November 29, 2018

Thrifty And Colorful Christmas Decor Ideas In The Living Room

Tour my cozy living room decked out for the holidays! Grab some hot cocoa and join me as I share colorful Christmas decor ideas using inexpensive and thrift store items to make your home merry and bright.

I don’t tend to do much seasonal decorating around the house but when it comes to Christmas, I’m ALL IN. I’ve been busy as an elf decking the halls around here, and I am super excited to share our colorful Christmas living room decor today.

I’m sharing today’s tour as part of the Cozy Holiday Home Tour with a group of super talented blogger friends so be sure to go tour their homes as well! I’ll leave links to all of their home tours at the bottom of this post.

Now grab a big mug of hot cocoa and join me as we take a little tour! I’ll share some tips for adding color and styling thrifty items in your Christmas decorating this year.

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Colorful Christmas Decor Ideas

Since we spend the most time in the living room, it’s the main space where I focus my decorating energy. I usually use more traditional reds and greens for my holiday decor but I’ll be honest, I never really like decorating with red.

So this year I set out to switch up some things to achieve a much more colorful Christmas living room. And I have to say, I love how happy and colorful this room feels now!

Our New Dreamy Flocked Tree

You guys, I’m crazy obsessed with our new flocked Christmas tree! When it comes to Christmas decorating, I always start with the Christmas tree since it is the focal point of the room.

I’ve been dreaming of a huge flocked tree since moving into this house a year ago. Our smaller 5-foot tree just didn’t seem big enough for our new living room, plus that old tree was the floor display I bought from Target 7 years ago the weekend before Christmas.

So yeah, I decided to cash in a couple gift cards and splurge on a fabulous new flocked tree and I cannot stop staring at it. I compiled my absolute favorite affordable flocked trees into this blog post for you (I couldn’t let all of my obsessive research go to waste, could I?).

And see how pretty it is all lit up at night? It’s so magical!

Colorful Ornaments

If you’re looking for colorful Christmas decor ideas, ornaments are a great place to start! I picked up two new packs of assorted ornaments from At Home to create a fun color scheme for our Christmas living room this year. Then I mixed in a lot of my old blue, green, and metallic ornaments to create a pretty collection.

In addition to the colorful bulbs, I also sprinkled in a lot of family ornaments we’ve collected over the years. I love combining sentimental and handmade ornaments with some glamorous bulbs to create a meaningful yet cohesive look to your tree.

I’ve picked up tons of pretty ornaments at thrift stores over the years including some really pretty blue and green ones. Don’t forget to keep your eye out for Christmas decor all year long at your local thrift stores!

A Colorful DIY Tree Collar

Since I have a one-year-old running around the house, I decided to forgo the usual tree skirt this year since I have a hunch she wouldn’t have been able to leave it alone.

I love the clean look of the new tree collars but I don’t love the price tag so I decided to make my own. My budget was $0 so I had to get a little creative. A strip of cardboard and some spray paint was all it took to make a colorful green tree collar. I stuck some fluffy “snow” material into the middle to fill it up and really do love how it turned out!

DIY Colorful Wooden Trees

The built-in shelving and fireplace mantle in this house is so much fun to decorate. I laid a garland along the back of the mantle, arranged the little wooden trees, draped a couple strands of beads, and hung our stockings to complete our simple modern mantle.

I whipped up these modern wooden trees by cutting scrap wood into triangles and painting them with craft paint. These little trees are such a thrifty project that can add a fun pop of color to your Christmas decor!

My wooden trees were inspired by these colorful wooden trees and these modern scrap wood trees.

Christmas #Shelfie

These shelves are super fun to switch out for the seasons! Although it took me forever to finish them because every time I’d climb up my step stool to stand on the bottom cabinets, Chloe would come climbing up right behind me and immediately panic about being stuck on the step stool. So it was slow going, but I love how this #shelfie turned out.

I hung a couple wreaths using a loop of sparkly ribbon tied to a Command hook. Then I basically filled the shelves with a bunch of thrifted objects and bowls of colorful ornaments. Filling baskets and bowls with ornaments is a really easy way to carry your colorful Christmas color scheme throughout the room, and I love using things I already own rather than going out and buying a bunch of new decorations just for the holidays.

