Month: May 2018

15 Free Ways to Decorate Your Home: Creating a Home You Love on a Budget – Part 3

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I was sitting here with my laptop, working on the last 7 of 15 Ways to Decorate Your House for Free. Then, I looked around and realize that right now, simply getting my house clean would make it feel like I redecorated! Some days are just like that, at least for me. Ok, some weeks are like that!

Though the broom is shouting my name, I still have 7 ideas to share. If you missed the first 8 ideas, you can find them here. 

9. Pine cones

I know these are typically associated with Christmas and winter decor, but I like to use them year around.  It’s an excellent, free way to add some natural elements to your decor as well as some texture.

I put them in bowls, baskets and metal containers. Small pinecones work great in vases. My daughter, Abigail has put them in a tall,  clear vase along with battery operated fairy lights. They can be made into wreaths, painted for any season and made to look like roses or zinnias.

Pinecone Zinnias, from A Fanciful Twist

How To Make Pine Cone Flowers More

Pinecone flower from The Better Nester

10. Paint

Paint can be used to up-cycle furniture, remake an old light fixture or transform a room. A front door, freshly painted in a bold, vibrant color completely alters your exterior and creates curb appeal. You probably have paint left over from other projects, but if you don’t, most cities now have a Habitat for Humanity Resale store. They always have partial cans of paint for pennies on the dollar and you’re contributing to a good cause in the process.

Home Depot usually has a section with discounted paint as well. Paint colors that don’t come out quite the way the customer wanted them end up in this area. I recently bought an assortment of their little 8 oz sample sized jars in fun spring colors for $.50 a jar. I didn’t really have a plan for the paint, but for the price, I figured someone in my house would want it for a project sooner or later.

11. Branch tea light candleholders

When my son got married two and a half years ago, we made all of the centerpieces out of large branches from my property. Equipped with the branches, a saw and a 1.75” forstner drill bit, my dad created dozens of candle holders.

These are rustic, beautiful and free. And, because they work in any season, they are so versatile!

12. Old picture frames

Old picture frames can be purchased for next to nothing at garage sales. For a unified look, paint them all one color. For an eclectic look, just mix and match. They can be layered, empty, on a mantel. Several of them can be grouped on a wall to create a statement. Use them empty, or frame photos, quotes or bits of lace.

https://i1.wp.com/www.kellyelko.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/staircase-gallery-wall1.jpg?resize=440%2C660&ssl=1

Gallery wall, Bless’er House

Decorating with Empty Thrift Store Picture Frames | www.andersonandgrant.com

From Anderson and Grant

13. Quilts and throws

Quilts and throws are, of course, practical. They cover our beds and keep us cozy while we watch our favorite shows on tv. They can also take up a lot of room. I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person who said they had more closet space than they knew what do with.

So rather than try to carve out a piece of that precious real estate, just put them on display. Drape them over a sofa, hang several from a old ladder in the corner of a room or stack them on the bottom shelf of a sofa table.

This might kill 2 birds with one stone: a great use for the beautiful antique ladder we found in our garage, and new towel rods to replace the awful ones in our upstairs bath...

From Pinterest

https://i0.wp.com/1.bp.blogspot.com/-cfrTplRCcmo/VMgcTq1UHOI/AAAAAAAANxI/d7iIvmFHz6I/s1600/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzdisplayingquilts3.jpg?resize=640%2C586

Photo from Ana White

14. Baskets

If you have baskets taking up space in a closet, why not pull them out and put them to use. If you don’t, second-hand and thrift stores always have them in abundance. I put them on top of armoires, hang them on walls, and keep my eggs and my bread in them. Tired and dated baskets can be given a clean, fresh look with a little spray paint. Stencil a number, design or initials on your baskets.

This shallow basket hangs on the wall of my dining room, but it’s not just decorative. It regularly gets pulled into use, usually when I’m entertaining. It makes an awesome vegetable basket!

When hosting large parties, this basket gets lined with a flour sack towel and is used to hold bread or rolls. Rather than find a place to store it when I’m not using it, I let it contribute to my decor.

15. Display your hobbies

If you’re a quilter, put your fabric stash on a bookcase or in a cabinet with glass or wire doors. A wooden box can hold paints and be put on display. If you don’t have a wooden box, an old drawer works great. Readers can display books.

We have horses, and though some might think it’s strange, we have halters hanging in the mudroom. If we need to catch a horse, they are quickly and easily assessible and they are a tangible reflection of our lifestyle.

Your decor doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to represent you, who you are and what you love.

This cabinet could just as easily hold a quilter’s fabric stash.                    From Creative Cain Cabin

The key to free or nearly free decorating, really, is to shop your own house before heading to the store. What do you have that can be relocated, re-imagined, re-used? Don’t forget to shop your yard. Branches, leaves, flowers can all be used to help create a beautiful decor. Be bold. Be creative. And most of all, have fun!

