Good afternoon everyone! I hope you are having a great weekend. Today I'm going to share a few tips I learned as a floral design student. These tips will help make a $10.00 or $15.00 Walmart bouquet look like it cost a lot more... just in time for Thanksgiving. :)

Supplies and Tools

First off, you'll need some flowers. You will also use floral foam for this project. Most people just re-cut their cheap flowers and pop them in a vase. This looks okay (I mean, how can flowers look bad?) but it won't look professional. Professional-looking vase arrangements are much harder to do than foam arrangements. In addition to the block of foam to fit your container, you will also need an outer decorative container AND an inner waterproof container. I am using a basket-style outer container and a clean reused cottage cheese container for the inside.

When I worked at a flower shop, I learned that customers got an $8.00 discount for bringing in their own vase or container. If you are buying a professional flower arrangement at retail, a good portion of the price has to do with the container.

Tools I used for this arrangement were sturdy floral scissors, a pocket knife, and a roll of floral tape (this is sticky green tape- not the stretchy floral tape). You can use electrical tape or even a tiny bit of duct tape to replace the green floral tape.

I also used leaf shine and "crowning glory", which is a spray-on flower preservative/shine to make my arrangement last longer. Both of those things are optional, but to make your arrangement look better.

Directions

1. Cut your block of floral foam to fit the inner container. You will need to use the water-sucking foam, and not regular styrofoam.

Drop the block of foam in a container of water. Let the water soak up naturally. This may take some time, and you will want to shove the block down underneath the water to make it go faster. However, this will leave dry spots in the middle of your foam, where the flowers will need water the most. If the block has stopped "drinking" water, you can gently turn it on its side to expose dry parts to water.

Save the little bits and pieces of foam, and put them in the water, too. After you've put the large wet block of foam in your waterproof inner container, fill the nooks and crannies with those little bits and pieces.

2. Next it is time to prepare the greenery. Greenery is the difference between a cheap bouquet of flowers and a real arrangement.

When buying houseplants, I carefully choose plants that can double as a source of greenery for floral arrangements. One of these houseplants is a "corn plant" that I bought at Walmart. Leaves of the corn plant are very similar to the aspidistera leaves used in real flower shops.

Below is a technique I learned when working at the flower shop. It commonly used in bridal bouquets or edging around arrangements, as well as providing fullness.

The other greenery I used for this project was orange branches. I started an orange tree from seed when I was a teenager. I have been waiting almost a decade for actual oranges, but all I get is greenery. Oh well- at least it's good for something!

Use the greenery to provide a "base" for your arrangement. I put six stems into my foam below. You want to provide decent coverage, but not too much because you will need places to poke the flowers in.

After adding the greenery, I sprayed it with leaf shine.

3. Add flowers. There really is no formula for doing this, especially if you are working with a cheap bouquet of flowers. Typically I like to work in groups of threes, but you can see that the bouquet came with four different colors of flowers. Sometimes the flowers come broken or the stems are too short. You just gotta deal with it!!

The bouquet flowers will need to be prepared. This could be a whole post in itself. I should have taken pictures of this step but I forgot to. :( Basically, you will want to strip the leaves 2" below the stem of the bottom-most flower on the branch. For this arrangement, I cut off the bottom three or four flowers (and their stems) from every branch to use as individual flowers for the bottom arrangement.

Always leave 2" of stem to poke into the foam. This will ensure that your flowers have water to drink.

You will want a focal point for your arrangement. My focal point is where the grasses shoot out on the right side (see below). These are artificial grasses that I saved from a store-bought arrangement.

I filled in the holes with single-flower stems, ornamental grasses, and a cute ceramic turkey (mounted on a stick).

The only way to get good at floral design is to practice often. When I was a student, I made at least one arrangement every week, and a wide variety of them. You can buy some books or DVDs to help you out, but in the end there is no recipe for a perfect arrangement. You will have to feel it out. Most of the time I think my designs look terrible because I know where every gap and stray flower and lopsided part is. However, most people will not notice these small imperfections.

4. Set the arrangement in its final decorative container.

And there you have it! A quite decent looking centerpiece for the kitchen table. You will need to replenish the water supply every few days. I use a syringe in order to avoid dumping water all over the table.

With practice (and with more tools and flowers to work with), your designs will start to look better and better. My designs aren't as nice as those from our local flower shop, but I think they are just as good as the local grocery store designs.

Additional tips:

1. Check out some library books about flower design. You can also watch free video tutorials on Youtube. More time consuming ways to learn include having a friend teach you, taking a class, or working at a flower shop (for free if you have to).

