Right now I’m in a decorating lull. I’m not doing much for a few reasons:

1. First of all, I have a couple of large projects in the planning stages, so I’m trying to bank my decorating budget for a bit to save up for those.

2. I’m leaving our summer decor up for a bridal shower I’m hosting mid-August, which I’ll tell you all about in a few days!

3. And thirdly, we’re starting to gear up for Halloween (yes, already…you just wait!), so a fair amount of my creative energy  is going towards planning everything that will be involved there. (P.S. I think “creative energy” makes me sound like a crazy hippie dance instructor or something…)

This all means I’ve been doing a lot of looking lately and not much actual decorating. But the great thing about this activity? It’s FREE! The hubby, in particular, loves this aspect. Today, I’ve been particularly fixated on mantels. The mantel in our living room is my favorite spot to decorate. I remember watching my mom decorate our mantel with the seasons when I was a little girl, so it only makes sense that it’s now my favorite. I espeically love the mantel in our house. It’s this big stone thing that isn’t square, but is kind of tucked in a corner. It’s very unique. This is what it looks like empty, just waiting for me to get my hands on it:

Disclaimer: Please ignore the yellow walls. I hate them and hope to paint them VERY soon.

After trolling the web for a bit, these are some of the things I’ve found that I really like:

The Lettered Cottage

This first one (above) is from Layla at The Lettered Cottage. If you haven’t checked her out yet, do so NOW! I love the solid white with the pops of green. Simple and homey, but not overdone. Just my style!

The Lettered Cottage

Okay, this one is from The Lettered Cottage, too. Clearly I’m a bit obsessed. But once again, it’s simple, but fun. Dare I say “spunky”? Wait. Can a mantel be spunky? I’ll let you ponder that one while I move on.

Country Living

I just love the oversized letters on this mantel. I bet you could do this look for $20!

Centsational Girl

Here’s a Halloween-y take on mantel decor from Centsational Girl. Love it!

Thrifty Decor Chick

Okay, one more Halloween mantel, this time from Thrifty Decor Chick. Can you tell I’m getting excited for Halloween?!?

Nesting Place

And last, but not least, is this one from Nesting Place. Lovely, lovely. And her kiddos helped her decorate (they painted the canvases on either side).

Okay, I think I am properly inspired! Now…what to mentally decorate next…

So sometimes you can’t put $1000 into fixing up a room, sometimes you can’t even afford to put $100 to fix up a room. Sometimes all you have is $20.  But what’s a girl to do to spruce up a bedroom for $20?!?

Well, say you have a cast off piece of furniture from another room…

Use a $5 can of spray pain to transform it into a brand new piece!

Search craigslist for inexpensive pieces of furniture. I scored this end table for $10.00.

And then I used the same paint I used on the desk to give it a fresh look as well. Then I added a lamp I found at Goodwill (for $2.50!) and painted teal. I added a few books in colors that coordinate with the room and a little clock I found at a garage sale for $3.00.

I’d love to invest more money in this room. But it’s our second guest room that we hope to one day make a nursery, so I don’t really think it’s a great plan to invest cash here right now. But these little touches make it more than just a bleh room with a bed in it! Here’s the price breakdown:

Desk: Free (It was a cast off from my Man Cave redecoration.)

Spray Paint: $10.00 (I used two cans)

End Table: $10.00

Lamp: $2.50

Books: Free (I already had these on my bookcase.)

Clock: $3.00

Total: $25.50

Okay, this was a little more than $20, but not much! And I got a whole lotta bang for my buck!!!  What do you think?

(Do you see my faux coral in there?!?)  I started by taking all the Spring decor down and putting it away.  This is what my mantel looked like ne-ked. It’s so empty!

Then I decorated the mantel. It took me a while to finally settle on this:

I love how it turned out!

Next I started working on the bookshelves:

Here a few of the details up-close:

And here’s me as the Fourth of July Fairy… I may have been a bit slap-happy and this point. Just maybe.

And there you have it! My Fourth of July Decor. I’m now officially in summer mode!  How about you? Do you change up your home decor with the seasons?

Last summer, I decided I wanted to go for a beachy theme with my summer decor.  My favorite store was selling gorgeous coral pieces, but they were a bit pricey, so even though I wanted to buy five, I could only afford one small piece. So what’s a girl to do? Improvise!  I found some great branches in my backyard, and spray painted them a reddish-coral color. Cost? A $3.50 can of spray paint (and I have lots left over for future projects!). I just love how they turned out!

Sorry this isn’t the greatest picture…but you’ll see a better shot of these in my post tomorrow!

