Spring and Summer Decor: Table Centerpiece

I recently found this cute little wagon (JUST the wagon) secondhand for a great price ($3, I think). I was wanting a table centerpiece for my spring and summer decor, which is mostly white.

It came to me with very old and tired sunflowers hot-glued all over it, as well as lots and lots of black electrical tape everywhere. I have no idea what was up with the electrical tape, since it's structurally sound without it. And while I love sunflowers, these were really tired-looking and just had to go. I pulled all of that off almost immediately.

Then I bought some flowers from Dollar Tree and redecorated it. I love how it turned out!

I used a total of four white rose bushes and two bushes of the flowers at the bottom (refer to my previous post about my knowledge of flowers - it's almost nonexistent).

 As a side note, if you think you can't make floral arrangements, I'd encourage you to watch some YouTube videos that use Dollar Tree stems. That's where I learned what I know, and I was surprised at how easy it can be.

For about $10 total (including the floral foam inside), I have a beautiful table centerpiece that would have been priced around $80 at Michaels. I love shopping secondhand and Dollar Tree stores!

Home Tour: Fall 2018

Today I thought I'd share my fall home decor before the season is over.

I mostly decorate seasonally in my living room and dining room. We'll start in the living room, since that's the first room you see when you walk in my front door.

This is an end table arrangement. The sign and mini pumpkins came from Dollar Tree this year.

I made the sunflower balls last year with Dollar Tree supplies. Last year, they hung on my porch. This year, I decided to bring them inside instead.

The glass vase/jar was a $1 yard sale find, the doily was a yard sale find ages ago, and the candle was from last year's fall clearance at Dollar General.

As a side note, I've been pretty happy with the throw of the three-wick Dollar General candles. The one-wick versions have been disappointing, but these candles smell amazing.

This is the other end table arrangement with a different Dollar Tree sign and a different yard sale doily underneath. The end tables are on either side of my sofa.

Next up is my coffee table arrangement. I made the "lantern" from Dollar Tree frames and some black foamboard (also from Dollar Tree). The top of it isn't as convincing as the bottom of it, so I'd leave it off if I were to make it again. But the loop of flowers helps to hide the worst of it.

I made the pumpkin jar (far right) last year for a ladies' meeting craft. After we did it, I found the idea on Pinterest, too. Apparently I wasn't the only one that thought of a pumpkin when I saw that jar!

My coasters are made to hold pictures (behind glass), but I prefer to swap out appropriately-colored scrapbook paper for the seasons.

The tassels came in a Michaels $4 grab bag a month or so ago. They were supposed to be summer-themed, but I thought they worked quite well with my fall decor.

Everything else was a yard sale find.

We have a bay window in the living room, and I like to put something pretty there. This was made entirely with yard sale finds. I added a few florals to the cornucopia, since it really needed more fullness. It's not perfect, but it works!

I'm pretty sure this crocheted runner is from my great-grandmother. If not, it looks exactly like hers (which I may have tucked away in my hope chest if this isn't hers). I tend to pick up crocheted doilies when I find them cheap at yard sales. I do crochet and love a good doily now and then, but old ones have a lot of character.

You've seen a tiny bit of my mantel already, but here's the full arrangement.

I did switch out the wreath, since I liked the colors of this one better with my arrangement. My daughter wanted a fall wreath for her bedroom door, so she got the one I originally had here. I made this wreath last year with two yard sale leaf swags attached to a wire wreath form (Dollar Tree) and three mini pumpkins from Dollar Tree.

I made the faux window frame from Dollar Tree mirrors. You can read more about it here.

I found the little truck framed print a few months ago at Dollar Tree and just had to have it. I really do like the "little red truck" items. There's something about the shape of the truck that I really like. Anyway, this was a way to bring it into my fall decor.

I made the pumpkin apothecary jars from old Home Interior candle jars and candlesticks (all yard sale finds - a whole box for $1). You can read more about those here. I filled them with miscellaneous jar filler that I picked up at Dollar Tree last year.

The candlesticks, crocheted runner, and swag were all yard sale finds. (Yes, there is a theme here. It's called, "I'm cheap frugal.")

I have a combination buffet/china cabinet next to our dining room table, and I've started to switch out the display seasonally. I've never owned a matching table and buffet before, so I'm enjoying this set. I know this wood stain and style are out of vogue. Most people would have painted it white and distressed it. However, I'm 41 and don't follow all the home decorating fads out there. I know what I like, and I keep it that way until I no longer like it. My home is about pleasing my family, not Pinterest.