I’m off to see if I can silence the pesky broom.

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15 Free Ways to Decorate Your Home: Creating a Home You Love on a Budget – Part 2

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If you follow along on this blog you know that two weeks ago I shared the first 3 of 15 free or nearly free decorating ideas. I intended to write about the same topic last week, but Mother’s Day, and my daughter moving out took me in a different direction.

So, here we are again with more affordable decorating ideas.

4. Branches

Most of us have access to a tree or two from which we can harvest some branches. This is a wonderful, free way to add nature and texture to your interiors. Use them to fill vases, create a place to hang jewelry, fashion a natural headboard, make a piece of framed art, build a towel or coat rack, or make a lampshade.

Jewelry holder, Funky Junk Interiors

 

Twig lampshade, Shabby Creek Cottage

You can buy this at Amazon, or simply fill a jar or vase with branches from your yard.

Headboard. Found at JenLovesKev.

5. Dishes

Rather than keeping all of your dished behind closed doors, put them on display and let them contribute to your decor. This works really well when dishes are the same color, even if they aren’t the same pattern. Feel free to mix and match.

Grouping items increases the visual impact, so rather than place individual pieces around a room, group them. For example, if you have several pitchers of different sizes, group them together and put them on display.

White dishes on display. French Country Cottage

I love the white with wood. Dear Lillie Blog.

Here’s one from Martha Stewart with brown transferware.

The dark cabinet interior really sets off the white dishes. I love the juxtaposition of the rustic cabinet and baskets with silver plate, crystal and fancier dishes. Desire to Inspire.

Dishes don’t have to be white to display well. Image found on Pinterest.

Even chippy shelves work well for display and decorating with dishes. Found on Pinterest.

6. Towels

Towels make a great decorating item simply because we all have them. Roll them up in a basket, place them on a shelf or a chair, or hang tea towels to create a valance.

Tea towel valance. If you don’t have a curtain rod, just use push pins to attach it above the window. From Debbie Doos.

7. Food

Rather than hide your fruits and vegetables away in the fridge, place them in a bowl on the counter or in the center of the dining room table. Using a variety provides color and interest whereas a single food creates more drama. Just use whatever is in season, or items that your family will eat.  Lemons heaped in a white bowl are beautiful and fresh. Fall apples in a basket are warm and homey and they smell great too.

In American, we tend to refrigerate our eggs, but when I lived in Europe this was not the case. Eggs were found on a shelf, not in a refrigerator. Since then, my eggs are usually kept in a basket on my countertop. It frees up space in the fridge and adds a farmhouse touch to my kitchen.

Yes, I know there’s all kinds of concerns about salmonella and other nasty things. I can only say I have been doing this for many, many years and never experienced any illnesses.

From my kitchen

If you like the look, but worry about the safety, simply create your own display eggs. Make a small hole in both ends of an egg. Blowing in one end will push the contents out of the other end. The empty egg can be placed in a bowl or basket with others contributing to a farmhouse decor for just a few cents.

8. Dryer sheets

I don’t know what it is about closets, but have you ever notice how newly laundered sheets go into a closet smelling fresh and clean, but when you take them out they have that not quite musty, but certainly not pleasant smell?

You’ve probably had those times, like me, when you pull sheets out of the closet to make up the guest bed and they just don’t smell good. So the clean sheets quickly go into the washer and you hope you can get them clean and dry again before your guests arrive. I really hate that.

It happens with towels and clothes too. You can spend a small fortune buying scented drawer and shelf liners and while they are certain pretty, you never really see them. Many years ago I started using dryer sheets to keep my linens and clothes fresh. I just layer them among the fabrics. Fabric items come out smelling clean and fresh. When the dyers sheets start to lose their fragrance I simply change them out for new. It’s cheap and it works.

Come back next week for more free or nearly free decorating ideas. Happy decorating!

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5 Personal Observations About Kids Growing and Leaving

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The ticking of the wall clock slowly calls me from my sleep. I can feel the sun and hear the birds through the open window. I resist opening my eyes. Something deep in my consciousness shouts that I don’t want to face this day.

Before sleep can return my heart starts racing with feelings of impending doom and all hope of sleep slips away. Slowly, it penetrates my consciousness. This is The Last Day.

Less than two weeks ago, I was in Arizona for my son’s graduation. I smiled, and laughed and celebrated his accomplishments. He’d earned his MBA. I was proud of what he’d accomplished and proud of the man he’s become.

I was relishing the time with him, keenly aware of how rare and precious these times have become. Then my phone rang. It was the first indication that there was tremor in the force, that my world was about to be shaken. Again.

My daughter, Anna, full of excitement and energy declared that she’d decided to get an apartment. She was moving out, just days after I return. What?!? I’d only been gone three days and she was making decisions that would change my life.

