Homemaking On A Dime: Hosting Company

Today is the final post in the Homemaking On A Dime series! It has been really fun talking all things homemaking, sharing tips for how to do it on a budget, and reading all of your ideas! Thanks for sticking with me through it, and I hope it was helpful and entertaining for you as well.  This week we are talking about ways to host company while on a budget. Opening our homes is so important and can be so much fun, but if you are tight on funds, you may not be as willing to do it very regularly. So let's get right to it, and talk about some ways to minimize the cost of having people over. 

Go easy on beverages If you are having a meal, or even if you're not, calm down with the drinks already! I think a lot of people feel like they need to have 16 different drink options at each meal, but I think we can honestly say that most people will be fine with water or maybe one other option. There are really inexpensive drink mixes, or a good way to mix it up would be to do some infused water with things you already have like berries, or lemon and lime. 

Themed dinners Instead of creating a big, fancy feast, try coming up with a themed dinner. Taco night, baked potato bar, soup supper, or something similar. A lot of these kinds of themes will also allow you to focus on one main thing and just provide several toppings. Like have a bunch of baked potatoes (so cheap), and provide cheese, sour cream, broccoli, bacon, etc. and have people create their own. This also works well with doing personal pizzas, or shish kabobs! People love picking out their own stuff, so it's entertainment AND dinner. What more could you want?!  Game night Skip the dinner and go straight for the games. If you can't afford to feed several extra people, don't feel like you have to have them over for a meal! Ask some friends over for a game night and have everyone bring a game and snack to share. Or just serve dessert and drinks. We love games and we often enjoy having people over for games after our kids have gone to bed. 

Have a fire Something about fires just draw people in. The fire pit we bought last year at Target has been one of our best entertaining investments thus far! We have had countless conversations, laughs, and marshmallows around that thing. People love to just sit outside in nature, roasting some mallows and chatting long after the sun has gone down. 

Have a pot luck If you want to get together with a group of people, host a pot luck! This works out well for larger crowds so that everyone can bring something and everyone has plenty to eat! We do something similar every year for July 4th. You could provide the main dish and everyone could bring a side or dessert, or you could grill out and everyone could bring what they want. The options are endless with pot lucks!  Skip the fancy feast Instead of having bacon wrapped filet mignon topped with expensive cheeses and mushrooms, dial it down a notch and have a casserole and a few sides, or a big pot of soup or stew. People will be just as happy with that (maybe happier), and it will save you some big bucks. Don't feel like you have to go all out just to have someone over (but if you like to, that's great too...it can definitely be fun). There are so many meals you can make really inexpensively to feed a large crowd! 
Any other ideas for hosting on a dime?! 
I hope you have enjoyed this series! I am looking forward to hearing how you have used some of these tips over the last 5 weeks! 

Homemaking On A Dime: Throwing Parties

Parties are so much fun, aren't they?! I have always loved throwing parties, but since having kids and having infinitely more parties to host and attend, it can be stressful to come up with ways to do it without spending hundreds of dollars. Since I have 2 kids whose birthdays fall about 6 months apart every year, I definitely can't afford to be hosting really expensive parties that often. And our family is only getting bigger! Whether you are hosting a preschooler's birthday party, a baby shower, or an anniversary bash, hopefully you will be able to put some of these tips into practice. 

Don't provide a meal This is probably contrary to what most hosts would say, but we all know this is the most expensive part! You can still throw a stellar party without having a meal at it. For my kid's birthdays, I have done some of both, but I typically try to have their party in late afternoon-after lunch but before dinner. A late morning would work out well, also. This way, people don't expect to get a full meal and you aren't busting your wallet to provide it. Even if you have 20 guests and get $5 Little Caesar's pizzas, that will still add up really fast. Instead of providing a full meal, try offering themed snacks, dessert only, or finger food choices. These ideas could turn out really cute and be way less expensive! For my oldest daughter's first birthday party, we had a rainbow theme, and offered snack foods in each color of the rainbow (strawberries with dip, cheese puffs, vanilla pudding, guacamole, blue corn chips, grape jello), as well as drinks and cupcakes that I made.

Choose a theme early If you're going to have a party theme, pick one early! This way you can be on the look out for things on sale and you will have extra time to DIY things or shop at thrift stores for items. This will also give you lots of time to peruse Pinterest for ideas, of course ;)  Make your own invitations and paper goods  Making your own invitations does not have to be intimidating. There are so many tutorials out there these days and with free websites, like PicMonkey or Canva, you have lots of tools available at your fingertips! Search Pinterest or etsy for ideas you like, and then create something similar on your own. This may save you quite a bit, although you can sometimes find custom PDF invitations for a pretty good price. 

