(Our first park day of the year with our homeschooling group was a trip to the lake – my kids first trip to the lake ever.)

Wordless Wednesday hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom

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You may not believe this given the state of my sad, tired, country-fied floral arrangement I showed you last week, but I actually do have some strict floral rules I try to adhere to – really.

Rules for Floral Engagement

1. The flowers have to look like their real counterparts – imperfect petals, some browns in the leaves. Real flowers aren’t cookie cutter and identical so artificial ones shouldn’t be either.
2. Avoid flowers commonly found in funeral arrangements – unless you want your home to look like a funeral parlor, in which case, go for it.
3. Adjust the size of the floral arrangement for the space. Bigger is better – but only in bigger spaces.
4. Let the arrangement fit your personality!
5. Wash/Dust the flowers when they get dirty and replace them when they get old and lose their shape/petals/leaves/etc.
6. Balance them out with real plant life – don’t let your home become overrun with the fake stuff!
7. Don’t spend a lot of money on them! I shop on clearance a lot. I can’t really justify spending a lot of money on something that sits on a shelf and never has a use or purpose. At least the real plants put out real oxygen. Even then I shop inexpensively.

So it goes without saying that the tired, country-fied floral arrangement on my piano was breaking almost all of those rules and needed to be replaced. I decided last week to start keeping an eye out for yard sales to see what I could find.

I had no idea that while taking my daughter to Wal-Mart to get a birthday present, I’d find this $20 grass arrangement on clearance for FIVE DOLLARS. With that, my brass vase from before, pruning down to the magnolias only and my yellow betta fish, I’ve got a completely different look. A cleaner, sleeker, more visually appealing and NOT country look.

I may still paint or cover the brown grass base , or perhaps tuck it inside of another container, but I’ll have to keep my open for some cheap yard sale finds for that. I’d also like to find something more creative and visually appealing for my betta fish besides that standard glass vase – ditto about the yard sale find there, too. In the meantime, this was a really quick and easy $5 fix to breathe new life into an old space.

I love tackles like this! I get to decorate. I get to do it cheaply. I get to enjoy looking at the new results. It’s a win-win.

Tackle It Tuesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom!

I think decorating the home is some kind of primal urge built deep into my cell structure. Not that I want to over-decorate or spend tons of money on new furniture, but I do want to make the home a nice and inviting place for my friends and family. I just don’t have a lot of time, tools and resources at my disposal. Who does, right?

So lately I’ve been seeking inexpensive ways I can make little changes to make our house more homey. Last week’s project was to tackle some inexpensive wall decor that I’d been noodling around in my head for a while.

The first thing you need are some inexpensive picture frames – I got five at the Dollar General for a dollar each – and some pretty ribbon – I got a spool of 24 yards for around $3.50 (but I only used about 7 yds.) The second thing you need is something to frame – I printed 5 letters in a pretty font that I liked.

The next thing I did, COULD have worked, but it didn’t turn out as I planned. You can learn from my mistake and do it right the first time. I used the papers that came in the frames as a guide for cutting my papers. My mistake was that I didn’t account for how much of the paper insert was covered by the frame. I used one at it’s original size, one trimmed about 1/4 inch smaller and one trimmed about 1/2 inch smaller. As a result, you can’t even see the outer white trim you SHOULD see. Next time I will remove the glass from one of the frames and mark what is visible on the paper insert and go from there.

After using the papers as my guides, I had 5 stacks of letters, 5 stacks of slightly larger black paper and 5 stacks of slightly larger white paper. You know what I did next? I taped them. Yup – I’m real fancy like that. Using “loops” of scotch tape, I centered them each and taped them together for framing.

After framing them (and getting disappointed that I didn’t measure right but not wanting to RE-DO it… I measured and cut my ribbon into approximately 4 ft strips. I looped the ribbon through the hanger on the back of the picture frame and then alternated the way that I tied the bows.

When it was all said and done, I had this:

It’s not perfect, but who cares? It makes me happy. It makes me smile. And it was really cheap. Uh, I mean, frugal. =P Not only that, but I can change it out when the papers start to fade. I make it say different things or I can hang black and white baby pictures of each family member or I can make silhouettes – the possibilities are endless.

Now all I need to do is change out the flower arrangement for something a little less… country.

Tackle it Tuesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom.

{P.S. – I apologize for the picture quality! Hubs had our camera so I used our daughter’s inexpensive one. The first two were overexposed and the white was TOO white – hence the sepia tones.}

Sponsored link: Home Decorating Made Easy

Last week and the week before that, we tackled the girls’ bed situation. I say “Situation” becuause, well, it WAS. I was tired of them playing on the bunkbed like it was a jungle gym, drawing their legs up and swinging on the bars under the top bunk like monkey bars. I was fed up with them grabbing hold of the safety rail and hanging on it, or sitting on it, and bending the screws so that the support rail didn’t stand up straight anymore. Oh, I tried to handle it, believe me – but no amount of training and consequences would correct their hyper-active ways.

So I did what a mother at her wits end does – I got rid of the bunkbed. I don’t have to worry about their saftey (in regards to that bunkbed) anymore.

No, instead I turned to Craigslist (doncha loveit?) and found a twin bed for Princess in excellent condition for only a hundred dollars and I bought a pull out twin bed/loveseat from for Drama Queen from a friend for only $30. Frugal furnishings. Gotta love it.

With the two new additions, we took their room from this (click for bigger):

That little piece of floor you see in the third picture was all they had. The toybox and bed was immediately to the left of the door, and there was just a tiny walk space between the bed and white dresser/bookcase.

To this:

Ok, sure, Drama Queen’s bed takes up a little more space when it’s open:

But, hey! Drama Queen can open it and close it all by herself. And look how much space they have now!

They’re room (still small) seems a smidge LESS small now.

Princess’ bed is a dark brown wood with 3 drawers underneath and bookcase type headboard. Drama Queen’s is a white loveseat that pulls out into a twin bed at night and gives them seating during the day. The best part is… they can’t SWING on these beds! And sure, they can jump off of them and fall and say,… BRUISE THEIR RIBS.. *ahem*… but they can’t fall as far, right? Ah well, you win some, you lose some.

Tackle It Tuesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom!!

Our big tackle for this week was de-cluttering and weeding the bookshelves, which had once again attained “quite horrendous!” status. We needed to rearrange a little to make room for the Christmas tree – and you need to clear big heavy bookcases before moving them anyway – so I finally reached a point where I didn’t have a choice but to do anything about it.

Oh, I suppose I COULD have just shoved it all back on there.

But I didn’t.

See before:

Actually, that was AFTER I’d already begun cleaning if off. I’d already cleared most of the clutter from in front of the books when I thought: “Wait a minute! A before picture!” See that bottom shelf? They all looked like that – at least. Oh well.

I purged some trash, several books that I don’t intend to keep anymore, several books to store away and a good many books to move out to my husband’s office.

See the purge pile:

And let’s not forget the large quantity of magazines I found – most of which I guarantee haven’t even been thumbed through!

Now, see the after (moved to the other wall in the same corner):

Wow, what a difference. (Trust me, I saw the REAL before picture. It’s a BIG difference!) I was hunting for room to put books before, but now I’ve got TONS of available space. Not that I need to buy any new books soon. That middle shelf?? I still need to read about 95% of those.

That’s right.

Tackle it Tuesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom.

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