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.

Squawkfox makes soft stuffies in the shape of tiny trees from leftover scraps of fabric. Quick and easy to sew, it’s a great project for anyone just learning to sew — and you can have amazing fun in embellishing the simple stuffed trees with buttons and bows and fabric paints, whatever you have on hand! Download her printable 2-piece pattern and make yourself a whole forest of stuffies!

Popcorn garlands were always a part of Christmas when I was a child, for example. Sometimes we’d have a bag of those big burgundy-red cranberries to string along with the popcorn — beauty! And sometimes the family dog would sneak a snack from the Christmas tree. I still smile at the memories…

Becca spreads the seasonal joy (and festive decorations) outdoors, with molded bird seed treats — pretty wreaths to feed the birds while they decorate the trees in your yard. (These would make a terrific frugal gift for a birdlover, too!)

Tiny pieces of felt, a little stuffing, and a couple of paperclips — that’s all it takes to make these cute ice skates mini-ornaments from a tutorial by Not Quite Vintage (inspired by her grandmother). Add sequins or seed beads for buttons, or whip a bit of colourful embroidery floss up the front edge to look like laces.

Another favourite do-it-yourself Christmas decoration around our place, growing up, was salt dough modelling clay we’d shape like Play-do into stars and trees and angels, bake in the oven until they dried, then add a touch of craft paint and a ribbon for hanging… My salt dough modelling clay recipe is here, if you want to give it a try for yourself.

Maybe paper crafts are more your style?

Design Sponge has the DIY on this clever paper ball ornament — make a whole lot of them from those tag-ends of gift wrapping paper that are too small to use for much else, and dangle from a swagged evergreen garland, or hang them in a window or on your tree.

Want more Christmas paper crafts? You can find instructions for making the best ever 3-d paper snowflake at Cut Out and Keep . (I tell you, forget those paper snowflakes you might have made in kindergarten — this is in a whole other class!)

And if you’re short on time and/or patience, but you still want the snowflake bling, you can always go for this pretty blue snowflake, from the collection of free printables at Canon.

At the price of printer ink, though, I’d be inclined to print out one copy of the pattern and use it as a template for making snowflakes from plain white paper. I’ve done something similar with lightweight cardstock (empty cereal boxes, actually), then used a little thinned-down white glue and glitter to make them into stars…

This year, the holidays are going to be especially tough for a lot of families — so what better time to rediscover the true meaning of the season, sitting down with the kids to create new traditions that have more to do with sharing the moment than with spending hard-earned money at the mall?

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?

Sensible!

Especially if the kiddy’s wished-for bedroom decor is based on the latest from Disney or Pixar or whatever video game is hot in the school yard this week…

What to do?
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!

Check the gallery of other people’s posters (like the lovely Nemo wall art that Phil made for his young daughter’s bedroom) for inspiring ideas like these:

• Leave the white edges of the paper on for a cool tile mosaic effect;
• Decoupage the pieces onto a room divider screen;
• Frame each paper tile separately in black and hang them really close together to look like a piece of stained glass;
• Go black-and-white or monchrome for an high-toned artsy look;
• Blow up a smaller image for a cool blocky pixelated effect (turn a nature shot into modern camouflage, anyone?);
• Posterize yourself!

Okay, maybe your children don’t really want your face looming down at them from the wall above their beds while they’re sleeping at night… but you could do a nice family portrait, or a favourite pop star, or a role-model athlete, or even a screenshot from a favourite game…

Your imagination is the only limit!

Or, to be factual, about 8 feet x 10 feet is the limit, finished poster size-wise.
But you don’t really need a larger poster than that, do you? Unless you’re making a mural to decorate a great room… hmm….

Photo: Photos o’ Randomness

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.

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

Not only that, it has been known to rain on October 31st… So what happens to your elegant glowing lights and drifting ghosts, if it rains? Soggy toilet paper draped over trees. In the dark. Not so chic and clever after all, is it? And you’ll just have to clean it all up the next day…

You can do better, even on a tight budget.

Tips for Frugal Halloween Decorations

Get yourself a pumpkin and make a traditional Jack-o-lantern. If you draw the face on your pumpkin with magic marker, instead of carving into it, you can cook it up later and make a pumpkin pie. How frugal is that?

If the kids want to know why you’re not investing in the latest inflatable three-witches yard art, or strings of flashing ghost lights, just tell them you’re doing your part for the environment. Ninety-nine percent of school-aged kids know more about saving energy than David Susuki does, and they dig it. Get them involved in thinking of other ways to decorate –

• Homemade orange-and-black paper chains looped across the porch railing?
• Watercolour paints to make scarey scenes on the windows?
• Construction paper cut-outs of spooky cats and haunted houses?
• An old white bedsheet pinned up in a shadowy corner of the yard, to spook all your little trick-or-treating visitors when it moves in the slightest breeze?
• …you get the idea.