I knew this was coming. Eventually. It was inevitable and ultimately good, but like a punch in the stomach it took my breath away and I struggled to stay calm.

Anna

We’ve talked about this day, but it was supposed to be that day in the future. Next year, when she’d graduated from college, then she would move. I’ve started purchasing things I thought she’d want when she sets up a home of her own. But I thought I had a year. A year to prepare myself, to figure out how to do this with something that resembles composure. This feels too soon.

Still, here we are. The Last Day. The year of preparation, vanished like the mirage that it was. As I write, she’s still in bed. Soon, she will rise and finish her packing. We’ll load my pick-up with the last of her things. For now, I let her sleep. Her last night at home, in her bed, under my roof. I don’t want it to end. So I tip toe around the house, careful not to make noise that would wake her.

When you talk about the pain of kids leaving home, some will look completely and utterly puzzled. They simply can not understand the sadness. Some celebrate. One couple dropped their last child at college, turned and gave each other high fives. They’d done it. Finished. They’d raised their children. No sadness. No nostalgia. Just joy at a job well done.

I wish I were more like that. I want to be better at this. I want to walk through it with poise, strength and grace. It’s really nothing remarkable, kids leaving home. It’s comes with the territory. Somehow, knowing this does not make it any easier for me.

So I grieve. Where I want poise, I feel panic. When I reach for strength I find weakness. Instead of grace, there are tears.

Perhaps, with time and distance, in a half a dozen years or so, when all of the kids have left and I’ve had time to adjust, to create a new life, a new home, I will have words of wisdom to share. Perhaps, when the loss isn’t so new and the pain so fresh I will have something different to write, something with which to comfort parents who, like me, are smack dab in the middle of this season of life. Perhaps.

But today, I grieve. And the vulnerability feels scary and feels too much like weakness.  I’d prefer to stuff it in a dark corner of my heart, shackled and gagged, silenced and forgotten. I’m more comfortable wearing a mask of strength than this raw, reality of grief.

I’d ignore it if I could, even though I know that only by forcing myself to acknowledge the grief, to look it square in the face and feel it can I know the personal growth that follows.

Someday I will analyze this process of letting go. Today however, I will content myself with making a few observations.

1. It hurts.

For many of us, when our kids leave home, we are filled with grief. Yes, we are proud of our kids. We  know this is inevitable, even right. Of course  we are happy for them. We see their excitement and enthusiasm and we want to rejoice with them. But the thing is, it hurts.

We know that the life we’ve spent decades building is slipping away. It’s changing. We will no longer share the silly little day to day things. We will no longer wash our faces and brush our teeth together as we get ready for bed at night. I won’t hear her car pull into the drive at the predictable times, or jump at the scream from the other room as she encounters a tiny spider. A thousand other simple, seemingly unimportant little things will change, things I used to take for granted.

It’s not that it won’t be good, but it will be different. Gradually, Anna became my friend. For twenty-one years she’s has lived under my roof and I will miss her fiercely. Tonight, when I go to bed and walk past her empty room, I will know a season has passed, never to return.

It hurts.

2. Comparing my sadness to other’s does not help.

I know mothers who have lost children, spouses who have lost wives, parents dealing with addictions and mental illness. I know my situation pales in comparison. I know this. In my head. But my heart, that’s a different story. Reminding myself that someone else’s pain is greater should lessen my mine, but somehow it doesn’t work that way.

3. Their presence lingers.

In her article on empty nests, Susan Bonifant put it like this:

“When the kids leave, they leave that behind – a feel and rhythm in the house that took years to evolve. The sting of empty nest is sharpest when that feel still exists after the activity from which it evolved is over.

Know that it isn’t just a change in what you do and who you see that will move you back to the center. It’s the new feel and rhythm that will grow around you.”

Hmmmm. It’s not something we can just get busy and fix. I’m not good at waiting. I’m a fixer, but this takes time.

It doesn’t happen overnight, nor once and for all. When the first, then the second left the nest, it took time for our family to evolve, to feel normal again, to find a new rhythm. This time is no different and remembering that brings me tremendous comfort.

4. I haven’t lost them. 

The relationships are different, but not lost. They are still my kids. I am still their mom. I can still love them, enjoy them and know them. Every once in a while they might even still need me.

Raising these kids is the single greatest joy, honor and challenge of my life. It utterly astounds me. These children were entrusted to me. Me!!  I was given the magnificent privilege of knowing them, of loving them, and that privilege remains. Love does not have an address.

5. I will be ok.

I’m still a couple of years away from an empty nest. Age has taught me that two years will come and go in the blink of an eye. Tonight I will go to bed keenly aware of the room sitting empty next to mine. One by one the others too will leave.  They will build their own lives and make their own marks on the world.  It will be hard. There will be tears, but I will be ok.