If you are going to make several paper goods, like printables, cupcake toppers, etc. then you will probably save quite a bit by making your own! I made these food labels and water bottle labels really easily in My Memories Suite.

Use what you have You probably have a lot of things around your house that you can use already! Using vases to put themed decor in, or adding household items for a little touch. Think outside the box and see what you have laying around in your home already. For my younger daughter's first birthday, we were in the middle of moving so we just had a small family party and I got out the set of mason jars I already had, and added ribbon and cute straws to make it a functional decor piece for guests to drink from. 

Showcase pictures Photos are cheap to print, easy to make a cute display from, and everyone loves them! Win-win-win! There are tons of cute ideas out there for cute photo displays. I try to always have pictures out at every party I host. It gives people something to look at and do, as well. Some ideas I've used: tri fold board with weekly baby pictures, monthly pictures on a ribbon with sparkly clothes pins, cake smash photos in clear frames on food table, professional yearly photos blown up as decor pieces, photos in frames painted to match theme, pictures of baby and parents at same age to compare.

Provide games & activities Instead of hosting the party somewhere expensive with fun activities, try coming up with a few games of your own. We have done simple things such as a guessing game to estimate how many photos we took of our daughter in her first year of life. The winner got a gift card to the froyo place. We have also done surveys where people tried to fill in the blank on things about our girls (favorite book, color, what she calls the dog, etc.) At the most recent party, we had a photo scene set up...photo booths are a big hit as well. At kids' parties, having activities for both the adults and the kids is always a good idea. We set up lawn games like Baggo if the weather is nice.

Homemaking On A Dime: Organizing Your Home

Welcome to week 3 of the Homemaking On A Dime series! This week we are going to be talking about how to organize your home on a budget. I know that there are so many blog posts, articles, and ideas floating around about how to organize your home, and they all have really great ideas! The thing that I have found when organizing my house is that everything is really particular to your house. What works in your home probably won't work exactly the same way in mine. As much as I want to take someone's great closet organization idea and put it in my own closet, my closet isn't going to be laid out exactly the same way. That can make organizing tricky. You often have to come up with your own ideas and own materials based on your space and budget. Hopefully some of these ideas for doing it inexpensively will come in handy. 

97 cent shoe boxes Do yourself a favor and get some of these. No, get a lot of these. I feel like I'm constantly finding new ways to use them and going back to the store for more! At Target, I believe they are 97 cents, and I think they are something like 94 cents at Wal-Mart. You can also get them at the Dollar Tree for $1. A few weeks ago, when I was organizing my pantry, I went to get a few from Target and they were on sale for 75 cents. These are seriously the best! I use them in my pantry for drink mixes, cups and tops for a small blender I have, and miscellaneous. I have them in my girls' playroom for some of their smaller toys like Minnie Mouse dolls, my daughter's Innotab with games, Peppa Pig toys, etc. We have one in our hall closet with batteries in it. I use them under my sink without the lids to organize cleaning supplies. I honestly think I have at least one in every room. They stack nicely too, which is great! 

Dollar Tree The Dollar Tree has a ton of organizing items. I have gotten things several times for small organization projects, such as little plastic baskets, desk organizing bins, etc. Everything is $1 so I am not spending $20+ to organize one little space, which is great! 
Target dollar spot If you have never bought organizing materials from the dollar spot at Target, you are MISSING OUT! I have gotten so many little organizing things here and there! My latest and greatest find was these magazine files with a chalkboard label that I use to organize some food in my pantry. I am waiting on my Target to get more in stock so I can organize my freezer this way, too! I have found a lot of little things here including file folders, notebooks, jars, and random containers.

Use wall space Rather than getting some big and expensive organizing system, I highly recommend using wall space to organize. I typically do this in the form of shelves--I love shelves!

 Shelves are great because you can put baskets or little buckets on them, but you can also just do open storage. If shelves are in your kitchen, put some pretty dishes on them and you have decor and organization in one! In my bathroom, I bought some clear glass jars from Walmart in different sizes and store some of our bathroom stuff in them, like cotton balls, q-tips, etc.

 I also have this caddy that I talked about in week 1, from Ikea on a wall in my kitchen, which was inexpensive and organized everything really nicely for me.  Be wary of baskets I love baskets as much as the next guy, but you have to be careful with them. Baskets are not cheap, and they add up really quickly. A few months ago I was looking at baskets for a closet organization project, and even looking at stores where I could get discounts (Like 50% off at Hobby Lobby), it still would have been several hundred dollars once I got all I needed. Just be cautious and know that it adds up fast and baskets don't always hold a ton.  Get creative It's amazing what kinds of items you can organize with it you just put a little creativity into it. I recently read this post where Amanda organized her junk drawer using items from her recycling bin! Totally free! I'm sure there are awesome ideas floating around all over the internet for this!  What other ideas do you have for cheap organization?!  