And if you’re fixed on decorating with Halloween string lights around your home and garden, why not re-purpose the ones you use for Christmas and patio parties? This works especially well if you tend to go with plain white lights (very elegant) — and they’re low-energy, low-heat LED mini-lights, right? Add a few fake spiderwebs (and dangle a few pipe-cleaner spiders, if you’re feeling artsy-crafty)… you’re good to go.

Not quite enough festive Halloween decorating, yet, for your taste?

Decorate your front steps with an over-sized bouquet of dead branches (pick ‘em up when you rake the lawn) in a wide-mouthed container — I like an old stew kettle for this, but use what you’ve got — and tuck in a couple of mini gourds.

Or more of those pipe-cleaner spiders and artifical webs.
Or bits of orange and black ribbon, tied in bows.
Or a photo of your mother-in-law.

Whatever scares you.

Photo: Sylvanfeather

And here’s a bonus idea — you can save time and money, both, if you simply go with more general “seasonal” decorations, and simply add a touch of spooky Halloween goodness for the night itself.

Think of a wreath of colourful autumn leaves, or a harvest-themed display of gourds and pumpkins, or a decorative scarecrow.

Instead of having a box of special Halloween decorations that will be used for a week or so at most, you’ll decorate once — and the decorations will do you for Thanksgiving too!

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” in the home has reminded me of this favourite cartoon from The New Yorker…

And who doesn’t like to poke a bit of fun at pretentious rich folks?

Well, other gaudy rich folks, maybe…

Afterthought #1:

Here’s a little travel tip for my fellow femmes:

If you’re travelling alone in North America, and you don’t want to be hassled by optimistic convention-going salesmen in hotel lounges or on long flights… I’d strongly recommend picking up a copy of The New Yorker and letting ‘em see you enjoying it.

Don’t ask me why — perhaps it’s the implication that you might be too intelligent and refined to look twice at any man who tries to get dates in an airport? — but it works like a charm!

Afterthought #2:

My uncle always used to say, of pretentious people who were rude to him, There ain’t no couth like uncouth!: I’m pretty sure that wasn’t original to him, so feel free to make it your own. In fact, I’d love to know who came up with that quip, if anyone happens to know…

… okay, that’s all I’ve got here.

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.

Turns out, maybe they’re not kidding…

A guy named Leif Swanson has convinced me that common sense is in very short supply, when it comes to making a home look attractive to others.

Leif sells real estate in Arizona — a place I’ve never visited. I have, however, spent a good bit of time visiting Leif’s hysterically funny (and inspirational, in a what-not-to-do kind of way) Ugly House Photos blog.

And you absolutely must set aside the better part of a lunch hour to check out the What Were They Thinking?!?! category, at least. There, you’ll find such treasures as:

• Taxidermy and plaid couches;
• Improperly stored firearms in the kiddies’ room;
• Amateur paintings of nekkid babes;
• Stripper poles;
• People who should really have left the room before the photo shoot began;
• The world’s ugliest fireplace surround; and
• much much more.

But that’s just the beginning! The whole site is a glorious encyclopedia of how not to decorate a house that you’re hoping to convince someone else to buy. As Lief says, how you want to live is your business — your taste in decor is your own, after all — but it’s a whole different thing if you’re trying to sell the house.

Take these bedrooms, for example:

The ones that really get me the most are those bedrooms where someone obviously tried hard to create a certain ambience. Tried really really really hard. Apparently, with the aid of a Target sale on bed-in-a-bag bedding, inspirational photos from a Sears catalogue saved from sometime back in the disco era, and subconscious longings to see what Disneyland would look like as an 1800s bordello…

The moral(s) of the story? There are two of them.

1. There’s a place in the world for vanilla.

Plain and beige — don’t knock it! Neutral is good when you’re trying to help someone else to imagine that they could possibly go into hock to the bank for decades to come because they so badly would love to make your not-quite-dream home into the home of their dreams.

2. In real life, you’ve really got to keep your decorating opinions to yourself, you know.

Sure, on the internet we can look at these photos and laugh. All these pictures were put out there for the purpose of selling a home, knowing that people would be looking and criticizing and snickering and generally being judgmental about it all. But would you want someone to point a finger at your own weird eccentricities of decorating taste? — heck, no!

Or am I the only one with an amazing fridge magnet collection, garish Mexican tin Christmas ornaments around the top of the kitchen walls (year-round), and more dog-bed in the house than there are beds for humans?