So usually I showcase my own twenty dollar projects here on Twenty Dollar Tuesdays, but I saw this amazing transformation today over at Mustard Seed Creations, and I just HAD to share it with you!  If you have an old piece of furniture tucked in a corner that needs a breath of fresh air, this is a great way to spruce it up, all you’ll need is paint.  If you want to try this project, but don’t have a piece of furniture that fits the bill, you can always check out my favorite place.

So without further ado…check this out: A Record Cabinet Gone to the Birds

Don’t you just love it?!? I’m dying to try something like this myself.  What about you? Does it strike your fancy?

Today’s twenty dollar tuesday tip is pretty simple.  First I have a personal question for you: is your box spring currently exposed? If I walked into your bedroom right now would I see that lightly padded box supporting your mattress?  If it is covered, is the thing covering it frumpy or outdated?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, my friend, you’re in need of some help. You need to cover that box spring right up.  The problem is that dust ruffles can get a big pricey. Luckily, I have a cheap solution! Go to your local Target or Wal-Mart. Cruise those endcaps until you find a sheet (the same size as your bed) in a color that will match or coordinate with your current bedding. You can usually find these for under $10.  Go home. Remove your mattress. Place either a fitted sheet or a flat sheet directly on the box spring.  If it’s a flat sheet, pretend it’s a mattress and do those military corners. Replace the mattress. And voilà! Instant box spring cover.

And there you have it, folks, another Twenty Dollar Tuesday!!!!

5. Install new hardware. These were the old knobs on the built in closet:

They were awful!  $16 in new hardware later…we had a wall of much more stylish cabinetry:

6. Change what you hate! My hubby and I both HATED the vertical blinds down in the previous room. It would have cost NOTHING to take those down, but we didn’t do it until now. If you have something like this in your house, change it! There’s no time like the present!

7. Shop those garage sales. Be sure to take advantage of Saturday morning garage sales. I found the really cool old trunk (which was a foot locker in WWII!) for $35 at a garage sale. I loved that it had a bit of military history itself, it seemed to really work for the room. It had been spray painted army green, so I just spray painted it white to coordinate with the rest of the room!

8. Edit. Edit. Edit. If you look at the before pictures, there is a lot of junk laying around the room. I asked my hubby to go through all the stuff in the room with me, and tell me what was important and what wasn’t. There were these little fish sculptures in the room that I thought were really important to him. I was trying to figure out how I was going to fit them into the decor, but when I asked, he told me they weren’t important to him at all!  So what things are important to YOU in your room?

9. Don’t be afraid. I’ll admit that decorating a whole room all at once…the sanding, the painting, the potential to fail miserably…was a bit intimidating. But…I just kept telling myself, “If this turns out horribly…it’s not really going to be much worse than it was before!” And that helped inspire me!  And when you have to force yourself to go to bed with a room half primed, five pieces of furniture in some stage of transition sitting in the garage, and covered in paint yoruself, just remember…these are all signs of CHANGE!

10. And last but not least, it’s ALL worth it in the end! My hubby LOVES his new room. He was down there almost all weekend, and all evening tonight.  It’s almost like we don’t even remember what the old Man Cave looked like!

So on that note…good luck with your next project!!!

Alright, so you want to know more about how I stretched my dollar; here are my top tips:

1. Paint really does do wonders. Right after we painted, the room instantly felt different. So if you want a quick room update, drop the $60 or so and buy some paint!

2. Secondly, shop in your own house! I talked about this a few days ago, but just as a reminder, the dresser that is our new “entertainment center” and the bookshelf that now houses the wine, scotch, and cigar collections were all unused pieces that we already owned!  The bookshelf was just in our guest bedroom closet. It was ugly brown, so we just painted it cream (with a $1.00 can of unclaimed paint I got at Lowe’s) and painted the backs blue (with another can of $1.00 unclaimed paint). The dresser, I didn’t have to do anything to!

3. Craigslist. Craigslist. Craigslist. I purchased the blue accent chair for the seating area, the floor lamp, and the desk all on Craigslist. The chair and the lamp were ready to use as is, but the desk, you may remember, looked like this:

I briefly thought about stripping and staining it dark brown to match the entertainment center, but then I remember how LONG it took me to strip and stain my armoire last summer. So I decided just to paint it! I chose Navy Blue as one of the primary colors in the room, as so many of my hubby’s accessories are, well, Navy Blue! Here’s how it turned out (FYI…the color is actually Navy blue, not royal blue as it appears in the photo):

I knew I wanted a brown leather accent chair to use as a desk chair to tie the office area with the sitting area (where the dominate piece of furniture is the massive leather couch we already owned). I found one on Craigslist for $25. But, I was greedy, and offered $20 (I’m such a tightwad sometimes!), and lost. So then I had to splurge and buy one for $60 at Ross (which has an AWESOME home department, by the way!) I suppose $60 is still a pretty darn good price for a chair, but I was bummed that I had missed out on the $25 one!  I guess I should have taken my own advice and bid full price since I really wanted it!!!

