thrifty: valentine's day decor

One of my favorite ways to stay thrifty and within our budget is to shop my home. I have collected a lot of stuff in my 28 years of life. A lot. I'm trying to declutter and get rid of excess items. We've done well with that through yard sales and donations. So now we are trying to be sure we aren't buying more unnecessary stuff to replace it with.

I love decorating and celebrating holidays. But I don't have a lot of decorations for anything besides fall/Thanksgiving and Christmas. I mostly just focus on decorating my mantle and having a fun holiday wreath on the front door. 

After the Christmas decor was packed away, my decorating focus was Valentine's Day. I got a few items from Pinterest and then started shopping my home to see what I already had that I could repurpose. 

 

I made two garlands. For one of them I used glittery foam hearts that I bought on clearance last February for 50 cents and some twine I had in the garage. I made the other garland with pom pom balls I already had. I used a needle and fishing line to connect them. 

On the left side, I use an old canister that my mom gave me paired with Olivia's blocks to spell "LOVE" and the book we gave her for Valentine's Day last year.

On the right side, I used a vintage mason jar to hold some heart paper straws that I picked up from the dollar section at Target. I also added a few of Julianna's puffy heart stickers to the jar. The love sign is from Hobby Lobby about 6 years ago. I added a wedding picture and a sweet picture of the girls.

I only spent $1 to create this since I shopped my home for everything else!

My second project took me forever to complete. I had the idea the day after Christmas but it took about 3 weeks of the wreath sitting on my kitchen counter before I got to work.

My friend gave me the straw wreath when she got married and her last name changed. It already had the letter "S" on it. I changed the color of the yarn to pink, gave the letter a fresh coat of white spray paint, and added on the rest of my foam hearts.

The yarn was a pain. It's imperfect but that's ok. It was made with lots of love. I love how the wreath looks on our red front door. This project was completely free because of shopping my home and repurposing the old wreath from my friend. I love thrifty decor!