Christmas tree on a budget

Even your Christmas tree can be done on a budget, and it is possible to work some magic with items from the Dollar Tree that might look kind of cheap or that you might not think will look "nice enough".  I did my entire tree for around $50 this year, and that includes buying the tree.  I got the tree for $20 from WalMart and I did purchase the lights from WalMart rather than the Dollar Tree.  The rest of the decorations were purchased from the Dollar Tree.

As you can see from the picture, I used three strands of 100 bulb colored lights, 2 9 ft spools of ribbon, 2 silver rope garlands, 2 decorative snowflake garlands, a package of silver pine cone ornaments (which could just as easily be made yourself) and four 10 ct. packages of white and silver ornaments.  I used silver pipe cleaner to hang the ornaments on the tree because I have cats and small children - I wasn't really comfortable with using regular ornament hooks at this point.  Everything from the Dollar Tree totaled less than $20, so for around $50 I managed to put together what I think is a fairly well decorated, decent looking tree.