Last year, when I was extremely poor, my children & I made this to top our Christmas tree, since my ex kept all the Christmas stuff during the divorce (No, it's not an angel of death). Everybody made a contribution to the design; My daughter wanted it to have fairy wings; Both my boys wanted it to be a skeleton (I love pirates, and seem to have passed that on to my babies):
Our tree is also festooned with many construction paper chains, and my daughter & I have amassed quite a collection of cut-out paper snowflakes to decorate the house:
It's kinda funny... my girlfriend has agreed to keep my angel to replace her very expensive Victorian style angel, should we combine households, because my children have become very attached to it.
When I was a kid, most of the stuff decorating our house was school projects; Construction paper chains, strings of macaroni, etc...
Nowadays, everything seems to be store bought.