Top of China Cabinet

Well, I don’t have a mantel in my house.  We live in a farm house, parts of which are 100+ years old, but there are no longer any fireplaces.  So I have a couple substitutes: this China Cabinet/hutch and the other hutch in the kitchen. The other hutch has a more refined-fancy look, but with this I decided to go for a more classic colors and look on this one with a focus on children.  Ice-cream doesn’t really make me think of Christmas, but that’s where the churn stays, and children enjoy ice-cream, so I thought I’d leave it. I hope to post about the rest of the cabinet later, and if I do I’ll add

Christmas Hutch

In the past I’ve looked at the date for Christmas linkys I’ve thought, “But I’m not all decorated by then”.  Well, this year since we didn’t get to make the trip to visit family for Thanksgiving, and wanted to be ready early since I had my wisdom teeth out last week, we were almost completely decorated before December came around.  This is the hutch just inside our main door.  It’s supposed to be a staging area, but I’ve been keeping it pretty decorated for holidays this year (Valentines Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Summer, & Thanksgiving) so that hasn’t worked out to well.  The runner is the same one I used for Valentines (it’s the back of the one I used for Thanksgiving.). The sleigh is where we put the cards we receive until they are open and hung in their place (we tend to open the cards together as a family).  This is the nativity scene is one I picked up a few

Bookshelves

Well, this is my newest project:

My sister decided that she didn’t want these bookshelves anymore, so I’ve “adopted” them.  Now it’s time to find all my books, get them together, and organize them (which I enjoy doing).

Patriotic Summer Hutch

For summer, I’m decorating in a patriotic theme since 3 of the main patriotic holidays are in a just over a one month span from Memorial Day through Flag Day to July Forth. I want to decorate the whole kitchen, so this may change as I get more time to work on this. But this is what I have right now:

Please ignore the photos in the frame, I have to find and get in the right size

Frugal decorating finds

Yesterday my mother, sister and I took a little "girls’ shopping trip", yesterday. I was able to get a few things for decorating all for under $2.

The candy was free after Extra Bucks from CVS. I plan to use the green (and probably orange since the Irish flag has both colors) jelly beans to decorate for St. Patrick's Day which I’m in the midst of trying to decorate for. I will probably use them for Easter, too, along with the eggs. The hearts necklace is for next Valentines Day.

We got the book at our library for $0.20. We have some cookbooks on display on the bottom of our hutch in our kitchen, but really could use more, plus my sister enjoys trying new recipes and may be able to make use of it in her blog: Nurturing Cruise.

I'm linking up to:

Coupon Teacher's Thrifty Thursday

Jane @ Finding Fabulous