Anyway ... The signs were all from Dollar Tree. They had some nice ones this year, but they sold out fast. I happened to be in the store when they unpacked these or I wouldn't have gotten them. They were gone when I went back a day or so later.

The lanterns were yard sale finds. One was $1 (on the left - flameless candle inside), one was $0.75 (on the right).

I have no idea where I got the pumpkins and sunflowers. I don't remember buying them, but they appeared with the rest of my fall decor when my husband and son brought my decorations down from the attic. One of us must have picked them up at a yard sale or thrift store last year. They're quite realistic, and I like them a lot.

Lastly, this is our dining table. In our previous house, I had a formal cherry dining table with intricate carving (a gift from our last church family). My kids were very young then, so I mostly protected it with a tablecloth. I wish now that I had enjoyed the look of the table and pulled the cloth off now and then. Oh well, it was pretty, even with a cloth on it.

Maybe that's why I've resisted adding a tablecloth to this table. I like the wood finish, and I like that the grain is decorative. I may add a runner at some point - maybe next year, if I can make or find one after the season is over this year.

My husband picked up these elegant placemats at the thrift store, along with a bunch of other nice ones that I'll be switching out seasonally. Up to this point, I've not been much of a placemat person. We rarely used them growing up. However, my sister-in-law really likes them, and I learned from her that they can add a lot to the look of a table, even when you're not eating.

I bought these gold chargers from Dollar Tree this year. They stay at the table to make it look a bit more polished between meals, and then we just add our regular dining plates on top of them at mealtime.

I don't remember where the big pumpkin in the middle came from. It was in the same bag as the other mystery fall decorations. However, I do know about the knitted white pumpkins because I made them. I thought I had posted about them on the blog, but apparently I didn't. If you knit, they're fast and easy. I used this free pattern from Ravelry and tweaked it just a bit after reading how others had modified theirs. You can read my notes on Ravelry here, if you'd like to make one yourself.

Well, that wraps up my fall decorations. I hope you enjoyed looking at them as much as I enjoyed creating them!

Dollar Tree Faux Windowpane and Wreath

Today I'm sharing more of my DIY fall decor.

I found a tutorial on YouTube for making this faux windowpane mirror. It uses frames from Dollar Tree glued together with E6000 and then glued onto the back of a piece of foamboard for stability. I changed it up just a bit by buying mirrors in a larger size and only using four of them.  That put my cost right at $5.

There are so many variations you could do on these mirrors. You could paint the frames, but black matched my decor. You could also buy a fancier frame and add the mirror panels into them (effectively doubling the cost), but I liked the simple black for this project.

I added a sawtooth hanger to the back (again with E6000 - hot glue won't work), and it was ready to hang on my wall after the glue cured.

The wreath is another Dollar Tree creation. It wasn't quite as inexpensive as my $3 Dollar Tree wreath, but it wasn't expensive as wreaths go, either. I bought a wire frame, six bunches of flowers, and one pack of small pumpkin clips (all from Dollar Tree) for this project. I used a metal sentiment sign from a pack I already had (3/pack from Dollar Tree). So this project cost me $8. If you needed to buy the sentiments, it would be $9.

There is no magical formula for arranging the flowers, but I like things to be methodical. I aimed for the equivalent of one bunch of flowers for each section of the wreath. It worked perfectly for me, but it really does depend on the fullness of your flowers. I tried to mix up some of the scrawnier ones with some of the fuller ones in each section.

To attach the sentiment, I simply wired it on with some floral wire I had on hand. It doesn't take much. You could probably use a bread tie on each side with the paper bits stripped off.

I really enjoyed making these! I hope they inspire you to look for inexpensive ways to make your house look prettier, too.

New Living Room Curtains

The curtains that were here when we moved in were very dated. They were also exactly the same throughout the house.



This isn't the living room window, but it was the same basic window treatment, just spanning a double window.

We are also working around someone else's furniture, which (in this case) is a couch from the 80's. Again, it wouldn't be my personal pick, but I'm working with it because it's cheaper than buying another couch and figuring out what to do with this one while we live here.

I said all that to say that I'm working on making do with the more expensive pieces that were here, while changing out less-expensive items (like curtains).

This is the couch I'm working with:



And this is a close-up of the print:



It's not stylish by any means, but it's comfortable and not falling apart. It's even a sleeper sofa, which will be nice if we have overnight guests (since we no longer have a dedicated guest room).