2. Invest in some supplies. Floral tape, water-soaking foam, a good pair of shears or knife, and perhaps even floral glue.

3. Use flowers and greenery that are free. Even city-dwellers can keep a houseplant around for greenery. You can also grow flowers in your garden or clip ornamental plants or tree branches around your house.

4. Dissect garage sale or purchased arrangements and salvage the supplies. Hubs buys me flowers once or twice a year, and I always save the containers and little ornamental bits to reuse. 

5. Buy discount flowers. At our local Kroger, sometimes they will discount bouquets that are starting to go limp. However, many flowers in the bouquet are still good and will last another week if they are taken care of. With a little creativity and greenery, those $5.00 flowers can look like $30.00.

6. Buy live plants when they are past their prime. Kroger and Walmart mark down orchids when there aren't many blooms left. After Christmas amaryllis bulbs go on sale, and in the spring you can find forced, potted tulip and hyacinth bulbs on sale after they have dropped their flowers. In late winter sometimes you can find houseplants on sale as well. Baby these discount plants for a year or so, and you will bring them back to life. Then next season, you will have plenty of free design material!

Til next time,
-Bethany

I remember several years ago browsing the portfolio of a costume seamstress. On her order page, she put this warning: "Remember, wearing an Elizabeth Swan costume will not make you look like Kiera Knightley. You will still look like you, in an Elizabeth Swan costume." I think Pinterest should come with a similar warning. Decorating you home with Pinterest crafts will not make your home look like the one on Pinterest. It will just look like YOUR home with a bunch of Pinterest crafts.

In addition to my annual Christmas wreath (plus one for Hubs' office door!) and centerpiece, this year I thought I'd try making some decorations for our mailbox. This was my latest Pinterest adventure, not without difficulties.

The total cost for all of my Christmas arrangements was about $5.50.

The Fight for Frugal Christmas Decorations
I'll admit, it's not easy to find cheap Christmas decorations in nice working condition.Hubs and I have found the used market (garage sales, thrift stores) for Christmas decorations to be really poor. Traditional decorations like lights and ornaments are hard to find for less than 75% of retail price. I don't think it's worth buying scratched up mismatching decorations for such a small discount. And it's not like people grow out of their Christmas decorations or give away hand-me-downs. We had a particularly bad experience this year with our used tree stand.

We found a thrift store tree stand for $1.50. However, it was missing parts and buying the special screws needed cost us $4.00. At home, we spent an hour adjusting and readjusting the tree in the stand. Finally we got it only-a-little crooked and decided that was good enough. We strung up the lights and did something else. About 30 minutes later, we were watching TV and all of a sudden the whole tree fell over. What a nightmare! Thankfully there were no ornaments on the tree yet. Once again, we tried to readjust the tree and I realized that the stand was made to use clamps, not single screws. Hubs went out to the shop and got some more screws to drill directly into the tree. It worked, and the tree has stayed up since.

I wonder if it was really worth it to buy a used tree stand. We only saved $5-$10 and it took us an hour or two and a falling tree to get it to work. A tree stand is something we will use for the next 20 or 30 years, and it might be worth it to buy one that works. 

Realities of Being Frugal
Despite what Pinterest and frugal blogs may imply, it can be difficult to make something cheap look expensive. 
One of my favorite bloggers has one of the most beautiful homes and backyard/garden I've ever seen. The photos she takes of her projects makes frugal living (making gifts, having an extremely small food budget, etc)- look absolutely glamorous. Some people would read this lady's blog and think that she has such a beautiful home because she is creative and frugal. The reality is that she and her husband paid dearly (and are still paying for) the home, and almost lost it in the years after 2008 when her husband was out of work.

Frugal people seem to have this idea that we can LOOK like a million dollars without paying for it. Because you know, we are so creative and have lots of skills to use. We think we can make something out of nothing. One time I was at a potluck and someone wanted me to try their soup. "Oh, you would like it- it's so frugal- there's like, nothing in it!" I tried the soup, and sure enough it tasted like nothing. If you put nothing in a soup, that's what you get... nothing. If you put a Christmas decoration on an unattractive mailbox, you still have an unattractive mailbox. Being creative and skillful can improve the situation, but it can't work magic.

That being said, I think Pinterest results will vary depending on how hardcore frugal you are. Personally I would not recommend doing a comparison photo... mine was just for the blog. :) I still think our mailbox looks more Christmas-y with the arrangement than without it, though. 

Have you tried making Pinterest projects? Do they ever turn out as good as the photo?

