Decorating on a Budget

I love to decorate.
Some might call it an odd sort of sickness.
My house changes a lot, and I'm thankful for a dear husband who puts up with it and enjoys it (Except for when I move something and he can't find it. Sorry!).
First, I want to say that I'm not trying to brag, just show you some of my favorite projects that I've made for pennies. It's so much fun and I love that I look around my home and see things I've put time and enjoyment into!
I also felt like when we moved in I kind of put things up, and made the house look nice, and now I'm taking the time to room-by-room personalize our home.
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Okay, so first the bird. He was supposed to be a throw pillow but I made it much too small.
I had put enough time into printing a template, tracing, cutting, and gluing that silly bird that I wasn't about to waste it!
I was given a frame that I spray painted grey, and cut the bird out to fit. I love it!
Another thing I've found is to print favorite quotes or sayings, or design a cute wall art so I'm not always replacing photos, which are more expensive to print.
To demonstrate, I put "LOVE IS PATIENT" in the left side frame, and "LOVE IS KIND" in the right side frame. I thought it went well with family photos. :)
I've also spray painted 75% of the frames on this wall. As you can see, I do love having photos up, and I'm willing to pay to replace them every so often. :)

*Therein lies another question: with all I spray paint, don't I spend a small fortune? The answer is this: I buy a lot of my paint on sale, or with rebates, and the total cost per frame or object painted is literally pennies. FAR less than buying new art or frames.*

Here is my newest piece:
(Again, an idea I loved and then designed my own and printed.)
It's my new favorite. :)

Inspiration source.

Another example: my bathroom wall.
Quotes are printed and framed in thrift store frames. The lighthouse print came from a church Christmas party gift exchange. The clock was $4 at Walmart.

Inspiration source.

This one was a free printable. I love the creativity shared and offered for free! It's so cute, and also in my bathroom. There are many sites and blogs that offer free, cute artwork.

Finally, the girls' room.
Birdcage from a garage sale, painted white.

[Paint used on the frames and dresser was free, and the subway art I designed and printed. Only cost was photo mats, $2.]

Here's a quick before:

The pinwheel art may change, but it's kind of cute and I like it. :)

The dresser is my new favorite. I'm changing out the purple for more robin's egg blue and pink.
So, here's a before:

And after:

I love it! The dresser was given to us when we moved in, and both the light blue and bright blue paints were given to us as well. So the only cost here was the drawer pulls. They came from Target, and I don't remember how much.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the fun projects going on here, and I hope you've been inspired to make your own decor, personalized to what you love!
Have a lovely day, and Happy Autumn!

Autumn Chill

The cooler weather is no match for my fearless girl!
I make sure she will be warm, and she creates the fun.

She was calling her gloves, "hands".
Then when she would pull them off she would say, "take the clothes off".
So I said, "Dear Ava, let's say gloves. Taking the gloves off."
She grinned impishly, but acquiesced and calls them gloves, which causes a bit less public confusion.

Peekaboo & Pink Jammies

Lucy enjoys looking at books.
When I prop up a particularly large book, it turns into a rowdy game of peekaboo!

As for my almost 2-year-old...
She wanted to take her football to bed last night.
I also heard daddy singing her to sleep with the Husker fight song. (Nice, hon!)

I like to call this next segment, "How We Get Ava Up in the Morning."

She's her mother's daughter.
I like to "be cozy" too.

A Pink Sweater

I realized that both girls have worn this outfit at 4 months. I had to take a picture and loved seeing them together!

Ava:

Lucy:


After taking Lucy's picture, Ava wanted hers taken. However, her ornery self showed up and this is what happened:

(That last one was Lucy getting tired.)
Ha! I love real life. :)

For the Girls' Room

I picked these up at a garage sale back in July:Cute, but the style wasn't quite what I wanted for the girls' room.
However, I have achieved the picture in my head!

Newly improved, we have some wall hooks that are cute and functional!
After:

The wall shelf received a few coats of white paint after a good cleaning (I used some Krylon at first, but it didn't cover as well as I'd hoped. The final coat was a simple white by Rustoleum.) The pegs just screwed on, so it was easy to remove them and replace with some brushed nickel knobs from Menards. The bolts were a bit long, but that was remedied using some bolt cutters.
The stars were also going to be white, but I thought the pink was much cuter. (Sweet Pea by Rustoleum. I really like Rustoleum, can you tell?!)

Cranberry Gloss

I think our house is really cute! However, the shutters had faded, the mailbox was a bit blase, and it was time to fix them!

Before:

(Enter Rustoleum 2X spray paint in Cranberry Gloss. This is strictly a personal recommendation for this paint.)
After:

I like!
We got the paint on sale at Menards, so we only spent $10 on the paint (about 4 cans) and it looks great! Hopefully it will wear well.

Four Month Match-Up

Ava
Lucy

"Ducks" all in a Row

Sister Photo Shoot

All photos Copyright Megan Sloter