If you’ve been following along with “Educator” Dan’s home renovation adventures, you’ll know why I keep threatening to drag him out east here and put him to work at my house: This man knows his way around a sheet of drywall — and now, as it turns out, he’s got a bit of a decorating streak in him too! But we’ll let Dan tell the story. Enjoy! ~ Jen

Colour Coordination – Enter The Rug

How important is a rug on top of wood flooring? Does it really make a difference in the ambiance and aesthetics of the room? Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder?

During the summer of 2007, we purchased a 20-year-old house with the intention of undergoing major renovations in every part of the home, family room included. We previously wrote an article entitled Home Renovation Tip – Color / Colour Coordination – Critical in which we described the renovation of our family room, as well as providing before and after pictures of the renovation.

The renovation saw the replacement of old light blue carpet with dark hardwood flooring, installation of recessed lighting in the ceiling, covering of the top portion of the floor to ceiling fireplace with fire-retardant drywall, the painting of the fireplace’s remaining brick with a medium beige to complement the cabinetry in the adjoining kitchen, and a complete repainting of the room in an earth forest green.

These colours brought the forest adjacent to the back of the home into the house, visually speaking of course, through the 5-foot-tall windows on the south wall of the family room.

Here is a picture of the renovated family room.

But, what about the flooring?

For some people’s tastes, so much dark hardwood is too much without a rug somewhere on the floor to break up and even enhance the look of the flooring.

For us, the issue was more about the television.

My wife goes to bed much earlier than I. During those times when I am not on the computer writing on our blog about our continuing home renovation experiences I am likely to be in the family room watching a comedy or action movie, both of which can get pretty loud. So, placing a rug somewhere on the hardwood floor would, in theory, act as a noise dampener.

But, what about the aesthetics? What type of rug would one acquire? Should it be complementary or contrasting to the existing colours in the room? And, what about the price?

Below is what the renovated family room now looks like with the rug.

We went with a complementary colour scheme for the rug. Notice how it appears to be the same or very similar shade to the paint used on the remaining brick of the fireplace with hints of darker brown to complement the hardwood flooring.

As well, it looks like the rug is centered in the room, right? Nope. Actually, it is placed 4 to 5 inches more to the left of the fireplace than to its right. However, by placing the run under the front of the couch and having the coffee table on top of the rug corner beside the couch, it gives the appearance that the rug is actually centered.

Which appearance to you prefer? Why? Would you have gone with the same or similar complementary colour or would you have gone with a contrasting colour?

As far as the price? Well, the rug’s dimensions approximate 10 feet by 6 ½ feet. Would you believe all of $89.99. From where? Would you believe….Costco! And, would you believe that it is an indoor / outdoor rug! Talk about bringing the outside into the house.

For more of Dan’s ongoing home renovation experiences, including the increasing efforts to reduce his home’s consumption of non-renewable resources as part of our home renovation efforts, simply visit Dan’s web site, Daily Home Renovation Tips.

Domingos Tótora is a Brazilian designer with a remarkable feeling for organic flow, for the line that simply feels right to the eye — sustainable, organic, renewable, like Life itself. His products were exhibited at Maison & Objet in Paris and currently in stores and galleries around the world. This showcase is at www.do-not-touch.com, a new venture of Zoe Melo.

TOUCH collaborates with emerging designers in creating handmade products, rather than mass-produced blending aesthetics, sustainability and social responsibility. What matters most is the lasting effect of the product and its process.

In short, Touch seeks to “do business differently” and reduce the environmental footprint of home decor and furniture products. Other designers shown at present include Estúdio Manus, La Feliz, and Mana.

4 Frugal Ways to Furnish a New Home

Buying your first house is a wonderful experience. Most of us immediately begin personalizing with paint and new furnishings. These personal touches are important, but they can bring stress when bought with credit.

When my wife and I bought our house, we had little money left over and a lot of space to fill. We agreed that it didn’t make sense to borrow money for furniture, paint, or decorations.

So we dedicated cash each month for furniture and my wife agreed that we could delay painting for a year.

How we stretched small amounts of cash for nice furniture

First, we kept a lot of our old stuff. We decided it made more sense to keep old dressers, shelves, and storage bins so we could focus our purchases on the places where we spend the most time: the dining room, living room, and office.

Second, we kept our eyes open for yardsales. We didn’t go out of our way to visit yardsales, but when we passed one we drove by slowly, looking for promising furniture. We scored a solid maple hutch, dining table, and matching wood chairs for $250. The hutch alone might have cost upwards of $2,500 if we had bought it new.

Third, we bought new stuff that was “good enough” for now. For a couple of months, we used a folding table and folding chairs for our dining room. I used a matching folding table in the office even longer.

