When gearing up for our holiday cocktail party, I wanted to make our apartment feel as magical as I could. With a tight-budget and not a lot of time, I worked with what I had. If you are as into Domino, Martha, Vogue, and a myriad of other magazines that provide ideas and inspiration, than you too must have stacks and stacks of useful material.

 Before I sent my stacks out to the recycling bin (note: I NEVER pitch my Martha's. I save each and every one), I decided to use them to help transform our pad into a holiday wonderland.

First go through your STACKS and STACKS of mags, and tear out the pages that have the boldest, most colorful pages. Keep your eyes peeled for weird, quirky patterns and cool typeface, ads and images.

Then, take your stacks and cut the magazines pages into 3 long strips with the page lengthwise.  Mix the colors up so that you never have the same colors in a row. I went so far as to hold it out each time to make sure that the colors and patterns were equally distributed, but I was in a holiday haze and was dangerously determined.

Take your first strip, and loop it into a circle elementary-school style. But instead of the clunky staplers I used in my 2nd-grade class, we will use clear tape and tape both the exterior and interior flaps down.This is cleaner, a little lovelier, and the tape doesn't weigh the garland down as the staples do.

Continue this until you are satisfied with the length of your garland. What sets these apart from the ones we all made as kids are how bold and colorful they can be.

With magazines like Antenna, Vice, and Bust, you'll find way cooler, more interesting ads and pages to use. Also, the sheer volume of what I got myself into really made a world of difference.

 I did the entire garland in a few hours while watching HGTV, and it completely transformed the room. Mine literally circles the ENTIRE circumference of the living/dining room.

And then when I finished at 2am and my husband looked at me as if I were insane, I made one for the kitchen!