4. Dress up your windows. One of the things this room was desperately missing before, was window treatments (by the way, my hubby HATES the term “window treatments”, he cringes every time he hears it!). There were vertical blinds (ick!) above the sliding glass door, and nothing above the window. Curtains and hardware can get quite expensive, so I needed a CHEAP solution. You may remember that I recently purchased new window treatments for the living room and got rid of these heinous wood curtain rods:

Well, I saved them “just in case”, and I’m so glad I did! I ended up taking a bit of Navy blue spray paint to them.  For curtains, I simply purchased canvas drop cloths at a home improvement store for $10 a panel. And here’s the result:

Not too bad, eh?

And that’s all I’m going to leave you with today. Tomorrow I’ll finish up my Man Cave diatribe, and then I’ll tell you about the plans I have in store for my next project… I can hear my hubby cringing already!

So, I tell you all this, not for your pity (okay, a little for your pity), but mostly because I’m going to reveal the Man Cave pictures tonight as it’s FINALLY finished! BUT…I’m not going to show you all the details until this weekend. Because, my friends, it’s 1:09am!

If you’ll remember, here is what the Man Cave looked like before. It was sad and pitiful and we didn’t spent time down there because it was sad and ugly.

And here is the before desk area:

And with some painting help from the hubby:

And lots of supervision from Caroline:

Here is what it looks like now!

As for the budget, I came in slightly over $300, which includes all the paint. We did, however, altready have the couch, entertainment center/dresser, bookshelf, and we just recently purchased the desk on craigslist. (But I did paint the bookshelf and desk). There are still a few things I’d like to purchase, but I’m pretty happy with where the room is now.

It was also a really neat project, because although my hubby helped paint the room, he knew nothing else about it. He hadn’t seen any of the new purchases or the painted furniture, and he knew nothing about my design plans. Muahahah. So tonight, I totally surprised him with the completed room. He was so excited, and it was so much fun to give him such a neat room–he deserves it!

And with that note, I’m off to bed! Be sure to stay tuned this weekend to see just how I did it all!

-This American Wife

No, the paint is not actually up on the walls yet, BUT the room has been cleared, cleaned, and the walls are all spackled!  We hope to paint tomorrow or Wednesday.

So why didn’t we paint?  Well, because we did a million other things! Caroline and I went garage saleing yesterday morning. And I have a new favorite iPhone ap–iGarageSale. It pulls garage sale listings from craigslist (where I usually get my garage sale listings) and superimposes them on a map.  You can scroll through the listings or search them for keywords and then tag your favorites. You can then have your map display only your favorites, and even give you directions!  Pretty cool, eh?

We ended up getting “stuck” at this Estate Sale for over an hour.  We only ended up buying one thing there, but it was sooooo cool.  They were selling EVERYTHING in the house.  And it was open for people just to walk through. Kind of creepy and really neat all at the same time.  Both Caroline and I fell in love with this room I dubbed the “Hardy Boy Bedroom” because it looked like the Hardy boys lived there. It had two twin beds covered in plaid blankets, a bunch of fishing poles tucked away in the corner, a closet full of old cameras and projectors, a dresser covered in atlases and gazetteers, the shelves were lined with model airplanes, and the bed was littered with old catchers mitts, baseball bats, and baseballs, a small table in the corner held some science experiment equipment. Seriously, it was so cool. We didn’t end up buying anything out of the room, it wasn’t exactly my style, but it was just so  awesome that both Caroline and I had to spend some time in there!

Anyway, so after the garage sales, we hit the thrift stores. We got home and were both pretty pooped so we took some naps, then got up and did some projects related to the man cave renovations, which will remain secret at this time. I’m trying to surprise my hubby with the new design (he knows the paint color, but not much else), and he’s a blog reader, so I’m going to save all the project details until after I reveal the design to him!

Today, the hubby, my sister, and I drove down to Pasadena to visit the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts. If you’ve never been to a showhouse, be sure to look up one in your area–they are so neat. Basically, a nonprofit organization picks a house (usually a mansion), the family moves out, and participating interior designers in the area each are assigned a room to decorate. The organization then charges people to tour the home. The nonprofit organization raises money, designers get publicity, the homeowners get a free renovation, and the visitors get lots of great ideas! The Pasadena showhouse is one of the best I’ve ever been to. I think my hubby and I both decided we like last year’s a bit better, but the house this year was pretty incredible. You can learn more about the Pasadena Showhouse here.

I’m so excited to finish up with my redecorating of the Man Cave. I’ll be sure to share lots of pictures with you!