Showing posts with label decorating for dollars. Show all posts

It cost more in money, time, blood, sweat and tears than ever expected but HERE it is (thank you, Spouse, for being such a good sport). (Let's do another one soon!)

I felt a vague sense of dissatisfaction when I opened my (one and only) box of 4th of July decor this year. (Compare this to my 4 Easter boxes, 12 Halloween boxes and 24 boxes of Christmas decor.) (Or don't, as I am sure you have far better things to do.) We almost always celebrate the 4th with family but this year we will be fending for ourselves. I realized that not only my decor was insufficient but all that fun stuff one uses to serve a festive meal was sadly lacking.

So is our budget.

I cudgeled my brain, pored over magazine photos (I especially love Victoria and Romantic Homes)and haunted the thrift stores for fetching, festive, frugal finds. I also came to a number of realizations, ones I am going to share with you. (Those of you who have already come to these conclusions can avert their eyes.)

If you hunt around your house for any and all things red, white or blue or that shouts "1776" or even old (or vintage) and gather them in one place, you have the makings for a very simple and free-free-free 4th of July decor. For example, the white and red baseball basking in the azure blue of the lobelia: add a cheapie flag (most likely already in your collection or 3 for $1 just about anywhere in the U.S. of A.) and it screams "July 4th". (I would have preferred a red croquet ball with white stripes but I didn't have one.)

You might already use a lot of red or white or blue in your everyday decor. Perhaps you once spent a great deal of time making crafty things out of fabric in just the right colors. Gather what you have in one place and you can make a very simple (and inexpensive) statement.

Check your garden for flowers that lend themselves to the color scheme.

If the simple look is one you're after, you needn't dye everything in a bath of red, white and blue. A touch here and there (along with a black piece that bespeaks Paul Revere) will do.

Don't fret if your red white or blue item is not American, or even English (it is the Mother Country, after all). This delightful cup and saucer says ooh la la Paris (as it was made and purchased in France, only, sadly, not by moi) but its dark blue and gold combined with the Colonial costumes (they call it "Georgian" in England--in France they call it ooh la la fashion of the past) (or so I assume) (never a safe thing to do) has Patriotic written all over it.

Check dollar stores and other discount party stores (don't forget thrift stores--last week I walked out of our local thrift store with a flag pillow in the shape of a star, a blue scarf covered with stars, a burlap flag that I made into a pillow and an Old Navy 4th of July kit full of rw&b crepe paper, stickers and other goodies, all for $4.32!) for items that will fit the theme. Star cookie cutters can be silver, plates can be plain white--they don't have to be fancy to look festive. Candy in the right colors are a fun way to decorate, too (if anyone finds red white and blue M&M's, pls.give me a holler!)

Think ahead and buy things on sale this year for next year. If you were really lucky, you did that last year and paid one cool buck for a $10 box of red white and blue paper lanterns (see above) WITH light cord which are now hanging in your yard. (Not that I'm bragging, or anything.)

However, nothing says Holiday like abundance. If you truly want to make a statement, the more, the better. Splurge and buy TWO packages of 3 flags for a dollar and wantonly display them all in one place. (Oh, the gluttony!)

When I pulled out my antique red and white china (Red Vista by Mason's) I realized that I could use my real silver forks, knives and spoons with it. I splurged and bought blue plastic cups at the dollar store (you might already have some) and filled a white classical looking vase with the fireworks we bought for the big night (though I use the term "fireworks" loosely. We are not allowed to have them in this neck of the woods so they are only dressed up versions of those New Year's champagne bottles filled with confetti and streamers). Decorating with food is also always a very good idea. Pictured is my gluten free yellow cake with strawberries, copious amounts of strawberry glaze and whipped cream. Yum!

One can never have too many pictures of Strawberry Shortcake, thus, therefore, and because . . .

When evening falls, one feels the need to be outside. Light up the darkness with more paper lanterns (plain white ones are cheapest and can be painted by the kiddios with water colors) which can be obtained much more cheaply than 3 for $10 if you shop ahead of time online. (You can use a string of white Christmas lights.) The one below is a Bethany Lowe design (I adore her stuff) that I bought at--are you ready?--the thrift store for next to nothing. Love it!

Bunting, like the one in the arch, is an absolute must and quite reasonably priced if you look hard enough.

My big splurge this year ($13) was fabric to slipcover my usual rose-strewn pillows in patriotic themes. It took less than an hour to make three pillow covers and I feel that they go a very long way towards making things festive in a Patriotic way. However you celebrate the 4th this year, I hope that it is fun, festive, yummy and safe!

Some of you have mentioned that you would like to stroll through my garden. Your admiration thrills me to the core but there can be no strolling in a garden that is a mere 400 square feet unless you take a little eyes-only promenade from the oh-so-remote distance of the adjacent window (same goes for the front yard minus about 200 square feet). The fact that 350 of those 400 square feet is cement, most of it pretty consistently pee’d and poo’d upon by the resident “bad-girl” princess-dog who is, as I write, sleeping off a particularly strenuous night of deeeeeep slumber, makes for an even shorter ramble.

