No-Cost Decorating

Lately, I've gotten REALLY into "no-cost decorating." It started when I became addicted to this blog and was so inspired by these ladies' creativity that I wanted to do some fun decorating projects of my own. Only problem - I can't spend any money on this fun, but unnecessary "want.' So what's a creative gal to do? Use what I already have of course!

So for the past couple of weeks, I've been redecorating our living room (and kitchen) with empty glass jars from our spaghetti dinners, ribbons left over from our wedding invites and the gobs of paper, paint, fabric, tags and buttons that I have in my collection of craft stuff. It has been a really fun challenge and I haven't spent a cent! Here are some of my favorites (sorry that I don't have "before" photos.)

After digging through a bag of block letters that Devin's grandma gave us (for Devin's infant photography), I spelled out "Hanson" on our bookcase.

Spaghetti sauce jar filled with stale coffee beans, wrapped in leftover ribbon; add a cute little tag from scrapbook stuff and silk flowers I already had; arrange with candle, photo, shell from our honeymoon and cute mini jar wrapped in matching ribbon- and voila!

I organized all the markers and pens that were scattered all over our kitchen into this adorable labeled display using more jars and tags, leftover fabric, ribbon and some glass stones that I already had.  (We also already had the little photo plates.)

A plain black frame and a simple silver digital frame got new life with the help of a little paint, scrapbook paper, ribbon, buttons and double-stick tape. I added another tag/ribbon combo (I'm obsessed) to our "goodies" jar.

To consolidate all the random items we had sitting on our coffee table, I grabbed an adorable "breakfast in bed" tray that we hardly used and accented it with scrapbook paper (that matches the above picture frame.) ::SIGH:: I love when organization looks so pretty.

Last little touch: I wrapped the bases of one of our lamps in brown ribbon and added a blue button for a pop of fun and color.

Next stop: Our bedroom. Dum-dum-dum....