I have gotten very thrifty with my decorating. You can go broke buying items for your walls. Trust me. I know these things.

I think I told you about this star. I got it at a garage sale for $1. It was purple, but a little spray paint took care of that. Total: about $7.

Then I needed to hide a damaged part of the basement door. Don’t ask. On clearance, I got these leaves, which Alyssa attached to pieces of wire we found downstairs that we bent into circles. I did have to buy the ribbon, but that was on sale, too, for $2. Total: about $5 or $6.

On to the best ones. When we dumped our landline service earlier this year and went to all cell phones, we couldn’t remove the phone jack from the wall in the kitchen. I’ve been staring at that thing for 9 months. What to do? Every idea I had didn’t work out. Then late yesterday afternoon, I had a brainstorm. I took the portrait we had taken of the kids in September, used some scrap paper, cut out some letters and voila. With a frame I had around the house, the cost of this was: FREE!

Well, the trouble was that I swiped that frame from the front hall. Now I had a bare nail. Not to mention a bare spot on the wall. In my search for frames for the kids’ picture, I ran across an aerial view of Doug’s mom’s family farm in Illinois. We have an aerial view of our house shortly after we built it on the wall across from this spot, so hanging my hubby’s family’s picture seemed right.

Of course, I then went upstairs to put Jonalyn to bed and discovered another empty nail at the top of the stairs. Oh, dear. I walked around the basement, knowing I had to have some gem hidden somewhere I’d forgotten about. Then I spotted this. Doug’s grandparents worked in the insurance industry. I’m sure that’s where this came from.
Brian doesn’t like it, but I think it’s kind of fun and funky. He says it’s from the 60s. That’s a long time ago to him. I think it must be even older than that.

That means last night I hung 3 items on my wall for the cost of: NOTHING!! Gotta love it!

What hidden treasures do you have around your house?