Homemade Outdoor Christmas Decorations

Candy Land Theme Outdoor Christmas Decorations

One of our readers asked for more details about my homemade outdoor Christmas decorations, especially the candy land theme decorations that I use to decorate my house during the Christmas season. I’m sorry… but for some reason, I never took pictures of it (maybe because I don’t own a camera??? 🙂

Since I bake gingerbread men, I make my house look like a gingerbread house, decorating with a candy land theme. I make my own homemade outdoor Christmas decorations. I go to carpet stores, get the 10-12 foot long cardboard cores carpet comes on, wrap them in white plastic bags and then, using outside wide red ribbon (the kind you use to make bows for wreaths), I wrap it down the core like a candy cane stick. I then place them on each side of my garage, tie to my fence on each side of my driveway or whatever I feel like that year. For one to two dollars, I have a fun homemade outdoor Christmas decoration that always makes a big impact!

One year, I got some clear colored cellophane paper in different colors for free. Here’s how I used it: I taped two paper plates together with the tops facing each other. This made a slight curve. Then I wrapped them in the cellophane, leaving the paper about three to four inches longer on each side and tied the sides with a string so that they looked like wrapped pieces of hard candy. I hung many of these on my fence, from my roof and up and down columns. They are so bright and cheery that my decorations look nice even during the day with no lights on.

I also took some of the candies and tied each one on to a stick. (I had 25 old white spring curtain rods that I couldn’t use, so that is what I used for sticks, but you could use a regular stick spray painted white.) Then I stuck them in flower beds and places, where they make great lollipops!

My son grabbed some three foot heavy cardboard cores that were being thrown away at his workplace. I spray painted them white and painted a red stripe on them or used the wide ribbon and made small candy cane sticks.

Then, one year, I added some giant gingerbread men to everything else. I found huge cardboard boxes someone was throwing away and I asked for them. I opened up each one to make one large piece of cardboard and had family members of different sizes lay on them. I traced around them, painted a face on each one and cut them out for a gingerbread family which hung by my front door. The largest one was almost 8 feet tall.

When my grandkids were coming to visit or just for something special, I tied real candy canes all over my little trees and bushes for them to pick off and eat. I had to use the wrapped candy canes and I didn’t leave them out very long so they wouldn’t get gross or eaten by bugs.

I’m not an artist, but my homemade outdoor Christmas decorations turned out nice! My kids laugh because the best I can draw is stick people but I don’t have the money to buy expensive decorations so I see something I like and then try to figure out how to make it for almost nothing, preferably using what I have on hand. When I’m done, I toss in tons of multi colored lights and some greenery and I top it all off with a candy wreath on the door.

It may seem like a lot of work to make homemade Christmas decorations but I just kept adding something each year and, once it is made, you can save everything and use it over and over.

-Jill

Photo By: Shirley SL