Do you have a wall for a cross collection display in your home? I know many Christian women who do. I do too. However, I grew tired of looking at it because it was just that: a collection of crosses stuck to the wall. They almost seemed to float, so I decided that it was time to give it all a new look. A while back, my husband found a collection of old hymnals up for auction on eBay. He bought the lot of them for $9.00.

The room that my cross wall is in is also the room where we do our family devotions in the evening, so I had a thought: “Why not use some of those hymnals in a different way? Why not use the pages individually, since the hymnals are very old and falling apart at the binding anyway?” The pages and the hymnals themselves are fragile, and I thought this would be a great way to “preserve” them while making these rich treasures from the saints who have gone before us more accessible to the family.

My idea was simple: decoupage the hymnal pages onto a board, especially hymns with a title that had anything to do with the Cross. Then place a white frame around it and fasten one of my crosses to the decoupaged board, and hang this artwork within the collection of my crosses to give it the added “oomph” it needed.

Now whenever we look at our cross collection, we are not only reminded of the sacrifice that was made on our behalf, but we are also reminded to praise our Lord for it too. It has also brought to mind many hymns that we haven’t yet taught our children . . . and they enjoy that greatly!

Total cost for my little project:

Hymnals: $9.00

Decoupage paste $4.00

Ribbon (on hand) Free

4 frames $4.00

Scrap wood (on hand) Free

Total: $19.00

You can find the complete tutorial for this project in the August 2009 Money-Saving Digest. In each Digest, I feature a “Feather Your Nest” tutorial.

This post is linked to Metamorphosis Monday, It’s So Very Creative,  Craftastic Monday, Make Your Home Sing Monday, DIY Project Parade, Made By You Monday, Brag Monday, Motivate me Monday, Homemaker Monday

We don’t have many home furnishings and what we do have are locked in a storage unit hours away. I just don’t know when we’ll make the trek to Ohio to claim our things.

In the meantime, we’d invited friends to visit and we had to have a place for them to sit. I decided to visit a few thrift stores hoping to find a decent inexpensive couch that we could live with, but what I found amazed me!

At our first stop, my son discovered this:

An awesome Lazy Boy couch for only $75! I couldn’t believe our good fortune! The other couches were all priced more than double at $250! I didn’t waste anytime letting the attendant know that we’d be buying it.

I also found an adorable brown, green and pink pillow to match, thinking I’d grab a brown throw to tone down the color since my daughter was not a fan. So, when I walked into our home and saw the color of the walls, my first thought was that I’d be repainting, but on a return trip to the thrift store to actually pick up the couch, I found these pillows for $4 each. Could they be anymore perfect?

They match the couch and the wall and tie the two together perfectly!

I also found a few other items that I really adore, like this brand new chair for $75:

I plan to recover the cushions or purchase new ones.

I also found this brand new mirror for $20 and the wall stickies for $2, which I love since visiting the Statue of Liberty was one of our favorite trips.

Two sheer panels for the window- $4 each, new.

Rug for entry way- $6, new.

Rug placed in front of couch- $10, not sure if this one is going to stay in this room, but I love it and our puppy loves it. You’ll regularly catch him rolling all over it.

Second Mirror that is waiting for me to decide exactly where I want it to hang, only $25,  new.

Unique wood shaving wreath- $5, new. I’m also not 100% sure this will remain in this room, but like the rug, I really loved it.

Final cost so far, $234 for the furniture and accessories. I’m really pleased with how it’s all coming together, what do you think?

Not bad considering it all came from the thrift store, is it?

Tonya Prater and her family have been traveling full time while living in an RV. They are a Christian homeschoolers who have just recently settled back down into a home. She is sharing her thrifty finds as she sets up house and continues homeschooling her children. You can read about her past adventures, as well as her new ones at Live the Adventure.

This post is linked to Thrifty Thursday, Strut Your Stuff, Transformation Thursday, Things I Love Thursday

Here are a few fun links I found this week:

First, I found and fell in LOVE with The Mother Huddle blog. So many cute things here.

For instance, check out this apron (made with one yard of fabric!) with built in hotpads in the hem! Love that!

An then there’s this super-simple solution for turning baby rompers into shirts once they are outgrown. I honestly can’t believe I’d never thought of that before.

And if this frugal and easy solution for storing ribbons isn’t a keeper, I don’t know what is. I might actually head upstairs and do this today instead of continuing to wait to install the wall mounted version I have in my head (that I never actually get to). I could put this together in a matter of minutes!

FeelsLikeHomeBlog.com shares  10 Things to Cook in a Bundt Cake pan. Great ideas here, and truly creative! I’m definitely going to use some of these if I can remember.

