Christmas Decorating in the Dining Room

We moved into our current house last year and when I did our holiday decorating in 2010, I realized our dining room area (adjoined to our living room) didn’t look very festive. Our previous home didn’t have a formal dining area, so when we did our usual decorating in this new house, it left very little for decorating this “extra” room.

Last year, we left it without any Christmas decorations. My thinking was that I would pick up a bunch of decorations at clearance sales after Christmas. That didn’t work out exactly as planned.

This year, I decided that we would get some new decorations so our dining area could look at great as the rest of the house. The best part? I was given an opportunity to shop at Kmart’s Holiday Shop to decorate my dining room with a budget of $100. Challenge accepted!

We aren’t regular Kmart shoppers, so I was very curious about how well I could do with $100. I mean, one centerpiece could easily cost $40 or more, right? Without any real plan or ideas, David, the kids, and I headed off to our local Las Vegas Kmart to see how we could do.

Once we made our way back to the Holiday Shop, I was pleasantly surprised. There was so much Christmas goodness! I didn’t expect there to be quite so much.  And when I say that there was a lot, it wasn’t like there was aisle after aisle of just gift wrap and stuffed animals, there was aisles of actual Christmas decorations. I was also so happy to see that everything was up to 33% off.

You can see a complete slideshow of my shopping experience, with lots of photos, here: #KmartHoliday Shopping — Christmas Decorating in the Dining Room

One of my favorite parts of the Holiday Shop was that the decorations were divided into themes. This photo shows two of the themes that were available: Jaclyn Smith Velvet Visions (on the left) and Jaclyn Smith Traditions Midnight Clear (on the right). Each theme is coordinating, so I could easily pick items from one section and I could be sure they would look great together in my home.

This image shows my two favorite themes out of everything: Country Living Vintage Christmas (on the left) and Country Living Homespun Holiday (on the right).

After we had browsed the aisles, we had an idea of what we wanted to buy, but I was still not sure how far the $100 would get us. For example, I was interested in this centerpiece:

But, when I turned it over, it said that it was $29.99. It might be worth $29.99, but that alone would be almost a 1/3 of my budget.

But remember that sign that said everything was up to 33% off? Well, I figured it *had* to be on sale, so David took it over to the price scanner and guess what? It was $14.99! Getting 33% off sounded nice, but hey, I’ll take 50% off too. I put that in my cart and now I had my dining room table centerpiece.

There was other things I needed to be sure to get. We don’t have a Christmas tablecloth, so I needed one of those. I was able to get a red fabric tablecloth for just $6.49 (was $12.99).

And there was lots of random decorations that I wanted to get. I have a window in our dining room that I wanted to dress up, plus a long shelf on the wall that I wanted to make all Christmas-y.

I found this ornament, the last one, that will get a special use in my dining room. It was $2.67 (was $3.99).

I wanted a nice garland for the long shelf — this was $16.74 (was $24.99).

The list goes on and on! We filled up the cart with all of this, plus so much more, and headed to the check out. My total came to $107.50, but when I was checking out, I was surprised to hear that I had earned a $5 gift card for spending over $50. If you take that $5 gift card into account, it’s like I only spent $102.50!

If all of these items weren’t on sale, they would have cost me almost $164.00. Not a bad deal for the things I got, but I’m still much happier paying the $107.50.

I’m totally in love with everything I bought. I carefully thought through every item, and am so glad that I was able to get so much. As someone who doesn’t shop at Kmart very often, I was VERY impressed with their holiday selection and their prices.

I’ve already done my decorating, but I can’t show it to you quite yet. Want a teaser? Here’s part of my shelf:

You’ll have to wait for the rest! Stay tuned!

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. #CBias All opinions are, as always, 100% my own.