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decorating

Heirlooms to treasure, or just plain creative family fun — either way, there’s a special magic to Christmas decorations that you make yourself at home, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Here’s a round-up of patterns and how-to tutorials for frugal holiday decorations that you can make yourself:

Cardboard, glue, tiny pine cones, and scraps of birchbark — topped off with a sprinkle of glitter, the only special craft item you’ll need to do this — create a rustic miniature Christmas village! Kristin Nicholas –”Getting Stitched on the Farm” — gives a clear step-by-step tutorial for making your own.

Snuggle the houses on a landscape of poly fibrefill or quilt batting snow, if you’ve got some on hand, or just drape a white cloth over crumbled balls of newspaper to make a winter landscape to showcase the minature village.
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Make Your Pictures into Giant (Free) Wall Posters

Make Your Pictures into Giant (Free) Wall Posters

So, you want your kid to have a bedroom that’s decorated to match his dreams — but you don’t want to spend much money? Well, here’s one incredibly frugal solution to that decorating dilemma: Block Posters lets you send any image from your computer (up to 1 MB size file), slice it up, print it out, and turn it into a giant wall poster — free!

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Bad Advice for Frugal Halloween Decorations

Bad Advice for Frugal Halloween Decorations

As for decorating your place for Halloween on the cheap –

“Decorate your home and yard with everyday items and almost-trash, like leftover candle stubs and toilet-paper ghosts,” the glossy magazines tell you.

Right. Not.

Who was the genius to suggest that lighted candles and paper products were a good mix? Now throw in gangs of rambling trick-or-treating kids wearing capes and robes and all manner of flammable costumes? Uh-uh.

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If You Ain't Got Elegance

If You Ain't Got Elegance

You know how the other day I went on quite a bit about personal taste in decorating? And about how some people manage to pour all kinds of money into making their home look… well, quite hideous, really? Cartoon: Robert Weber The New Yorker, April 3, 1989 by permission That whole discussion of “good taste” [...]

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Money Can Buy Stuff, But It Can't Buy Good Taste

Money Can Buy Stuff, But It Can't Buy Good Taste

You know how real estate agents are always rattling on about their professional expertise in showing off a home to its best advantage? Curb appeal? Staging a home so it looks good to potential buyers? I’d always half-suspected that they were just putting fancy names to common sense, to encourage home sellers to hire them. [...]

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