Honestly, brown is about as far from my favorite color as you can possibly get. So I'm playing up the other colors in the couch, hoping to balance that sea of dark brown with some blue.

Imagine my excitement to find these curtains at the thrift store for just $5!



They are the perfect color, and I adore this style (which may "date" me slightly). It brings welcome color relief to my living room, and I'm very grateful!

I have a few more things to do in the living room, but I'll try to remember to share pictures when I'm done.

I hope this helps someone else who is working with furniture that is less than your personal ideal. I'm a firm believer in being as happy as possible with one's current circumstances.

posted from Bloggeroid

Repainted Little Tikes Table

Well, here it is, folks - the repainted Little Tikes table and chairs to match my daughter's newly redecorated room.

I absolutely LOVE how it turned out. We all do.

Now, for those of you who have never used this paint (Krylon Fusion for Plastic Spray Paint) before and are curious, it is dry to the touch within one hour. That's when you do a second coat, if you want to. If you wait more than 24 hours, you have to wait an entire week before doing a second coat. We chose to do one coat thick enough to cover the old color completely. It wasn't too thick, though, because we didn't get any runs. (Well, with one tiny exception, but we're pretty sure that was because the paint can got tilted too far.)

According to the can, the color isn't completely chip-resistant for seven days, so our kids have been warned that this table and chairs are only decorative for the next seven days. After that, they're welcome to play with them and use them.

My kids listen well, so it works for us. They are also at an age when they're beginning to understand the concept of delayed gratification, so they can appreciate the need to wait. If your children fit neither of those descriptions, I would recommend that you put things you paint with this out of their reach for a week.

And in case you missed my last post, here's the cost breakdown:

2 cans of bonus-sized paint ($9.20 with tax) covered

• 4 table legs
• 2 pull-out drawers
• 2 chairs

It took the better part of  a day to do it all, but that's because we didn't have a large workspace and had to paint everything in batches. Given adequate space, you could be done with a project like this in as little as four hours from the start of painting to finished drying.

Repainting Mismatched Plastic Kids' Furniture

We're not done with my daughter's room yet. Revival ended on Sunday, and I was hoping to dive right into everything on Monday morning. Sickness decided to visit instead, and I've only been able to continue this morning.

However, all was not lost! As I started to feel well enough to sit up yesterday, I was able to browse online for organizational ideas that I knew I'd need for my son's room. I found some good ones, and I'll share those another time.

This morning I felt like I had slept for two whole days (which I almost had), and I had the energy to match it. What a great feeling! This was the day to repaint the Little Tikes plastic table and chairs for my daughter's room.

Of course, I first had to peel off the pesky stickers that "magically" appeared after I gave my kids some stickers awhile back and then left them to their own devices. Then I had to use a Magic Eraser (dollar store version) to get the writing off the parts that weren't going to be painted. Don't ask me why it seems logical to kids to write with pen on the top of a plastic toy table, but it seems to be a kid thing. I see it all the time on toys at the thrift store.

I wasn't able to get all the writing off with the Magic Eraser (dollar store version), but I was happily surprised that the rest of it disappeared after I washed it and let it sit for an hour or so in the bright sun.

I wish I had thought to take a picture before I disassembled it all and my husband started spray painting it, but this will have to do:

I don't know who at Little Tikes picked this blue color, but I haven't cared for it since we got it. I'm pretty sure it was given to us, though, so I really can't complain. However, I wasn't going to put this color back into my daughter's newly-redone room with a pink/red/white color scheme. Not in a million years.

So I found the Krylon Fusion for Plastic spray paint at my local Wal-Mart. I chose red and found two bonus cans with 25% more. It's a good thing, too, because it took both cans to do this project (not including the table top).

The last of the pieces are drying as I type this, so this picture will have to serve as the teaser for today:

This is a table leg before and after the painting.

In all, we painted four legs, two chairs and two drawers with two bonus-sized cans of spray paint. That means this repainting project cost $9.20 (with sales tax). I certainly couldn't buy a new table and chairs set for that price, so I was happy.

Organizing & Redecorating: What has been keeping me busy

My blog has been silent almost all month, but I've been getting a lot accomplished around my house. That's definitely a good thing, even though I don't always think to take pictures to share with you.

The most recent house project has been organizing and redecorating my daughter's room. Things had gotten completely out of hand in her room to the point that there was no way she could keep it clean. It had to be organized and  purged.

It took us an entire week to purge the toys she doesn't play with, doesn't want anymore, or just doesn't have room to store. I was surprised at how willing she was to part with some of her collections - you know, the "junk" collections all kids accumulate. I'm sure a lot of the motivation was a redecorated room.

