Rustic and Vintage DIY Christmas Ideas

Last year, we hosted an early Christmas lunch for the family at our new house. We live in Durban, South Africa, so our Christmas is in the middle of summer - it is very hot. We wanted to do an outdoor Christmas lunch around the pool - ideal for our hot weather. so I opted for a casual, rustic and vintage Christmas theme. This is how I did it...

Tree:

In a previous hub you will see how I used an old branch to make a DIY hat rack/coat stand. Well, I decided to decorate my hat rack with various Christmas ornaments to make one of the coolest Christmas trees we have ever had! The branch was taken from our garden and sprayed white. I then potted it in concrete but you could easily get the same result using sand.)

Table:

This is how I decorated the table for our Christmas lunch; White tablecloth with burlap runner. I decorated the runner with vintage red and green books and placed a gold wire Christmas tree on top of the book stacks. I placed cute Christmas theme napkins on the table and used mini Christmas trains as paper weights to hold them down. I set the knives and forks out and added an extra Christmas touch by giving each guest a Christmas Tree Favour and I added some flair to some store bought Christmas crackers.

View my Christmas Tree Favour tutorial here

Christmas Crackers:

I bought some very cheap crackers and then put some extra gifts inside the crackers. Some of the gifts I added were; tweezers, nail clippers, mini torches, air freshners etc. I then used pages from old books and wrapped them around the crackers to give them a vintage, rustic look.

Curry is a very popular dish in Durban so we decided to serve a Durban Chicken and Prawn Curry instead of the traditional Christmas lunch.

In the end it was a great afternoon with the family. We ate, drank and were very MERRY!

Secret Santa:

We no longer buy presents for everyone in our family like a lot of families nowadays we opt to play a game of secret santa instead! Christmas shouldn't be about spending ridiculous amounts of money and a game of Secret Santa is always so much fun! If you are looking for an easy and affordable secret santa gift idea then have a look at these!

- Donut Maker Gift Set

- Waffle Maker Gift Set

Photobooth

I also set up a Christmas themed photobooth using a piece of Burlap as a backdrop. We got some great family pics in our photo booth and it looked so cute with santa hats and reindeer ears!

Wishing you and your family a MERRY MERRY Christmas and a Fabulous New Year!

Much Love,

The Hippie Housewife