We host a Christmas Party every year and I like to pick a different theme each time on which the decorations, food, etc, are based on.  As always I like to go eco-friendly with the decorations, reusing and repurposing things I have. So a few weeks before Christmas when I had gone to the park with the kids, and they were picking pine cones and twigs, I decided to use them as decor. We also happened to watch the movie “Polar Express” and together came about the theme “Bells and Nature”.

I gave an old pinecone candle holder, that I had, a coat of glitter paint and placed it on a silver tray with some bells around. Some more candles were added to make the entry way cozy. The leaf balls hanging from the sconces, and the leaf paintings were what I had made previously.

The banner was made using the Rice bag that our sonamasoori rice comes in.

Painting the pinecones the kids had collected with gold glitter paint and placing them on silver looked elegant – at no cost! I had picked up this bell at Netherlands, years ago during my travels.

We had a bunch of wine corks collected. I made a sort of wreath gluing the cork and some bells on a cardboard packaging box (from a recent purchase of clock from Ikea).

As I was pulling out my Christmas decorations from the garage, I noticed that a couple of boxes were missing. It had a lot of string lights and some decorations I had made. I was so bummed since I had been planning to use them. But in the process, I found a big bag of wooden chopsticks my husband had collected from all the take out during his bachelor years!

Kids and I painted them in gold and glued them on cardboard cut in rounds and painted, to make these sunburst wall hangings. We also made the hanging paper ornaments – easy, fast and all we needed were a couple of scrapbook paper.

I have these tall candle holder vases which are so versatile – I have filled them with different things (colored water, sea salt, etc) and this time I placed some ornaments and snowflakes.

I hung a couple of long twigs the kids had collected at the park on the back wall, and hung several bells, painted pine cones and ornaments on them.

This was another new decoration – I made cutouts of Santa sitting on his sleigh, pulled by his reindeer and flying through the clouds, bringing presents for kids.

I used the tiny twigs from park for reindeer antlers and cotton balls from previous year for clouds.

We had a ton of food and drinks.

I decorated these little gingerbread boys and girls for the kids and made these fun candy treats.

Hot Chocolate for kids..

and Marshmellows dipped in Chocolate and sprinkled with Candycane, stuck to candycane ends to stir into their hot chocolate.

And hot apple cider and wine for adults. I used bells with a name tag as wine glass charms. It was so fun and festive as the bells were jingling the whole time 🙂

I made these cheese balls in the shape of pinecones to go with the theme, it was a hit.

And some warm winter salad using the butternut squash from our garden.

We always get busy during the party and forget to take pictures of the food. There was a lot of it, these are just leftovers..

It was a great party. Lots of fun, a visit from Santa to give all the kids a present, some good laughs during the white elephant game for adults, food, drinks, music, .. merry!

I spend quite a bit of time on making the decorations and preparing food. But I enjoy doing it, especially because I barely spend any money. Its a challenge I put to myself on how I will use the different things I have and transform them into something beautiful, while saving the planet and saving the wallet. I think the only thing I bought for this party, for decorations, was bells.

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