It's that time of year again! When everyone pulls out the box of Halloween/Thanksgiving/Autumn decorations and gives the house a facelift. Everyone, that is, except minimalist cheapo DIYers like me.

Last year I was committed to not spending a ton of money on Christmas decorations. 1) Because I'm a tightwad, and 2) because our apartment doesn't have a lot of storage space, and 3) because I was (and still am!) trying really hard to suppress the hoarder that lives inside of me. One of the decorations I came up with that was cheap and easy to store was a wreath of fresh evergreen branches. I used a few different kinds of greenery here on the property, some pinecones and a bow made from ribbon in my craft stash.

I decided this year to use the same idea for harvest time, but with fall colors and materials. It wasn't totally free because I bought $2.00 worth of fake flowers/leaves from the dollar store. I wanted some color that would last for many weeks.You can find nice fake flowers in garage sale free boxes or secondhand stores as well.  In addition to the fake stuff, I used several different grasses, golden rod, curly dock, wild rose hips, and hot peppers from my garden. Foraging isn't just for food and medicine!

I posted the video tutorial I used for my Christmas wreath in that article, but the directions are pretty simple. After collecting materials, I used floral tape (you could use wire or anything green) to make little bunches. 

After making the bunches, you can lay them on the metal wreath holder thingy and wrap it with wire. You may have to add more stuff, wrap with more wire or utilize a hot glue gun to keep some things from falling off. Then when everything is done, you can tie a ribbon to the metal frame and hang it wherever you want.

Some other decorations I decided to do for fall were setting out fall-ish candles (apple pie, pumpkin spice, etc.) that I already had or bought at garage sales. I bought an $0.88 harvest-themed hand towel at Walmart to hang on our oven door in place of my cherry-themed one. Another thing I've done is put some squashes on our porch. These decorations are semi-useful and inexpensive, yet not cheap-looking banners or window clings.

What is your favorite way to decorate for fall? How do you keep yourself from buying too many decorations?

Is anyone else out there LOVING the Spring weather? I sure am! Right outside our window a whole orchard of fruit trees are bursting into bloom.

Cut flowers can be very, very expensive but we all love them. In the coming years I would love to start my own cut flower garden, but until then I can still use tree blossoms! Any flowering tree or shrub will work, and many of these blossom in Spring before any of the other flowers have bloomed. Forsythia, lilacs, fruit trees or other flowering plants are wonderful for vase arrangements. I know that the big apple tree in the photo will not miss a few branches.

In addition to making a big vase arrangement for the kitchen table, I'll also take a small arrangement to the Farmer's Market tomorrow, and I used some blossoms already for a marshmallow photo that was uploaded to my bakery website.

I don't know about you, but I'm not really a fan of inflatables. Inflatable snowmen, inflatable Santas, reindeer and/or Christmas trees. I am also not really a fan of flashing neon Christmas lights. Tacky Christmases are just not for me.

Everyone has their own style; I get it. My style is a more subdued, classic, old-fashioned all-natural Christmas. The very first church I ever attended as a little girl was a little Methodist church down the road. Every year at Christmas the building was decorated in fresh greenery. The smell was so... Christmas-y. Not old and stale like some decorations used by other churches. Those plastic garlands- the kind that keep losing "feathers" until they look like a cat's wet tail. Now, there is a place for vintage decorations, but I really like the classiness of fresh greenery.

And why not make your own wreaths, centerpieces and garlands? Most of the materials are free, and how much fun to go tromping through the woods looking for supplies! You don't have to be a florist to make your own fresh, creative and professional-looking wreath. I made one this year with a reusable metal wreath form ($1.77 at Walmart) and some wire ($0.25 at Walmart). Walmart was selling ugly, plain little fresh wreaths for $7 each. My wreath was a fraction of the cost, but so much prettier. 

When we were in Guatemala, I watched a few Youtube videos on wreath-making. This was my favorite one, and I used the same method to make my wreath at home. It took about 30 minutes to assemble.

Before I made the wreath, I went out to the woods and found some pine trees and also picked up some pinecones, sumac berries, and hickory nuts for decoration. Then I came back up to the house and found another different evergreen tree and took some cuttings from that. When I got back, I had three different kinds of greens and some decorations for my wreath. When I got done the wreath, I made a bow out of some ribbon and added that as well. Then Hubs helped me hang it on our door outside.

Why stop at only a wreath? After I was done, I took some more greenery and made a candle centerpiece for our kitchen table. Now something like this takes a bit more skill than a wreath, but not much. Besides, flower arranging takes practice, and what better time to practice than when your "flowers" are free?