Something I've learned from decorating my home

When we first moved into our home I got very overwhelmed at how much it was going to cost to furnish and decorate it. Our new house was twice the size of our rent house. Before we moved in, I made a mental check list of everything that I wanted to change about our home..color of the cabinets, door knobs, light fixtures, mail box, light switch plates, air vents (they were all scratched up and ugly). My first thought was to replace these old items with new ones. I calculated it out that financially we couldn't make all of these changes at once. So that meant we were going to be living with some ugly light fixtures for a while. I decided that if I couldn't buy a new item to replace the old one, then I would fix up the old one to at least look better than it did and that would tide me over until we could afford to replace it. I feel like this was a revelation for me. I didn't have to live with the lamp shade and lamp base that I wasn't at all crazy about. I decided to give the lamp base a second chance and just replaced the shade. The lamp took on a whole new look. I would have never experienced this "happy accident" if I would of just gone out and bought a whole new lamp shade and base. All that to say, is there something in your home that you don't like but cannot afford to replace? Try a coat of paint or some new fabric. Besides sprucing up our old lamp base I have also spray painted frames, mirrors, shutters, made pillows from cute dish clothes (anthropologie has neat ones) reupholstered a vintage sewing bench, painted our coffee table and added some fabric under the glass and added fabric/decorative paper over the white matte in black frames.

the old lamp shade wasn't bad. it just wasn't  our style as a couple. a small inexpensive change goes a long way. Lamp shade $12 at target.

I don't pull off modern very well so I don't know what I was thinking when I registered for lots of these black frames with white matte for our wedding. But I am so happy now that I did! I love the look and love how it brightens up our hall. I used remnant fabric that I had around our house and then I bought some decorative paper for the others. This was a fun and expensive project that I can keep adding to through the years.