Fortunately, I keep a number of plants in pots, a habit I acquired when our propensity to rent turned into a downright tradition. Most of my 13 rose bushes have been dragged from local to local (as we have an even deeper tradition of moving frequently) which is how, over the years, I have satisfied my thirst for roses at my fingertips.

However, we were so very lucky as to purchase our little cottage over three years ago, prompting me to plant many of my roses in the tiny squares of available dirt as well as to invest in (gasp!) perennials. Since I have long been an “annuals” (cheap, plentiful, frost-vulnerable, “I want it now”, floozies-of-the-garden blooms that give you instant results--sort of like “blue ruin” whiskey, but without the capacity to make you drunk) kind of gal, rather than a “perennials” (the more expensive flowers and plants one buys for the long run—responsible work horses of the garden that take time to develop and mature) lover, the pay-off of this trade-off (perennials for annuals, for those of you whom I confused) has been a very happy surprise.

To illustrate this point, I present a photo of my trellised arch as of August 2008.

See the tiny whitish-pink daisy plant at the base? (I no longer have the brain capacity to memorize the names of everything I plant but we waive that point. We do not press it. We look over it!) (Extra points to whomever can tell me from what play/movie/musical starring Kevin Kline that quote(ish) is from(ish).) See how sweet and petite it is? See, also, how my New Dawn climbing rose has only climbed as high as the height of the birdbath? Now take a gander of a photo of the same spot (different angle) I took in April of this year.

Little daisy plant is a huge daisy plant! My climbing rose has reached the top (and one month later is actually blooming!) Yeah. I know. It so rocks! The fact that, in my area, annuals such as sweet alyssum, lobelia, bacopa, snapdragons and nasturtiums just bounce right back in the spring, year after year after year, means that as the gardener of the household, I have pretty much planted myself out of a job.

In short, if you want to save on money in the garden as well as on fresh flowers to admire from within your four walls, perennials are the way to go, a lesson this floozy-lover took way too long to learn.

(warning: Not a real test---it's made up by me--in an attempt at humor--I'm poking fun at me and only me)

(choose all that apply)

One day, a day when you have been in denial about dusting and decide on the more pleasant task of organizing your adorable scrap booking supplies, you might be seated on the couch staring at the brown cover of the storage book you use for your multitudinous TV remotes because Angel (we miss you Andy Hallett!) is on and though you love Angel, it doesn’t really demand your constant attention as does Lost or 24 or Heroes, and it occurs to you that even though the lovely brown of your storage box (which is usually fairly empty since the TV remotes—one for the DVR, one for the VCR/Wii and one for the actual set) are hot property, it really doesn’t blend well with your chic n shabby décor.



You wonder how difficult it would be to grab a bottle of acrylic paint and just slap some on whilst watching Angel (if you’re a mom, you can always use those eyes you have in the back of your head as you walk into the craft storage area, i.e., kitchen drawer that really ought to be holding kitchen items but priorities, people, priorities!) and see how it all looks when it’s dry. You decide it wouldn’t be the least difficult and that you should go for it. If you do, you could end up with something like this.




Your inspiration for this “look” might be the now-totally-destroyed-but-once-was-a-lovely antique book made of white leather so many years ago that Brigham Young actually owned a copy of said same book.

At least it was displayed in the Beehive House when you were a kid though you could find no sign of it when you went through many years later as an adult—in fact, the whole place was so very different from your memory that you felt kind of lost and a bit betrayed but you came home and painted your bathroom the same color green as the living room and your bedroom the same color pink as one of the bedrooms in said Beehive House, anyway.

If you have lots of scrap booking materials that you dare not deign to use on your actual scrapbooks, you could use it to decorate a box like the one above. Or you could use a shoebox. Or one of those photo boxes. It doesn’t have to be chic n shabby either. It could be retro or a nursery themed box (or anything YOU like! What a concept!).

You could use your holiday scrap booking materials to make a Christmas, Halloween or Easter box. Just think, you could keep your TV remotes in holiday style ALL YEAR LONG. And all for the price of those scrapbook supplies you keep handy just in case you should ever use them in an actual scrapbook. Oh, the possibilities . . .

(My project was accomplished by using one of those faux storage book boxes that can be found on eBay or Ross or Target or TJ Maxx or Tuesday Morning, etc. for fairly cheap—about $5 for the size I made—5.5 X 8.25—I used numerous coats of “Daisy Cream” acrylic paint by DecoArt, a pretty rose themed waterslide decal left over from another project though stickers would work just as well—the Little Guy was SO impressed, he thought I hand painted the roses and that I was a great artist like Carly’s brother Spencer on I Carly—and some black rub on letters I have had in my possession for more than two decades. Literally. I bought them when I was 19. Woe is me.)

Tomorrow: the new cover art for the large print edition of Miss D out in May!