perhaps my favourite addition to our decorating process was our homemade wreath! This was made simply with a circle of strong wire and some festive patterned materials. We cut the material into strips and then tied them around the wire in bows, building it up gradually to made this lovely little decoration for our door! This was easy and fun and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a seasonal DIY!

So, if you’re out there, sitting in your student communal room, staring at depressingly blank walls, about to have yet-another breakdown over the looming deadlines, why not head out to Poundland and Homebase or anywhere that takes your fancy, and bring Christmas right to your door now – go on, make your mum jealous.

P.S. – Merry Christmas! x