Here’s wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

My friend Jennie purchased a 3 bedroom rental home and completely transformed the inside for only $3,000!

I wanted to show you this to let you know that if you are very frugal, you can completely make over your home with a small amount of money. And yes, $3,000 is not that small, but compared to the $10,000 and $20,000 renovations I have seen, this is a small amount!

What kind of renovation projects do you have going on?

I got this post from a reader who graciously allowed me to share it with you all. I think it’s a great idea. If any of you have pictures of way you’ve incorporated your vacation memories into your decor I’d love to see them as well!

Hi!

When my son and I created this wreath for our front door, I just knew I had to share it with Molly!  It was super cheap to do (I purchased the plain wreath for $6) and added seashells from our big trip to Florida.  It is a beautiful way for us to display the beautiful shells we found from a vacation that was so special to us.

I recently saw a similar item available in a catalog, and thought, “I can do that!”  I’m so glad we did.  Not only did we save money, but our home has been made warm and welcoming by a wreath made of shells that hold special memories.

It was super easy to make.  My son, Seth (who’s almost 12) and I simply put hot glue on the shells and then pressed them into the wreath.  There was no way to do it incorrectly – how great is that?  When we were done and the glue had hardened, I gently turned the wreath over and added more hot glue to secure the shells in the back.

The wreath is absolutely beautiful, more perfect than an I could have purchased - maybe because it means so much to us.

In His Love,
Kimberly Ehlers

“Vacation Decor” works for me! To see more Works for Me Wednesday tips visit Kristen at We Are That Family!

When you decorate with yard sale decor, patience is required. For instance, we really needed some kind of side table next to a chair in the living room, but I didn’t really want an traditional end table. I found a couple of old suitcases I had, put a tray on top and it served the purpose. Still, it was definitely a bit too low. That’s where the patience came in. We just lived with it this way.

Unfortunately, I’ve had minimal time to hit any yard sales this year. However, some neighbors were holding one just down the street and I decided to make a quick stop on my way to town. Yay! I found this.

It was kind of funny, because I just stuck it in the house until I had time to mess with it. Several family members asked who the suitcase was for. (I think they were worried it was for them!) lol

Now my end table is the perfect height. Not only that, I can store stuff inside! Good deal for $5.00, right?

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips visit Kristen at We Are That Family!

Just thought I’d share a fun way to make inexpensive but cute house numbers using a platter. I got this platter at the Dollar Store for……$1.  It’s blue/white and matches our house colors. We went forever without house numbers because I knew I wanted to do this but wanted it to be “just right”. I wanted to paint light blue numbers to match the platter and be, oh so pretty. Granted, that WILL look much better but I finally realized I’d better do something to help out the UPS man until I finally get around to my “big plans”. So I bought some of those cheap, rectangular stick-on house numbers at Walmart and then just cut around the numbers and stuck them on.

Doesn’t look as nice as painted blue ones, but the reality is, who knows when and if I’ll ever get to that. As it is, it’s still more creative than regular old numbers. Quick & easy, too!

And, as I’ve learned in my old age:

Not everything worth doing is worth doing well!!

Sometimes it’s best just to DO something. Come back later and fix it if you have time but don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress. Learn what needs to be perfect and what doesn’t!

Less than perfect works for me! To see more Works for Me Wednesday tips visit Kristen at We Are That Family. Also linking to Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest (check out her great skeleton key art!) and Someday Crafts.

We are experiencing gorgeous weather today, and I admit, it’s making me anxious for spring. If you’re getting antsy as well, you can at least set your computer to look like spring. HERE is my all time favorite desktop wallpaper sites. They have breathtaking scenery shots that are clean and simple. I linked you to the Spring pages, but browse around and see what else you might like.

My current choice is on page 8, but I change frequently, because it’s so difficult to pick just one.

I guess I’ll quit. I could just keep showing you gorgeous pictures! This has got to be the easiest, cheapest way to Spring Clean that there is!

To use a picture on your desktop, click the numbers by the little red arrow (1920 x 1200). You’ll then get the full size version. Right click and choose “set as desktop background.”

Enjoy!

This past weekend I spent some time reading The Complete Tightwad Gazette. I love this book! It is full of all kinds of great ideas for us frugal ladies and gents!

