Cheap and Easy Christmas Ornaments

We have moved a few times in the last few years just before we finally purchased our home. Moving stinks. Its painfully labor intensive and you almost always lose your things that you really didn't want to part with. I, unfortunately, lost most of my cherished Christmas ornaments. Honestly, it hurt my heart that I lost them, but who has time to dwell on 'things' that are replaceable. Yes- some were irreplaceable, such as the cute ornaments my children had made through out the years, but, like I said- they are only 'things'.

Being really really broke and moving in the middle of Thanksgiving we had to come up with something super cheap, but also something fun that the children would love. While pacing the isles in Wal-Mart, looking for ornaments to cover the whole tree, that weren't breakable and were kid friendly, I thought we should try the toy isle. That's when I spotted a giant tub of dinosaurs for just under $10.

I grabbed the giant tub of dinosaurs, and my husband had thought I had officially lost 'it'. I then ventured into the hardware department and picked out two colors of spray paint that would please both the girls and boys in our home, then I found a can of glitter spray paint. What says Christmas ornament more than glitter? Probably that cheap silver tinsel, but I had to do a little better than that for our kiddos.

I purchased eye hooks, and my husband and I screwed on into each dinosaur by hand. Then we took our little Dino's outside and separated them out and painted half one color and the other half with the second color. Once they dried, we flipped them and painted the opposite sides. Once that dried we stood them all up and did a quick spray of glitter on all of them. Now, what we didn't think of- was that we had laid these Dino's down on a board on the tailgate of my husband's truck, and did not put anything under that. To this day, he still had turquoise and hot pink spray paint on the tailgate of his truck. So- you may want to splurge for that cheap plastic drop cloth, unless you are ready for paint on whatever surface you are using.

Our little Dino's are on their 3rd year now and still going strong. We also added a bigger T-Rex as our tree topper. We found him at a Family Dollar Store, and painted him the same way as the others.

This year I think we will add pretty little bows, and maybe a few more Dino's in another color. As much as I love a traditional white light tree with beautiful fancy ornaments, our children are only little for a short time. Why not enjoy that time with fun little things like a Dino tree.