Simple Easter Decorations for the Kids! | Hendersonville, NC

 

For several years now Cooper has always begged me to decorate for different holidays.  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Easter...  And for several years I have felt guilty because I never had the time or energy to do it for him.  After moving to North Carolina and getting to be a stay at home mom again, I have finally been able to spend the time with him putting up a few decorations for the holidays.  We of course decked the halls for Christmas.  And then we put some things out for Valentine's Day.  We skipped over St. Patrick's Day and decorated for Easter instead. 

 

The thing about decorating is that it can get expensive if you let it.  But I'm the queen of cheap and instead of letting it be expensive, we headed to the dollar store to see what we could find.  We found several little things that both Cooper and Peyton loved, and all for only a dollar!

 

First we found these little foam sparkly letters.  They are individual little letters with sticky stuff on the back.  I broke a paint stir stick down to the length that we needed and just stuck the letters on it.

 Then we found these sparkly Easter egg picks and little tin buckets.  We grabbed some floral foam and Easter grass and created this cute little bouquet of eggs.

 Again with the sparkle theme.  These cardboard eggs.

 I was going to make some sort of garland to hang on the mantle, but then we found these paper flowers in the $1 bins at Michaels.  Cute and colorful!

 I found this cute little unique plant at the grocery store and put it in this little yellow

 pot that I bought at the dollar store.  I have no idea what this plant is called, but I love it. 

Anyone have any idea what it is?

Found this cute printable here.

I just printed it on printer paper and put in an 8x10 frame that I got on clearance at Target for $2.

 I already had this plant on hand and just threw it in with the Easter stuff because the pot looked good with all the Easter colors.  The little birdcage is another Michael $1 bin find with some sparkly little eggs added for color.  Are you seeing a theme here?  A dollar here, a dollar there.  :)

 My blue mirror and green lamp are both fitting in perfectly with the Easter colors.

 I did spend $5 for two packages of fun fur yarn for this simple little wreath.  First I took a pool noodle from the dollar store and bent it into a circle shape and duct taped the ends together to make the base for the wreath.  Then I just wrapped the yarn around the noodle to cover the entire thing.  I used some fishing line to tie on some Easter eggs and used a scrap piece of fabric to hang it.  It's not a very exciting wreath really, but the kids love it, and that's what this is all about for me. 

 Instead of using a over the door wreath holder, I just used a couple of

thumbtacks to attach the ribbon to the top of the door.

 And then we added this little Easter sign to our basket of pansies on the

front porch to welcome our guests.

So all together I spent around $27 to put up a few little decorations.  Not only did we get decorations, but we had some together time shopping for our goods, and then putting everything out.  Not to mention how much joy the kids get from seeing all this stuff everyday. 

Do you decorate for all the holidays?  Do your kids care one way or the other?  Our older boys never cared about any of this stuff.  What frugal ideas do you have for decorating on a budget?





$21 Kitchen Gallery Wall

 

Wow!  It's been a VERY long time since I've blogged.  It's sort of strange to try to write again after all this time of no writing.  But I'm going to give it my best shot.  I won't bore you with all the reasons that I haven't been blogging.  Or some of the reasons that I'm trying to get back into blogging again.  I'm just going to jump in and act like nothing has changed!

 

I've had a few people ask me if I was going to blog about home/DIY stuff again now that we are settling into our new home.  My response has been that I would need to actually FINISH some sort of project before I could blog about it.  I tend to get bored working on one thing for very long, so I am notorious for having 10 different things going on at one time.  I have tons of ideas swimming around in my head all the time.  But it takes time to find all the parts and pieces needed to complete one of the ideas that I have.  Today, I finally had everything I needed to complete a little gallery wall that I have been thinking about for a couple of months.

 

Gallery walls are all over the Internet now.  We have all seen them and pinned a few of our favorites on Pinterest.  This is my first attempt at creating one in my home, and I thought I would share with you how I went about putting it together just in case you are stuck trying to figure out your gallery wall.  Maybe you will find a helpful hint in here somewhere that will make it a little easier for you.  If however, you don't care about gallery walls at all, check back later this week for some photography related posts.  This is a photography blog after all! 

 

So about the gallery wall, I started by gathering all the items that I wanted to include in my gallery.  Then I taped some pieces of paper together and traced all of the items onto the papers.  After tracing, I cut everything out and taped them to the wall to figure out my arrangement.  This prevents having a million little nail holes in your wall when you are finished.  I just taped them to the wall and fiddled with the spacing and location until I was happy with the layout. 

 

 While I was tracing my frames, I also marked on the paper templates exactly where my nail would need to be to hang that frame.  Again, this prevents ending up with a bunch of extra nail holes.

 

Once I had my arrangement the way I wanted it, I hammered my nails right though the paper.

And then you simply pull the paper off the wall.  So simple. 



 

This gallery wall is in my kitchen, and I had a couple of cutting boards that I wanted to include in the layout.  Originally I thought that maybe I could use plate hangers to hang the cutting boards with.  But after looking at some plate hangers in the store, I realized that wasn't going to work.  So I bought some Command picture hanging strips.

I applied the hanging strips per the instructions on the packaging.  I had to start by cleaning both cutting boards with rubbing alcohol.  Then I pressed two strips firmly onto the back of the cutting board and two strips onto the wall.  The instructions said to let the strips adhere for an hour before hanging the picture, or in my case a cutting board.  I reluctantly decided to follow the directions and let everything set for an entire hour.  I killed the time by chauffeuring kids to friends houses and basketball open gym.  Story of my life!  Anyway, after the hour, I simply pressed the strips on the board to the strips on the wall, and just like that I had created a little fun art our of cutting boards.



 

And here is the final result!

I'm excited to finally have this stuff on the wall. 

Hopefully it will motivate me to get some more things hung up around here.



Dennis and I both like map art right now.  I found this fun cutting board on clearance at Target for $12.


 

This is just a fun little Cheeseburger In Paradise printable that I created.  Our entire family loves Jimmy Buffett and the kids regularly request this song when we are in the car.

I've included the printable at the bottom of this post if you would like a copy for yourself.  Just right click and save.
 

This is a clipping from a magazine framed on top of a piece of purple paper. 

 I just thought it was cute and saved it to frame it.  You really can make art out of some many things. 



 

And this fat little pig is my husbands.  He made this thing in middle or high school.  I don't remember which.  He loves this goofy thing, so I thought I would display it.  I have to admit, he is kind of cute!


This little picture display was kind of an afterthought.  I had some Instagram pictures printed last week for another project and ended up with more then I could use in that project.  So I just grabbed some twine, hung it on the wainscoting, and then clothes pinned the extra pictures to it.



 And there you have it.  A fun little inexpensive gallery wall.



I spent $4 on the frames on clearance, $4 on the Command strips, $12 on the map cutting board, and probably $1 on the pictures.  Everything else I had on hand or printed out on my own.



And here is the printable for you if you want it.

Wordless Wednesday | Sunbury Photographer

(If you like this printable, email me and I will forward you the full sized file.)