Thriving with Autism: A thrifty girls version of Valentine's decorations

This year, we are hoping to make some home improvements. And I'm starting that off with some simple home decorating around the house. At a minimum, I want to at least decorate the mantle for the different holidays and celebrations throughout the year. Now, I'm not the best person at decorating. I struggle with trying to find things that match. I'm filled with self doubt on whether or not this picture frame would match with that candle holder.

I like things to match. If you have seen me, you know that my handbag, scarf, gloves, and winter coat all coordinate. But I really have a hard time throwing things together for the house. It's funny. I could make huge life changing decisions with relative ease. I knew that I wanted to marry Alex and have kids within a few months, knew that I wanted to move to Kansas once we visited, knew that I needed to end my career when we moved. But ask me what sofa and ottoman to pick out, and I become the queen of indecision. But thanks to Pinterest, I can now rip off...I mean become inspired...people from all over.

So after pouring over Pinterest, I found some things that I thought I could make on my own. I bought most of the things at Dollar Tree. But a couple of items were purchased from Michael's and Hobby Lobby.

Here's a list of what I bought.

Dollar Tree-
Crepe paper rolls in pink (4 rolls)- 2 rolls/$1
Decorated shredded paper in pink and red 2 bags at $1 each
Tissue paper in pink- 1 pack for $1
Tall Valentine's glasses (2)- $1 each
Valentine's pink scarf- $1
Valentine heart table scatter (2 packs)- $1 each
Foam wreath- $1
2 Vases- $1 each

Michael's-
Foam balls (2)- $2.99 each
Dark pink crepe paper rolls 3-$1.99 each

Hobby Lobby-
Valentine foam heart pack with ribbon trim- $5.99
Valentine heart floral pick- $1.99
Craft picture frame- $2.99

So I spent less than $40. But truth be told, I could have spent less. I didn't need as much crepe paper as I had thought. And I could have cut out one or 2 vases from the mantle.

I started out by making what I call flower balls. There's probably some fancy name for them. But I like flower balls. I headed over to Michael's to buy 2 styrofoam balls. With my two balls in hand ; ), I headed over to Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby for the rest of the supplies.

Once home, I started making my paper flowers to cover the foam balls. I took the crepe paper and cut it into 24" strips. Then fold it and start rolling.

And rolling, until it looks like a flower. Sort of.

Then you keep going and going and going...

Until you have enough flowers to cover 2 foam balls. You will need a lot of flowers. Once I had my flowers, I just used my glue gun to start sticking them onto the foam balls. Shockingly, I only burned myself about 10 times.

I moved on to the wreath next. The cheap Dollar Tree wreaths are green, so I used my left over crepe paper and wrapped the wreath. Then I took the tissue paper and cut it into 4x6 pieces.

Then I twisted the pieces like so.

Once I had all of the pieces, I used my handy glue gun, and started to stick them onto the wreath.

Surprisingly, I managed to burn myself less than with the foam balls. Hey, I'm getting better at this stuff!

I had some left over crepe paper flowers, so I used them to fill in some gaps on the wreath. I finished it off by tying the scarf around the top.

Next, I went to town on the craft picture frame.

It started like this.

I took the table scatter hearts, and you guessed it. I used my glue gun. Only this time, I didn't burn myself.

The rest went along much quicker. I used either decorative shredded paper, Valentine's table scatter, or puffy foam hearts to fill the vases and glasses. I used some ribbon that I already had, just to add a little extra pink to it.