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10 Cost Saving Ideas to decorate on a budget

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Wouldn’t it be lovely if we had as much money as necessary to decorate our homes any way we’d like? Unfortunately, for most of us, we have to scrimp and save for the furniture that we really want in order to make our homes feel comfortable and inviting.

While you’re waiting to win the lottery or for a designer friend to find you some cast of bargains there are a few things you can do on your own – inexpensively – to make your home beautiful.

1. Use a few splashes of bold color in your decor. Now I don’t mean go nuts and paint your whole room red and only have red furnishings. No … I’m suggesting that if you’re current decor is basically earth tones, perhaps white or beige carpeting and white or cream walls and beige or light brown colored furniture then a splash of bright bold color would brighten that room right up.   It’s as easy as simple painting one accent wall a bright color, or adding a large colorful painting or print to the room.  You could even buy a colorful throw rug or area rug to the room.  It will make a difference.

2.  You can make or buy textured or colorful throw pillows for the room that you are decorating.  Pillows of different shapes, sizes, colors and textures can add to a rooms look and feel.

3.  If your furniture is a worn and you can’t afford to replace it at this time you might look into purchasing slip covers to give your couch or chair a new look or to cover both pieces to unify their look.  There are some very cool slipcovers out there these days. You can really change the look of your furniture.

4.  If you want to give the room a touch of romance or a softer look adding a few well placed candles is a budget worthy idea.  If you enjoy scented candles you might use one or two in the room.

5.  There’s nothing wrong with going out to yard or garage sales to do a little shopping. You can find some lovely lamps, light fixtures, side tables, coffee tables and other furnishings. Sure sometimes you might have to clean them up, sand or paint them but it’s worth the work.

6. Just cleaning up a room can make a huge difference! You might decide that it doesn’t need a change in decor once you clean and organize the clutter if it was really bad.  Perhaps purchase some wicker baskets or hideaway storage boxes for your nick nacks and mementos.

7.  One thing that I enjoy doing when I’m bored with the look of a room is to simply rearrange the furniture. It’s amazing how moving a bed or a chair from one side or a room to another can make a room feel so different.

8.  If the room you are redecorating has a TV perhaps think about putting the TV in a cabinet so that it’s not the first thing everyone sees when they walk into the room.  TV’s seem to become the highlight of the room that they are in and frankly they aren’t all that pretty, are they. Find ways to minimize their impact on the room they are in if possible.

9. If you’re feeling creative you might try a new painting technique or applying a wall covering to either all of the walls of the room or as I stated above just one accent wall in the room.  There are many different types of painting techniques that you can try. There are even some interesting plastering techniques such as Venetian plaster which makes an interesting feature wall.

10.  If the room is dark or if you have dark curtains or drapery by all means open it up and let the light in. Your room will feel larger when you open things up.  Now if you don’t like bare windows try sheer curtains, they will allow quite a bit of light in and still give you that nice open feeling.






A Kitchen Garden For Decoration And Utility

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A kitchen garden has a charm all its own. There really is nothing to beat the look and taste of fruit and vegetables that you’ve grown yourself. If you add a few decorative herbs to the mix, there’s absolutely no reason why your kitchen garden can’t look as good visually as your flower garden.

It’s a fact that fruit, vegetables and herbs are very rewarding to grow. There’s an extra special flavor to produce you’ve grown yourself.

But be warned, a kitchen garden is going to be very labor-intensive. If you’re not into hard, manual work in your garden, a kitchen garden may not be for you. The only way you’re going to get bumper crops of the fruit, vegetables and herbs that you grow is by lavishing tender loving care and attention on them.

Starting your growing early can produce a bountiful crop weeks ahead of its normal time, giving you a home-grown harvest at a time when those fruits and vegetables are particularly expensive in the shops.

You can make your kitchen garden as visually attractive as possible by careful planning. If space is at a premium you can choose some of the more decorative vegetables and herbs and plant them in your flower beds.

Ideally you need to choose a sunny site in your garden for most herbs and vegetables to do well. If you are growing fruit trees, you should ensure that they do not cast a shadow over the vegetables and herbs.

Remember that although most herbs are leafy and lacking flowers, they will provide greenery in your garden, even in the winter. Just exercise a little thought as to where to place them and think in terms of what your garden will look like in each of the seasons and factor this into your planning.

Most herbs will do very well when planted in containers, so they are an excellent option even if you don’t have much space in your garden. Tall herbs can be planted at the back of a traditional flower garden and low-growing herbs make excellent flower garden borders.

The normal method of growing vegetables is in regimented rows. If they are kept properly weeded, this can still look good. Again, if you don’t have much space, you can still grow a large range of vegetables in containers e.g. peas and potatoes. Some vegetables are even attractive enough to be planted amongst the flowers – but remember that you are going to have gaps once the vegetables are harvested.

You may be surprised to learn that there’s a large range of fruit that you can grow even if you don’t have several acres worth of orchard plot. Small apple trees can grow in pots on the patio, you can grow strawberries in containers and there are even certain varieties of cordon-trained apples and pears that can be grown against a garden fence.

Nearly all fruit trees prefer a sunny site. You will certainly suffer from poor crops if you allow frost to damage the blossom on apple and pear trees. Pears are particularly vulnerable because they tend to flower earlier than apple trees.

If you don’t have space in abundance but still want to try your hand at fruit growing then you should look at planting trained fruit trees such as espaliers, cordons and fans against a fence or wall. They can look very decorative and take up very little room.

With a modicum of planning, thought and imagination there really is no reason at all why you can’t have the joy of growing and harvesting food for your own kitchen table in your own kitchen garden, no matter how small the plot.
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Trying to have a relaxing weekend

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I was planning on just relaxing this weekend because this past week was extremely busy. We’ve been renovating our living room dining room all this past week, plus I had a few big appointments that made the week stressful. So … I’m due for a relaxing weekend.

So far my weekend hasn’t been all that tranquil. I tried going shopping earlier today and one of the stores that I needed to go to was also having renovations done. They were getting new shelving put in so they were closed … pharmacy shelving from mfried.com it looked like. I guess I’ll have to go and pick up my prescriptions next week instead. I wish I’d known they were closed before I drove all the way out there.

Sunday is definitely going to be a relaxing day. How is your weekend going?

Finishing our renovations

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We’ve been in renovation mode for a couple of months here at our house. It’s a been quite a while since my husband and I were renovating our home non stop like this. Back when we first bought our house in 2001 we did a lot of renovation – everything from knocking down walls to refinishing floors to painting and doing all kinds of repairs.

Then after about two years of constant renovations I got sick and we just stopped. We weren’t done renovating, not by a long shot, but we stopped … for about three years, then we started again for a few months and then stopped again until just a few months ago.

Now we’re just trying to finish up all the renovations that we started in the past. Finally get the house looking good. We have most of the supplies that we need. I think we just need a little more paint and maybe we might need to buy welding supplies for when we do the upstairs bathroom but otherwise we have everything we need stored in our basement.

I can’t wait until our renovations are done. I’ve literally been waiting 11 years to see how everything is going to turn out.

Getting the patio ready for summer

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It’s been raining the last couple of days but if the weather clears up tomorrow I want to get out my patio furniture and start putting it together and setting up my patio for summer. We’ve had some warm weather in the last two weeks or so, so I’m behind in getting my patio ready for summer.

I also found this great site to order some lights for my patio umbrella. They are brown wire christmas lights and they’ll blend into the color of the umbrella very nicely so you’ll only see the lights when they are turned on. I think that will work fantastically! I have to order some.

Do you have your patio or backyard ready for summer?

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