I came across this one article on page 93(for those of you who have the book), entitled “Interior Decorating for Tightwads”. How do you feel when you visit a home that is neat, orderly, inviting, and decorated lovingly? Sometimes when I visit a home like that, it kind of makes me feel guilty for all the things I should do in my own home, and then other times, it gives me new ideas to help spruce up my home. Amy (aka The Tightwad), offers some thoughts and I thought they were pretty pertinent to us for today. She says this:

Where we live has a marked effect on our sense of well-being. If we are happy in our home we have less need to leave it and spend money. As tightwads, how we feel about where we live is important. But we approach interior decorating in a unique manner–money is an object. Therefore we must resort to the strategies that yield the most improvement for the least money.

Here are her tips from the book:

• Housecleaning: Make a concentrated effort to eliminate the permanent pile of clutter, minimize eyesores, and put things away. Smaller places are harder to keep clean so the less stuff you have the better.
• Rearranging: Redecorate by putting old things in new places.  When you clean house and rearrange you can still keep the decorative items that please you, but try to group them and create a focal point. I did this with some old picture frames and an empty wall space. It freed up space on a counter and helped make the wall space more inviting and family oriented.
• Eclecticism: Why not mix furniture of all types? Who says everything has to match? Eclecticism is a great liberator. You can’t make a mistake as long as you choose things that you like. It doesn’t have to match or conform to someone else’s standard of tastefulness.
• The Potpourri Approach: A potpourri is a grouping of items that are similar but not identical. Do you have a variety of picture frames of various sizes? Paint them all the same color and hang them on the wall. Or do like I did and buy a set of mismatched that paired well together and created a nice focal point for my dining table.
• Do-It-Yourself: If you see something that needs work, like a chair that needs refinishing, or growing plants from seedlings, why not research how to do it and try it yourself? You can save a lot when you learn to see the potential of something that needs work. (my husband and I are doing this right now with a boat and a camper)
• Flexibility: Don’t try to cram all your interior designing into one weekend. Carefully choose things over time and as bargains come your way. For instance, my children have been using a set of bunkbeds that we purchased several years ago. When it was time for them to get their own room, instead of purchasing new beds, we just took those apart, used the ladder for a clubhouse outside and now they both have beds for their rooms. When the time comes for them to get a new bed, we can put the bunkbeds back together and sell them.
• Breaking with Convention: Just because an old tv has always been an old tv doesn’t mean it is ready to be thrown out. Take an old tv, remove the guts, and refinish it, add shelves and now you have a fabulous shelving unit for collectibles. The goal here is to break out of the box–don’t always think about what it was, think about what it can be.
• Stick with the Classics: Some of the most basic and least expensive things you can do is stick with basic colors when redecorating: black, white, wood color–anything that is natural looking. If you look through magazines, you will see most of the walls in cute country homes are painted white with lovely accents.
• Think: Look around your home and ask yourself, “What is it about my home that bothers me?” Try cleaning, rearranging, and a fresh coat of paint and see if that helps!

I think I just might use these tips today and rearrange my living room! What about you?

Running low on gift tags? Download some cute, free ones from Hobby Farms Magazine.

Another special gift tag or ornament idea–I have some old sheet music and I hope I find time to make some of these sweet birds from Little Birdie Secrets. I made a little flock of bright colored felt birds like this earlier in the year. Love them.

The wrapping IS the gift…Check out this gorgeous idea. For not much more (or maybe even less) than a paper gift bag you can easily make one of these beautiful monogrammed totebags that I spotted at My Quarter Life Crisis. I WILL be making at least one of these in the next few days . . . maybe even more!

Need a low-cost, tasty gift for neighbors, students, classmates . . . any kind of group? Check out this Snowman Soup idea from Design Dazzle complete with a printable tag template. One stop “shopping” for a really cute gift idea that won’t break the budget.

This next idea might have to wait until next year. Stock up on drastically reduced Christmas fabric after the holidays and sew easy, reusable gift bags for next-to-nothing. Instructions can be found at Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op.

Tonight I’ll be stopping by Super Walmart to pick up a couple of potted herb plants from the produce department. I’ll be wrapping the pots in a brown paper bag tied with jute string . . . and these will be gifts for a couple of friends. I’m sure they’ll enjoy clipping fresh basil, rosemary, and oregano for their holiday cooking and beyond. Cute and cheap!

Finally–if you feel like some eye candy when you have a little downtime, check out Nester’s 2009 Christmas Tour of Homes. More than 1000 (yes, that’s one thousand) of her readers have linked up to post pictures of their holiday decorations. Fun stuff–inspiring too–a virtual tour of real life homes.

Question: Time is getting short for shopping, crafting, decorating for the holidays. What last minute projects or questions can I help you with? Need a recipe, gift idea, or something else? Email Editor@Econobusters.com and I’ll try to get you the answers you can use and post them here.