thrifty decor: it's all in the family

To add on to Arden's post about paper decorations, I'm offering up some treats from the family archives.
The year: sometime in the mid-60's. The place: my grandparents' rec room in their house on Vancouver Island, BC.


My grandma, the irrepressible Louise, is standing in front of a collaborative collage undertaken by a troop of their friends the night before, smirking in the light of the morning after. Her and Grandaddy Dennis certainly knew how to party!





My dad says my grandma is the Queen of Thrift, a resourceful lady who filled the house with amazing bargains and steals. Her and my grandfather were children of the Depression, and it showed; repair trumped disposal every time, with the same couches and chairs getting recovered, reupholstered, re-everything whenever they got too shabby.

That, and they had the most amazing collection of Danish Modern furniture - a special obsession of mine.

Not to go all "recessionista" on you, but take a lesson from Dennis and Louise and seriously consider fixing that broken chair instead of kicking it to the curb. But if you really don't feel like repairing it - let us know where you're leaving it!

handmade decorations

photo from aesthetically pleasing

In the spirit of celebration, this post is dedicated to pretty handmade decorations.

If you're hosting a party (maybe even one tonight for Valentine's day!), hanging paper cranes, pennants, hearts, or chains looks lovely and really warms up a space without much hard work at all. Dig back to your kindergarten crafting and try to reassemble some paper chains or snowflakes, but skip out on the messily crayon-coloured paper and replace it with some inexpensive coloured construction paper. Surprisingly, chains and decorations made with just plain white printer, graph, and lined paper look beautiful too.

I love this idea of hanging paper cranes from brightly coloured clothes hangers. A simple but gorgeous D.I.Y.:

















photo from My Little Apartment

These pennants are lovely too, looks like they've used origami paper:















photo from Please Sir

Paper decorations can make for lovely place settings too, if you're hosting a sit-down dinner party. Here's what we made for New Year's Eve out of printer paper and construction paper scraps, pretty nifty, I'd say:
















Happy Valentine's Day!