Looks for less.

To back up a step: we live in North Carolina, and virtually all our family is still in Virginia. The four of us came here several years ago. D.C. area house prices were astronomical, the crime rate was depressing, and the schools we’d be sending our children to were poor to mediocre. When my husband’s contract was up, we made a weekend trip to the Triangle area, and signed with a homebuilder within a few days. And while I am known for rash decisions, I pride myself on making good ones. Heh. (My husband and I were together three weeks before getting engaged, and we’re coming up on eight years of marriage.) The weather here is magnificent, the location is ideal (an 1.5 hour to the beach or mountains, 15 minutes to the state capital), the people are charming, the money is great, the schools are excellent, the house prices are low, and we’re in one of the safest cities in America. To say I love it is an understatement. I wake up every morning feeling so lucky and grateful to be exactly where we are.

So obviously I’ve been pushing everyone else I love to GET DOWN HERE ALREADY. My cousin Erin already took the plunge: she moved with us, a few streets away. My sister Michelle is hopefully coming in a year or two. And now I have my brother, which is awesome. Shelly is actually in town now (YAY), and we’ve been talking a lot about getting Ben’s new apartment ready. He doesn’t care at all about what it looks like, but we LIVE for stuff like this. Heh. He’s basically doing us a favor by letting us plot. We’re also trying to redo a bit of my own house while she’s in town. Both of us are frugal– thanks, Mom!– so we’re trying to make everything as cheap as possible without sacrificing look.

Here’s some of the ideas we’ve thrown out there:

This is something I only recently started to appreciate. Most of the time, you can make something amazing for literally nothing. For instance! I was given this glass fruit stand about two years ago. It was one of those tiered deals with different sized platters going up, so you could put, like, bananas on the bottom and apples in the middle and grapes on the top. The problem was, I never bought enough fresh fruit to fill it, and if I did, no one ate it quick enough before it went bad. I finally gave up on fruit altogether, then it started becoming filled with random junk. Candies, coins, vending machine toys, screws, anything. I hated that fruit stand. It was nice in and of itself, but it did nothing for my kitchen. If anything, it detracted.

I think everyone knows one (or two, or three, or four) things like this in their house, just off the top of their head. So one day I took the fruit platter down, cleaned it, and thought of another problem area in my house: the master bath. We had like sixteen things we used daily that I wanted on the counter, but they looked so messy and cluttered just sitting there. LIGHTBULB.

The fruit platter is now in the bathroom. It stores everything beautifully. I have a shelf, my husband has a shelf, and we share the largest bottom tray. It even looks sleek and bathroom-like, and now that I don’t have a go-to spot for kitchen junk, I’ve started to put things in the right place immediately.

It’s not just organization. I had leftover garland decorations and clay pots from a kid’s fairy party taking up space in my garage. I plucked all the pretty little white flowers from the garland and glued them onto the outside of a plastic base I had, then put them in a pot. It looks just like the ones on display at Target for $15, and all it cost me was five minutes of time. (And the burn I got from the hot glue gun. Yikes.)

Craigslist. is. amazing. The free section can be filled with literal trash, but occasionally you’ll find a little diamond thrown in. Once I actually saw some Marie Antionette-style benches that a restaurant was throwing out during a renovation. Pretty similar to this:

Those would be the best zero dollars you ever spent. (PS: That particular bench is courtesy of Trianon Antiques, and would probably cost you an entire paycheck.)

Craigslist is also a goldmine for cheap used furniture. Often, people will buy a piece only to find they’re (A) moving unexpectedly, or (B) the item didn’t fit, so they’ll practically give it away. I’ve seen brand-new TVs for half the retail price, and Pottery Barn couches for like $200. And sometimes you have to use your imagination. For instance, this–

— will probably never be a sexy chair. Even for $9, it will always be plastic and remind you a little bit of sitting outside in the hall waiting for the school nurse. However, for $15, this–

— despite looking a little busy and distressed, would work BEAUTIFULLY if your style is  eclectic. For instance, it makes me think of the Bohemian living room of interior designer Kristen Buckingham:

If you have a printer and
a Salvation Army, you are SET. Michelle and I went to thrift stores yesterday, and were shocked how cheaply you can buy a preframed art. Even if you hate the art itself– say, a cross-stitched cat or a generic boat painting– you can still usually get the frame itself for half what you’d pay at a store. Then you simply take advantage of this amazing thing called the Internet, and find yourself some free art to print and hang.

One source is the Feed Your Soul art project, where people donate their drawings just for such a cause. Some of them would be particularly adorable in children’s rooms.

For offices, I’m a fan of public domain images. All work and illustrations pre-1923 are no longer covered by copyright; which means they can be used for any purpose. BibliOdyssey has by far the most beautiful and far-reaching collection of old images for your perusal.

Chrysti also has a gorgeous Flickr collection of vintage scans. Distribution (and printing) rules are on individual photos pages, but there were plenty that were free and fit for hanging.

And that’s probably about it for me tonight. Hope you guys have a wonderful weekend. If you have any ideas of your own to pass along when it comes to bargains on home design, by all means– comment! I’d love to hear it (and put it into practice). 

On a small, sad follow-up note: my son’s bones moved out of alignment inside his cast after the swelling went down, so he’ll need surgery next week to put metal wires in. The good news is it should be healed perfectly in a few weeks– the bad news is it’s some scars, and two scary hospital visits (one surgery to implant the wires, another to extract them in six months). If you could send some positive thoughts our way Tuesday, it would be hugely appreciated. He, and I, are both pretty nervous.