A New Meaning to "Window Treatment"

So here I am, slinking quietly back into blogland. I think I'm finally settled enough at my new job to maybe start posting regularly again. Let's hope!

Meanwhile, I am madly in love with this awesome and easy-looking project from The Shabby Chic Cottage:

I would not complain about having one of those in my house. Time to start looking for windows!

Be sure to visit the Shabby Chic Cottage and see all the awesome posts there.

Five Dollar Decor - Arts & Crafts Style

So, Mr. Scrimp and I were trying to figure out a good five dollar decor topic. We couldn't come up with one for the longest time, and then it hit me! Instead of talking about five variations on one thing--wall coverings, or whatever--what if I looked at five things you can add to or change about a room to make it feel more like a certain style of decor?

So this week, I dug up five things that you can do to make a room feel more Arts & Crafts. Now, when I say Arts & Crafts, I'm not talking about the thing you do with fingerpaint and popsicle sticks in kindergarten. No, I'm referring to the design movement pioneered by William Morris and John Ruskin at the turn of the century.

Think early Tiffany lamps, Stickley furniture, Frank Lloyd Wright, exposed wood beams, simple fabrics, geometric patterns, and leaded glass. The key here is simplicity. You should be able to replicate all of the following things for five dollars each.

Recap

Well, my blogging vacation extended quite a bit longer than I initially ancticipated. It took a little while to get back into the swing of working full-time after nearly two weeks off, but now it's the weekend, Mr. Scrimp is working tonight, I've done my grocery shopping for next week (and, I'm sad to say, finally broke my week's-groceries-for-under-$30 streak, which had been going on since late October), and put dinner on the stove.

Our trip to Columbus was flat-out amazing. We stayed with some friends of ours, but spent a great deal of time just wandering around the city. Mr. Scrimp lived there for a while after college--in fact, when we started dating (long-distance), he was in Columbus. Needles to say, I was pretty excited about seeing it for the first time after hearing about it for so long.

You can check out a play-by-play over on my Twitter page. I'd say the highlights were visiting Schmidt's Sausage Haus (where Mr. Scrimp manfully volunteered to let me take the grainy cell phone photo you see on the right, for archival purposes), the North Market, and the Book Loft. We ate a lot of delicious food, wandered through a 32-room bookstore in a huge old house, looked at all kinds of antiques (including a signed Chagall print that was just hanging with a bunch of random junk in a corner), and generally enjoyed ourselves. It was a perfect end or beginning of the year, depending on how you look at it.

But now, of course, it's January. Time to go back to the Scrimpalicious lifestyle and not go gallivanting all over Ohio, eating at restaurants and browsing high-end antique stores.

How did you celebrate the New Year?