At any rate, I'm finally done with the purging and organizing. The organizing itself taxed my organizational skills to the limit.

Now comes the fun part - redecorating!

You've probably guessed that I don't plan to throw thousands - or even hundreds - of dollars into redecorating. You might have also guessed that my daughter's room isn't huge, either. It's plenty big for a little girl, but it's nowhere near as big as the decorating magazines - and a lot of blogs - showcase. So you'll get to see some real-life, truly budget-friendly, realistic changes that can be made to a room when the bed takes up about a third of your floor space. Then stay tuned for my son's room - his bed takes up nearly half of his floor space! :)

I'll have to take some pictures next week because we're in revival this week and that means I'm entertaining the evangelist and his wife all week. (You probably won't hear from me again this week.)

But I thought I'd share a great idea I came across on Pinterest, in case you're in the mood to redecorate your kids' rooms.

This idea comes from Gluesticks - a bed canopy made from PVC pipe! She made hers for a toddler bed, but we're almost done with my daughter's, and hers is a twin bed. I'll try to remember to write all the details down and share it with you when I'm finished.

I think every girl has dreamed of a canopy bed at one point or another, and this is the least expensive way that I can think of to make it happen.

If you decide to try one yourself, make sure you check out this article about how to stain PVC pipe to look like wood. It's pure genius! And let me know how it turns out for you if you try it. We decided to go a different route.

Repurposing a spice rack

In the John Deere theme of things, here's another recent "recycling" project from my son's room:

I bought this spice rack at a thrift store for the little spice bottles, but I had no use for the spice rack itself. We were going to donate it back to the thrift store, but my husband got the idea to turn it into a showcase of sorts for the wall.

He took off the top slat from each shelf (so you can see the tractors better) and I used my mini Xyron machine to stick the John Deere logo to the middle top. We just used a few of my son's duplicate John Deere toys to make a cute wall display.

John Deere: Decorating with a calendar

I'll take a few posts' break from my cards and Cuttlebug and show you something we just did in my son's room ...

If you remember, we decorated it in John Deere since my son loves John Deere tractors. If you've ever noticed, anything with the John Deere name on it tends to be pricey, so we're always looking for ways to spice things up while being frugal.

We just completed a year, and that means there's last year's calendar to dispose of. BUT we paid good money (albeit a great price) for that John Deere calendar that hung in my son's room, and I couldn't bear to throw it away. I also had a mini calendar with the same images that I had picked up when they were on clearance last year.

So here's what we did with them:

I got the frame, complete with the mat, at the Salvation Army for $2 sometime last year. I set it aside, thinking I'd use it for another project. But those small calendar pages fit perfectly inside the matting and the frame matched the other frames that were already in his room, so I decided it was meant to be.

Here's the wall arrangement we came up with. My eye tells me it still needs something in those empty spaces, but my husband and I disagree on how "froofy" arrangements have to be. He liked it, so that's how it stayed. :) Here's a peek at those larger pictures:

The frames both measure 11x14" and are matted to 8x10", which is a perfect fit for most of the premium calendars that have been made from prints.

As I mentioned, these frames were already in my son's room with different pictures inside. I just replaced the old pictures and they were good to go.

Everything I used was something we already had on hand, so we paid nothing for this great John Deere wall arrangement. We figured it would cost at least $50 to buy equivalent pictures from the store. That's a bargain!

Craft Room Wall Art

I've had these wall stickers for awhile now and didn't know where to put them. But once I redid my craft room, I knew I wanted to put them on the walls.

I got them at Dollar Tree ($1 each) and I used two of them in my room.

The first one allowed some room for moving it around, so I carefully cut the pieces apart and arranged them on the countertop first. I highly recommend this since I would have overdone it if I had just gone by the drawing I made first!

Here it is on the wall, just above my fake window frame (an "old" Home Interiors purchase).

And here is the second one that didn't have a lot of rearranging possibilities, so I just did it as it was. I really, really like the arrangement!

I do have a few tips if you plan to use these (or similar) wall stickers.

• Most of the letters are individually cut, meaning you have to align them carefully. I recommend you measure carefully and draw a light pencil line on the wall to make sure you're getting them on straight.
• Take the stickers off the backing very carefully since it wouldn't be hard to rip one. (I didn't, but I'm pretty familiar with stickers, thanks to scrapbooking.)

One of the nicest things about these stickers is that they are removable so I don't have to worry about putting them on the walls in our parsonage.