Ah, November is here, the Christmas hype has begun, and no doubt you’ll want your flat to look the part for the festive season. However, popular retailers around this time of year like John Lewis and Marks and Spencer fail to cater to our needs as students (with the particularly fancy baubles being sold at around SIX POUNDS. EACH). For us, ‘tis never the season to be spending extortionate amounts of money on silly knickknacks, so hopefully, this article will inspire you to add some frugal festivity to your uni lives.
Christmas bunting is a beautiful thing, but why buy it for £10 when you can cover way more wall space for a fraction of the price? 3 metres of Christmas wrapping paper costs just £2 from Tesco – simply unroll the entire thing and tape over any free space you own for an instant Christmas makeover! (It’s easy to get over excited and tape over doors and windows, so watch out for that). Got some spare? Go wild! Slap some over your kitchen cupboards, the fridge, the chairs – NOT THE HOB – another easy mistake to make.
Pinecones too, are going to be contenders for your new best friend this Christmas. All you have to do is locate some conifer trees and grab as many as you can (pinecones that is; don’t try and take the entire tree). For bonus points, roll them about in some glue and red glitter for a while before displaying them on that fancy Christmas plate you don’t have.
On a similar theme, what’s the point in getting a Christmas wreath when there’s a free one waiting to be made just outside? Sure, dead leaves and twigs may not sound that appealing, and could even be a little damp, but that’s nothing a hairdryer and some tinsel can’t fix! You can decorate your splendid wreath with pretty much anything – why not stick on a few Quality Streets so it doubles up as a snack, or try cotton wool for a snowy effect? If your pinecones looked a bit crap on your paper plate, stick them on too.
University accommodation tends not to have a gigantic living area in which a real tree could be displayed comfortably, and the usual solution is to make do with a tiny fake one. However, tiny fake trees also come at a price, and personally, I find larger trees to be much more exciting. Not only is my method very cheap, but it means you can use all the expensive John Lewis decorations without having to buy them. Take 3 cardboard boxes, big, medium and small, and glue them together to resemble a tree. Next, draw your tree on the boxes, leaving a bit of space round the edges for all your expensive baubles. Draw them too, and you’re finished! You’ve made yourself a cheap, portable Christmas tree and it took you about 20 minutes.
If your flatmates still aren’t full of Christmas spirit when you’ve done all this, just make sure you have the festive music on full blast, constantly, and that you are always singing along. It’s bound to help.