I won’t try to avoid the grieving process. I will allow myself to feel all of the feelings. When the silence becomes loud and oppressive, I’ll listen for the echos of the family that once was.

I’ll breathe deeply. I’ll count my blessings. I’ll reflect on the chapters of our life and family. I’ll rejoice in the family we still have, even though it’s different than it once was. I will find a new rhythm, a new feel and I will be ok. Better than ok.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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15 Free Ways to Decorate Your Home: Creating a Home You Love on a Budget

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She’s among the gentlest, sweetest young women you’d ever hope to meet. When she sings in church on Sunday, with a voice like an angel and her face radiant and glowing, I get the distinct feeling she’s sitting at the very feet of God.

Through the week, she patiently teaches little girls the art of ballet. It’s more than just plies and pirouettes. It’s instilling grace, discipline and confidence. She’s investing in those little girls, in the women they will someday become. She serves endlessly and loves selflessly.

When I noticed the email from her in my inbox, I smiled. I haven’t seen her in years and it was a joy to connect. She was asking for decorating advice. You see, though her heart is big, her budget isn’t.

Just an assortment of jars, some clippings from my yard and a piece of burlap.

A Starbucks Frappuccino jar serving as a vase and yard clippings.

When looking through Pinterest or browsing Pottery Barn, or even Hobby Lobby, it’s easy to believe that you need deep pockets in order to create a beautiful home. This simply isn’t true.

So, in honor of my sweet friend, over the next several posts, I’m going to share 15 free or nearly free decorating ideas

1. Jars:

I hate waste. Maybe it was the way I was raised. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent time in countries where poverty thrives like a cancer, choking out life and hope. Maybe it’s from trying to raise five little ones on a tight budget. Maybe it’s all of those things, but for whatever reason, I hate waste.

Image credit Jarful House. This is a fun centerpiece

Image credit  Jarful House. A jar, paint, a bracket and a piece of wood.

As a result, I often have a cabinet full of old jars of all shapes and sizes. Spaghetti sauce jars. Jelly jars. Tall skinny jars from Sun-dried tomatoes. Jars from an occasional bottled Starbucks Frappuccino. Short, fat jars from who-knows-what.

It turns out that jars make a great, free decorating accessory. Use them as vases, drinking glasses or storage. They are great containers for cotton balls, Q-tipps, and bobby pins. They can hold craft paint brushes, , pencils, make-up brushes and kitchen utensils. They can be painted, embellish with ribbon, burlap, lace and decoupage , and little things can be glued to them.

When using jars to decorate, try grouping several together to increase the visual impact. They can be the same, like in the beer bottles below, or you can mix and match. It doesn’t really matter.

Beer bottles!

2. Books

Books make great, versatile decorations. Old books can add age and character to a space. New books can be decorated with craft paper, burlap, wrapping paper or fabric.

Image credit Little Vintage Nest

Image credit Dot Com Women

If you want a unified look, create your own spine labels. For an eclectic look, simply mix books of all sizes, colors and ages.  Lay them on their sides and stack them. Prop a single book open or allow several to lean up against each other. Hang them on a wall for a clever wall display. They can even be used to create a fun, inexpensive shelf or a decorative box for holding treasures.

Image credit to Make and Do Crew

 

Here’s one from Fixer Upper

Image credit Nikki and Nicholas

3. Book pages

Most of us have more books lying around than we know what to do with, and if we’re honest, some of those books will never be opened again. Why not use the pages to create beautiful, free decor? Here are some ideas:

Book page Wreathes

Image credit Lace Crazy

Image credit Beehive Art Salon

Image credit Robin-Happy at Home

Book page Garlands

Image credit Tip Junkie

Image credit Love Embellished.

Book page Decoupage  – Glue shapes cut from book pages to jars, tins and boxes.

Image credit The Wicker House

Book page Basket of Eggs

This is such a fun and inexpensive idea. Simply decoupage book pages over plastic Easter eggs. These are displayed in a grape vine wreath, but you can get the same look with a bowl of twigs gathered from your yard.  Add stamps if desired.

Image credit Sew for Soul

Book page Wall Hanging

I love this! It’s simple, beautiful and again, versatile. Just choose your favorite quote.

Image credit Hogg Barn Antiques

Book page Lamp Shade

There are lots of options for covering old lamp shades with book pages. One of my favorite is using an illustrated book for a child’s room.

Image credit Amazing Goodwill

Book page Flowers

Simply beautiful. A bowl of flowers crafted from the pages of a book.

Image credit Love Embellished

Are you overwhelmed? Inspired?  Decorating doesn’t have to be expensive. Take a look around. What do you already have?  Are there other ways to use them, transform them or re-purpose them? Be creative. Be bold. And above all, have fun creating a home you love!

(Disclosure: While everything on this page can be created DYI, some of these images came from Etsy pages and the items are also available for purchase. )

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