I’m really excited about that white Christmas village collection I found for an absolute steal at a local thrift store. They were my find for the Thrift Shop Challenge I’m doing with some of my blogger friends, so look for details on the Christmas village makeover on the blog in another week or so.

By the way, that left cabinet is actually our diaper changing station. I threw a strand of beads and gift up there for this photo but it’s usually pretty empty so we can do quick diaper changes right there. The black metal crate next to the photo holds our wipes and diapers. Hey, I’m a firm believer that decor can be pretty and functional!

The Cozier, The Better!

Textured pillows and chunky blankets are a great way to amp up the coziness factor in your living room for the winter months. Adding extra lamps and candles also helps!

Whenever I’m decorating a space, I like to shop my house for pieces to incorporate and ended up swiping my recent thrift store lamp makeover project from our bedroom to add to this table by our armchair. The velvet lampshade adds some color and cozy texture to the room and I just love having lots of lamps to turn on this time of year.

See that cute green magazine holder on the floor? That is a thrift store find from a couple years ago that I finally got around the spray painting. I found this green spray paint in my stash and am obsessed with it! I’m thanking my past self for choosing such a pretty color ;). It adds a nice pop of color to this sitting area.

Speaking of thrifty finds, I just realized that the round table itself is also secondhand. I bought it off a girl on Facebook Marketplace (and it was a bonus that she’d already painted it so cute!).

Like I mentioned earlier, a basket filled with ornaments is a super easy way to decorate for the holidays. I found this cute wire basket in my stash, loaded it up with ornaments and some scraps of sparkly ribbon, and added a gift tag to the little holder on top. How easy and festive is that?!

Colorful Wrapping Paper

Wrapping paper is another frugal and colorful Christmas decor idea. I like to splurge on a couple new rolls of wrapping paper each year and chose some fun, colorful options this time around! Don’t forget to look for paper that’s not specifically for Christmas, like my navy striped paper that I can use for gifts all year long.

I always wrap a few empty boxes to add to the style of our tree right away and usually end up opening them up to box up actual gifts as Christmas approaches.

I picked up some chunky teal yarn and metallic gold string to add fun bows to gifts this year. I like how they have a more modern twist than using the traditional curling ribbon.

DIY Christmas Card Holder

I love sending and receiving Christmas cards from friends and family, and I always make sure to designate a spot to display them. This year, I decided to put these old shutters to use (I’ve no joke had those thrifted shutters since high school!).

I dug up a can of aqua spray paint and gave it a fun and cheery look topped off with a cute garland. Now I can clip up cards as they arrive in the mail!

It’s been so fun to come home from work to a living room all decked out for the holidays! I love turning on all of the lamps, lights on the tree, and little lights on the Christmas Village to create a cozy glow in our home.

I still have a couple more Christmas projects and spaces to show you during the next couple of weeks! I hope today’s tour gave you some thrifty and colorful Christmas decor ideas you can use as inspiration in your own home this season.

Thanks so much for stopping by for today’s Cozy Holiday Home Tour! If you want more cozy Christmas inspiration, make sure to visit these other homes:

Looking for more Christmas ideas? Take a look at these blog posts:

I’d also love to help you take the stress out of the holidays by setting up a holiday planner. Take a look at my collection of holiday planning printables, the Holiday Planning Playbook, here.

Have a great day!

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Brittany Wise says:

November 29, 2018 at 11:15 am

Emily, you have been busy crafting!! It all looks wonderful and that tree collar idea is GENIUS. Thank you again for the flocked tree inspiration, I love it!
1. Emily says:
  
  December 1, 2018 at 10:25 am
  
  Thanks so much, Brittany! The tree collar was a last resort idea, but I think it turned out pretty good. Thanks for joining the home tour!
Brittany Worrell Boyce says:

November 29, 2018 at 11:03 am

I love the rich, bright colors you decorated with! Absolutely stunning.
1. Emily says:
  
  December 1, 2018 at 10:25 am
  
  Thanks so much, Brittany! It was fun to do something a little more nontraditional this year. I love color! Thanks for joining along in the tour!

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