One of my fondest memories of from my childhood Christmases was unpacking the box of decorations my mom kept for me to decorate my own room – small ceramic angels, snowglobes, music boxes, and of course my little tree that I would decorate with extremely meaningful ornaments (many of which are on our living room tree at this very moment).  This is a tradition that I very much want to pass along to my boys, but beyond putting a little tree in their room last year I have sadly never gotten around to decorating anything else for them. This year, though, I quite unintentionally found myself adding small touches as I was decorating the rest of the house and, before I knew it, the room was looking extremely festive without very much effort at all!  So if you’re like me and want to add a little Christmas to your kids room, but always seem run out of time, here are some of the quick, easy, and pretty cheap ideas that worked for me.

To kick things off, I have to say that there is one idea that I had in my mind that I have been dead set on adding to the boys room – and that is a second tree to go in the corner by the window.  The boys already had a smaller tree covered with all of their special ornaments (and I have to call out my sons excellent choice of the faux fur tree skirt), but last year after I saw that Emily Henderson used two tinsel trees in her daughters room and I have been obsessed with the idea of making this corner extra magical with a second taller tree.  So when I was cruising the IKEA Christmas section and stumbled across this white tinsel tree (for $20!) I didn’t hesitate.

I added some colorful shatter-proof ornaments I had leftover from last year and spare tree skirt to fill up the floor space between the two trees.  And because I’m a big softy at Christmastime, I let my little one grab this wooden train set while we were there by justifying that it would look really cute wrapped around the bottom.  The train is now lost somewhere in the playroom but oh well – still looks cute.

Speaking of leftovers, I now realized that this was the major reason that this space came together so easily.  As much as I have been encouraging people to do a good purge of any seasonal decor they don’t have a place for – I now am going to say take a pause before you get rid of stuff and see if anything you have could work in a kids space, especially anything colorful, fun, or cute!  Last year I had this red/white felt garland, and these little stockings, on my mantel but I knew there right for that room – BUT they’re absolutely perfect to dress up the bunk beds!

For me, bright red and gray are a really cool color combo so basically anything red has found a new home in this room – like the pillows that used to be on my couch but look so much better mixed with the flannel snowflake sheets.  I got these from Target a really long time ago, but they ALWAYS have their Christmas sheets on super sale on Black Friday so add that to your early season shopping list next year!

For the shelves I borrowed the easiest, but most brilliant!, idea I saw on Instagram and just displayed all of their Christmas books along with some of their school Christmas projects and one of my Christmas Shop signs.  I also may have grabbed this giant foam candy cane from Michael’s because that Dinosaur head really wanted to get in on the action.  (Side note – when I walked in to take this picture that little countdown calendar, which I found in the Target Dollar spot, said that it was 9 days until the 4th of July and I was super tempted to keep it that way LOL).

I always make sure to incorporate the boys own artwork into their room by changing up on their bulletin board with the seasons…but I also love to do crafts with them that they can then display.  Micheal’s always has awesome sales on their holiday craft kits, and these stockings were another great dollar spot find…..if you’re hosting Thanksgiving or Christmas and have a lot of kids coming this is a great way to keep them busy before dinner!

As with anything I put together for my boys, I know that the chances of the room looking like this from one day to the next is very slim, but as long as they are enjoying the space and will help me straighten up a few times a week I’m happy.  My parting word of wisdom is if your kids are anything like mine don’t put anything in their room that you would be devastated to see go.  My son loves our old advent calendar with it’s little swing out doors, so I thought he would love having it on his desk….what I didn’t expect was that he would almost instantaneously draw all over it with marker….but hey, at least it’s not my floors ; )