Decorating your front yard for the holidays need not be an extravagant affair. Ready-made yard decorations are available at your local mall, but a real one-of-a-kind display is a nice combination of store-bought decors and homemade ones.

Christmas lights are of course, the most readily-available decorations you can buy at stores. Simple strings of plain white lights is enough to do wonders to your home. Wrap them around a tree in the front of your house; depending on the size of the tree, you may need about ten strings of a hundred lights each. The idea here is to wrap each strand around individual branches to give the tree a starlit, frosted look.

Use net lights for low bushes and shrubbery, especially trimmed ones. Small evergreen shrubs are perfect for these lights, and they’re real easy to install and remove. Get these lights in green to emphasize your garden at night.

For outlining your windows, walkways, and railings, use rope lights. These are especially made for outdoor decorating and are great for those who don’t have hours to spend for stringing up lights. You can even use them indoors to keep you warm!

Make sure you inspect the wires on each string of lights before installing them; look out for any frayed or broken wires. Before buying a string of lights, have them tested to make sure that each bulb is working.

A wreath on your front door is a warm and subtle way of saying, “Welcome to my home.” But aside from displaying them on the door to greet your guests, there are many other places indoors where you can use your Christmas wreath as an elegant decoration for the room.

Consider hanging a wreath inside the guest bathroom or the living to extend the warm, festive feel. Decorate it with red, gold, and green ornaments like poinsettias, holly berries, and artificial gold feathers, or choose a wreath that matches the color scheme of the room where you intend to hang it.

Children love it when their rooms are especially decorated for the holidays. Turn the wreath-decorating into a crafts project with the kids by getting a bare wreath and allowing them to personalize it with their names and decorate it with a theme like sports, pets, or good old Christmas. Hang the wreath above their beds or on their doors.

Fresh wreaths are also a great way to add a Yuletide scent in any room. You can make your own by getting eucalyptus leaves, fresh evergreens, pine cones, or berries and attaching them to a wreath frame. If you don’t have time to create a homemade wreath, you can order a fresh one from your florist. Alternately, you can also place a drop or two of cinnamon and apple-scented essential oils on an artificial wreath.

Christmas wreaths provide an instant decorative touch that can be placed in any room and on unexpected places. They’re so easy to customize according to your home’s color scheme and if stored properly, artificial wreaths can last you for many Christmases to come.

Just because you have no lawn and no tree in your apartment, doesn’t mean you can’t capture the warmth and fuzziness of the holidays. Don’t let the limited amount of space limit your creativity. Here are a few decorating ideas you can use when you jazz up your apartment for the holidays.

Hang items like wreaths on your walls in order to save floor space. The idea is to avoid cluttering your apartment with holiday decorations. Think up of ways to creatively arrange other decors in a vertical capacity so your apartment doesn’t get too overwhelmed.

Put garlands on your door frame and decorate it with pine cones, ribbons in Christmas colors, and little decorative balls. You can also wrap Christmas lights around it too.

Centerpieces are a holiday staple; create or buy a centerpiece for your dining room table or the coffee table in your living room.

If you’d like to have a Christmas tree in your place, get one that’s only two or three feet tall and decorate it with miniature balls, lights, and small ornaments. Place it in a corner of your living room so you don’t stumble into it. A balcony also makes a great place for a Christmas tree, if you have one at your apartment.