We bought the tables and chairs (on sale) to buy us time—the time to find quality bargains that would serve us well for years. The temporary tables and chairs were not a waste. They will also be useful when we host parties for friends and family.

Fourth, we set up automated Craigslist searches. Craigslist is a powerful, free site for buying and selling almost anything locally. Quality furniture, even real antiques, are often sold for pennies on the dollar. You can even find expensive, almost new stuff if you live near an affluent neighborhood.

Craigslist turned up two local bargins. The first lady lived in a beautiful, beach-side log cabin she had built years ago with her husband. She sold us three solid maple pieces manufactured in America half a century ago.

We got a writing desk, large coffee table, and a night stand for $75! The second seller had an attractive computer desk with a solid maple top for $60. The desk fit perfectly into our office layout.

Four tips for Craigslist

1. Setup an automated search with your rss reader (bottom right corner of the search results page)
2. Search locally, you don’t want to be tempted by items you cannot reach (the top of the search results page)
3. Line up transportation before you find a bargain because most sellers won’t be willing to deliver
4. Don’t worry if someone beats you to an item, there will be more bargains

Aaron shares reliable, easily followed steps to build wealth at On Financial Success. Subscribe to his feed to follow along.

Technorati Tags: frugal, home decor, guest post

Renovation adventures make for lively reading — it’s all the fun of a full-blown home makeover, only someone else does the work and pays the bills!

The family behind Daily Home Renovation Tips sounds a bit like they’ve ended up in the plot of a movie! Just think about it: a major home renovation, semi-DIY style…

One problem….it needed a lot of work. How much work? Let’s just say that after 6 months our renovation continues!

Cheers to the anonymous homeowners for sharing their frustrations and, er, “learning experience” with others who are walking the same road! But we can learn from looking at the success stories, too — the family room makeover, for example, is inspiring:

So, what happened here?

From a cold pale blue room dominated by a floor-to-ceiling dark brick fireplace, they created a warm and inviting, yet sophisticated, family retreat in up-to-date earth tones.

A dark espresso-brown hardwood floor anchors the room, now, in place of a dated blue carpet, and a change of wall paint colour means a complete change of mood — but the big news is the fireplace. The secret is heat-proof drywall to cover the top portion of that heavy brick surround, giving a chance to reduce its imposing bulk, scale down, and blend into the room.

Now… the home reno family is down in the basement, struggling with the challenge of home heating and humidity control. As the proud owner of a brand new Biasi furnace, myself, I’ve got a keen interest in what happens next!

Each tip comes from our own personal experiences. We are not contractors. We are not renovation professionals. We are just like the vast majority who are home owners who needed both minor and major improvements to their home but have no experience with renovations.

Follow this real-world renovation at DailyHomeRenoTips.com.

If you’re in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Greece, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden or the United Kingdom, you’re in luck: all the luxe textures and subtle warm gold tones of Zara Home‘s “ethnic” linens and accessories could be yours.

For the rest of us, it’s pure decor inspiration with a hint of Sheik of Araby fantasy-romance.

I’ll probably never get over craving an Andy Sanchez vanity top, or Shawn Lovell’s metal-sculpture bed where the term “forest canopy” is almost literal… but there’s an endless supply of tree-inspired objets of home decor to snag our attention — and here’s a selection of recent finds:

Clockwise from upper left:

• Yellow Gocco Tree and Tissue Paper Note Cards by bubbledog on Etsy.
• Forest Leaf Collection twig-inspired silverware by Michael Aram [via stuff-i-like]
• Jelly Beans’ bright watercolour painting, The Turning evokes the spirit of autumn. [via Morrgan's Creatures]
• Gum tree jewellery stand by Polli can double as a tabletop screen.
• Woodwright’s oval tree pendant is handcrafted in birch wood.
• Red tree notecards by tamar say “I love you” inside.
• The Alberto clotheshorse — Casamania by Frezza — is actually inspired by coral plants, but it reminds me of the stark shape of a dead tree against the distant skyline, very elegant and sculptural.

Much as I absolutely despise the kabillion pop-ups that plague the Better Homes and Gardens site, I do enjoy some of BHG’s quick-and-easy holiday decorating ideas.

Here, for example, asparagus spears and long green beans make Thanksgiving-theme wrappers for simple pillar candles. It’s all done with a couple of strong elastic bands, and a length of satin ribbon to hide them.

And see that hollowed-out artichoke candle holder?
Very cool.

Grouped together with a few white chrysanthemums (easy to come by this time of year, and good tough flowers that stand up well to handling while you fiddle with your centrepiece), and you’ve got yourself the kind of table decor to make your Thanksgiving dinner guests feel special indeed.