Christmas garland

So I've always been in love with this garland from Pottery Barn:

It's lovely right? But its also $140 for a 6 foot strand... ugh! Even just to cover my outside columns I would need 4 because six feet really isn't long enough to go all the way around the column more than 1.5 times! So it adds up, fast and P said it was a no go! Clearly the logically decision but I was so sad until I ran across this tutorial for making a DIY version of this garland here! 

Y'all!! This is so simple, I shouldn't have even needed a tutorial but I really just had no idea it would be so simple. Let me warn you though- it is simple but it is definitely time consuming! I'm a little slow and I wasn't totally paying attention, choosing to watch Christmas movies on ABC Family while I did this little project, so each 9 foot garland took me about 2 hours- I think. The first one probably a little longer and the second one went faster as I got the hang of things! 

Just like in the tutorial I picked up two 9 foot pre-lit GE garland from Lowe's and a bunch of ornaments from Hobby Lobby during one of their 50% off decorations week! SCORE! I used only small and medium ornaments, not the large ones and tied them on with some floral wire stuff that looks like green twist ties. 

Here you can see my three tubs of small ornaments- these covered all 18 feet of garland along with 24 (6 packages) of the medium size ornaments that come in 4-packs

This too was in the holiday section at Hobby Lobby on the aisle with their garlands and wreaths. I ended up using two! 

I just cut a bunch of strips of the twist ties into about 3 inch pieces and strung them through the ornaments (do get shatterproof plastic ornaments since these will be outside!) and attached them to the garland. I did all of my larger ornaments first, then came back and filled in space between with the small ornaments. 

I decided to use silver and red like the Pottery Barn wreath AND gold since my front door wreath is all gold- I thought I should bring some gold into the picture! 

Overall I spent about $60 on ornaments and $60 on the two garlands so $120 total vs the $700+ I would have spent to pay for the PB ones. . . while time consuming, I think the 4 hours in "labor" were well spent! 

I'll add pictures of the garlands up outside later when I show you the rest of our Christmas decor!