Fresh, Frugal Ideas! Here are some great ideas for bringing the freshness of spring into your home.
Sponge paint your walls, or a key piece of furniture. Blues, greens, pinks, and yellows in pastel shades refresh a room, and the softness of sponging gives an “impressionistic” appeal.
Take clippings from outdoor ivy, and root in water for FREE houseplants. Buy inexpensive shade annuals and pot them up for indoors- fuchsias, impatiens, begonias, and primroses are wonderful for bringing in color, and deal well with the lower light indoors.
Dress up candles as natural works of art instead of putting them away for the warm months. Use a glue gun to attach organic materials such as dried twigs, flowers, cinnamon sticks, worn out potpourri, pressed leaves, coffee beans…use what you have! Or, tie on raffia or ribbon and group candles on a shelf, tabletop, or on a mirror.
Paint inexpensive houseplant pots to give your room designer touches. Sponge paint over clay pots, or use a stencil or simple pattern to give interest. This technique can also be used on your outdoor pots. Hint: for a more elegant look, try using the new metallic craft paints over clay pots. Simply sponging on some metallic paint (try combing them) can look extremely upscale.
Got an old wooden stepladder? Use it as a great plant stand to bring the green indoors. You can paint it or leave it rustic and weathered, depending on the style of your room. Full size wooden ladders can look great on the patio.
Add spring detail to your window treatments by using small grapevine wreaths as tiebacks or swag holders. You can add more interest by gluing on a small bunch of dried flowers. This is a great way to reuse flowers from a damaged arrangement, or leftovers from another project.
Buy artificial plant vines at the craft store, and drape them over the tops of your window treatments, or wrap them around a floor lamp. Watch the craft stores carefully, and you can usually catch them on sale for just a couple of bucks.
Cover cardboard boxes with fresh floral fabric, and stack on a table like hatboxes. If you utilize scraps from another project, you will have creative, decorative storage, virtually free!
Give your kitchen a garden window by installing cheap shelving across the inside frame. This can be nothing more than a small wooden block nailed into the frame on each side, and a simple board resting on top of them. Fill this with plants and cuttings, and you will have big impact. Bonus; the plants will thrive I the bright light, and moisture of the kitchen. Caution: Do not do this in a south facing window…the direct sun is just too much for most houseplant.
Paint small paper mache bird houses and hang them from your curtain rod, or the bottom of a shelf or cabinet. I found them at my craft store for 50 cents, or you could easily make them from small cardboard containers and paper mache paste.
Use those beautiful pictures from your garden catalogs to frame into botanical prints, who will know!
Use gold spray paint left over from the holidays to transform small clay pots and saucers into coasters and silverware caddies. They stack well, too, and best of all, they’re cheap!
Make and herb drying rack for your kitchen by nailing small wire brads into cheap lathing strip, or better yet, an aged piece of wood you might find, even driftwood! You can make and hang just one, or several together to make a large wall arrangement. You can gather flowers, herbs, even grasses to dry directly on the rack from your own yard. I recommend using a rubber band to secure them, as plant material shrinks when it dries. You can cover the rubber band with ribbon or raffia if you wish.
Save those clear bottles and fill with colored water for a bright accent in a window. Use your glue gun to dress up the bottle caps with organic odds and ends…beans, lentils, dried flowers, you get the idea.
Never underestimate how much impact a small container of fresh flowers can have in a room, even just a pretty cup full of roadside daisies!
A couple of packets of seeds can keep a house in cut bouquets all summer. Sunflower, cosmos, and zinnias are VERY easy to grow, and are great in arrangements.
Replace heavy window treatments with a simple drape of gauzy fabric. This type of material is very inexpensive at the fabric store, or keep your eye out for tablecloths that can be pressed into service.(Watch those garage sales!)
Need more ideas for warm weather windows? Simply hang cloth napkins or placemats over the rod. Experiment with overlapping, laying them on the diagonal, or tying them with ribbon. Cherry valance that ties right in with your kitchen or dining area!
Make easy, virtually free ivy topiaries. Pot up your ivy cuttings (straight from the yard, or a neighbors) then form a wire coat hanger into your desire shape. You may need pliers to help you with this. Insert the hooked end into the pot, and secure by pushing sticks, or bamboo skewers into the soil on either side of the wire. Secure the wire to the skewers with twisty ties, then cut the skewers of level with the wire. Wrap the ivy around the wire from the base upwards, and continue to tuck and wrap as it grows. Very soon the ivy will completely cover the wire, and you’ll never know it was a free coat hanger, instead of a 20 dollar topiary form!
How To Plan For Kitchen
Remodeling
by: Johnathan Bakers
Kitchen remodeling is one of the most desirable home improvement
projects for many homeowners. A new kitchen increases the value of your
home and makes your life easier. The first step to your new kitchen is to
set a budget. Decide how much money you are willing to spend. This will
help drive your other decisions. Be sure to leave a cushion in your budget
for additional, unexpected expenses.
When determining your budget, consider how long you intend to stay in
your home. If you are planning to sell in the next year or so, you may
want to spend less money. Decide which features you must have in your new
kitchen. You can cut corners in other areas by substituting less expensive
materials for the counter tops, flooring or cabinet doors.
Research Kitchen Trends
Before you start planning your remodeling project, do some research on
the current trends and designs being used in kitchens. Look for
information on the internet or in home decorating magazines. Visit your
local home improvement center for more ideas. Start a file for pictures of
kitchens you love, furniture, appliances, fabric swatches or anything else
you find interesting. This will help when you are ready to start
purchasing items for your new room.
Options in Kitchen Remodeling
Cabinets are an expensive item in any remodeling project. They often
take up half of the overall budget for the room. If you can’t afford the
cost of brand new cabinets, there are cheaper alternatives. Consider
cabinet refacing rather than replacing the entire cabinet. In refacing,
the doors are replaced and exterior wood areas are covered. This is much
less expensive since you are using the same cabinets. An even cheaper
alternative is to paint your existing cabinets and buy new hardware.
If you must have new cabinets, consider adding some extra features.
Features such as tilt out drawers, pull out garbage cans or a lazy Susan
inside a corner cabinet are great space savers and make the room more
functional. The doors can be either solid wood, clear glass or stained
glass. Shop around to find out what is available before making a purchase.
You can save money on flooring and countertops as well. Substitute
vinyl flooring in place of more expensive ceramic tile to save money. If
you can install ceramic tiles yourself, you can have them for about the
price you would pay a contractor to install vinyl flooring.
Countertops vary widely in price depending on the material that is
used. Counters that are more durable are also more expensive. You may want
this if you want to be able to cut food directly on the counter. For most
people, this is an easy way to cut the overall cost of your kitchen. You
can find less expensive material that gives the look of marble, butcher’s
block or other expensive materials.
Once you have decided what you want, consider how much of the job you
can do yourself. Contractors can eat up a large portion of your budget.
The more you can do, the more you will save in the overall cost of the
room. Use the savings for great new furniture.
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