Inexpensive Home Beautification

When I posted about using glass containers for soaps and things on countertops, people had some great ideas to share! I thought it would be fun to discuss home beautification more generally. I believe that we can make lovely homes for our families WITHOUT buying all the expensive things that the home decor magazines try to convince us that we need! What are some low-cost ways that you beautify your home? Below are some more of mine...

1. Candles. They add such a warmness and homeyness to a room! I have candles in every room of my house. I always light one in the bathroom when we have company, and I light a candle in the kitchen or on the dinner table just for Micah and I to enjoy on a regular basis. Granted, some candles aren't cheap! But less expensive ones can be found at stores like Ross or TJ Maxx (or whatever discount/overstock type stores you have in your area!)

Keeping in mind flammability and safety concerns, you can be creative with your candle holders. For instance, I had a set of four pretty crystal plates and one broke. Since three plates was an odd number for a set, I now use them for candles. I've seen candles in things like teacups, jars, or wide-mouthed glass vases. For my coffee table, I bought an inexpensive white porcelein serving plate and arranged five pillar candles of different heights and complementary soft colors on the plate. I bought a bag of river-stones at Hobby Lobby to cover the bottom of the plate.

2. Consider whether something ugly can be improved. When we first got married, we had this ugly--I mean UGLY--lamp! The base was bulb-shaped, porcelein, and painted a pukey yellow color. We also had a hand-me-down floor lamp that was a brassy gold color. Nothing wrong with gold...I just don't decorate with it. I much prefer silver:o) We bought a silver finish in a spray can and recoated both lamps. The finish also came with a rub-on darkening cream designed to coat any crevices in the surface to texturize and make it look kind of pewtery. Both lamps now look MUCH better and seem to match the rest of the house instead of sticking out like a sore thumb!

Furniture is another category ripe with possibility. Sometimes, all you need to do is add new hardware (handles or knobs) to make something look 500% better. In other cases, you may need to paint or refinish. I've mentioned before that Micah and I found a dresser and a side table with drawers on the side of the road with a sign saying "Free!" There was nothing special about the pieces, but neither was there really much wrong with them. A couple of the drawers had come apart and need to be nailed back together. The side table had a warped plywood top, which was easily replaced with a piece of wood. The dresser is mostly made of real wood, but has plywood sides which I am planning to also replace with wood so that I can paint everything. Then I am going to sand the pieces to give them a distressed finish, replace the handles and knobs, and I suspect that I'll have two wonderful looking pieces for mere pennies on the dollar of what they would cost in the store!

3. Recycle. I made curtains for my kitchen out of an old bedskirt and am really happy with them! Right now, two matching twin-size bedsheets are serving as curtains over the glass french doors leading to the backyard until we can afford actual curtains. They're not my first choice, but they don't look bad! Nobody ever realizes that they aren't real curtains.

4. A couple well-selected pieces are better than a myriad of knick-knacks. I suggest thinking about what's important to you and finding a way to display them. Arrange smaller keepsakes in a shadowbox. My mom is an expert at this! She has several themed shadowboxes around her house containing family heirlooms, like her mom's baby shoes and a picture of her mom as a baby, or little keepsakes from her own childhood. She made a shadow box for me containing flowers from my wedding bouguet and our wedding invitation. I have dried petals from all the roses Micah's ever given me in a large glass jar. Things like these are SO much more meaningful than knickknacks you just pick up at the store!

5. Pictures. My mom is great at this, too! I still have a lot of work to do in getting good pictures in my frames:o) Hanging black and white pictures looks extra classy, in my opinion. It's very easy to get colored pictures scanned and converted to black and white if you want to (Wal-Mart has machines that do it!) Try themed pictures in the different rooms. My mom has a black and white picture of my sisters and I making cookies together when we were little hanging in the kitchen. In our study, Micah and I have kind of a "travel" theme, so we display framed maps and pictures from some of our travels in the past.

Well...those are some of my thoughts! I would LOVE to hear some of yours! I'm sure that some of you will have ideas that I haven't thought of:o)