Homemaking on a Dime: Furnishing Your Home

Welcome back to the Homemaking on a Dime series! I am really excited to keep talking about how to be an awesome homemaker on a budget...two of my favorite things put together! This week we are going to talk about some tips for furnishing your home on the cheap. Furniture can be REALLY expensive, and if you have just moved or are re-furnishing a room, you'll quickly find how fast it all adds up. Here are some of the ways I have furnished our new home without going into major debt! 

Look for sales and wait Waiting is really hard. But I have found that with big purchases like furniture, it pays off to wait. Before we moved into our new house, I knew that I really wanted some of these bar chairs from Target. After we moved in and found that we were more broke than we thought we'd be, I knew it wasn't feasible to buy 3 of them right then. I thought about buying one at a time, which would have been a good plan also, but I just waited. One day, I was shopping at Target and looked down the furniture aisle and saw a sign underneath the chairs saying that they were 30% off using the Cartwheel app! I knew that was the time to finally get them. Each chair being 30% off, plus saving another 5% on my red card meant that I basically 3 chairs for the price or 2! Waiting totally paid off in this case. It was kind of weird not having any chairs at the bar for awhile, but I saved so much this way! 

Hand Me Downs  Hand me down furniture is the best thing ever. When we were first married, practically our whole apartment was furnished through hand me downs from our parents' various moves. Actually, I take it back, I think our entire place was...I honestly don't think we bought a single piece of furniture until our house. If you know a friend or family member is moving or re-furnishing, ask them if they have any furniture they are looking to get rid of for a small price. Most of the time, when people are moving, they are ready to get rid of all their stuff, so I'm sure they will be happy to have you take it off their hands. Our kitchen table was my mom's prior to us getting married in 2008, and I sat at it every day from probably 7th grade on when we got it. When my mom got married, her husband had a table, so she saved it for me, knowing I'd need one sometime in the near future. This FREE table has lasted my little family 6+ years (not including the time my mom had it, too)! 

Cover It Up If you are able to find a piece of furniture on Craigslist, Goodwill, garage sale, etc. or from a loved one that is cheap or free, but maybe not the best looking piece of furniture, consider getting a cover for it. When we moved into our current home, we knew we had to furnish two living areas, and had nothing to do it with because the buyers of our previous house wrote our one large sectional into their offer. I was at my husband's aunt's house one day and she was showing me their new furniture. Later, I was thinking "I wonder what they did with their old stuff" because I knew they kept their things in good condition and it would be better quality than anything I could find on Craigslist or elsewhere, so I asked her, and she said they were keeping one piece and the couch was up for grabs! The only downside is that it was totally white, and we have two toddlers. That would be a total disaster waiting to happen, so I just bought a couch cover at Target that was something like 40% off and its perfect for our living room. 

Re-purpose It If you no longer have a need for a piece of furniture, you could consider using it for something else. I have seen tons of ideas floating around Pinterest for things to do with old cribs. The possibilities are endless! This also works the opposite way--if you have a need for something new, see if you can repurpose something you already have. Try using a night stand as an end table or vice versa. 
Refinish It  If you already have a fine piece of furniture, but its not that eye catching, or doesn't fit with your decor anymore, consider refinishing it. There are so many tutorials out there these days for painting furniture, staining, reupholstering, etc. This is also a great idea for Goodwill finds.I have done this with several items in our home. I bought an old dresser at a garage sale and turned it into an entertainment center (post will come on that someday). I had searched here and there throughout my pregnancy for a nightstand for my daughter's nursery, and finally one random day I saw the perfect nightstand for something like $7 at Goodwill. It was totally ugly, but it turned out fabulously.  (sorry for the poor quality before photo)

This ombre dresser was a Walmart dresser I had owned for years, and I wanted to use it in my girls' room when we moved. I simply used a few jars of sample paint in coordinating colors. Easy and cheap! 

Liquidation or Discount Furniture Stores If you haven't checked your furniture liquidation or discount stores, you may be missing out! In most cases, the quality is not going to be as good as if you were shopping on Furniture Row, but you can't beat the price. With little kids and pets, we figure our furniture is not bound to last a super long time anyway, so we are really comfortable with paying a smaller price for lower quality in this stage of life. We bought our sectional for hundreds, if not thousands less than we could have gotten a similar style at a regular furniture store.
Other stores to check: Target {Cartwheel app savings + %5 red card discount really adds up with bigger purchases} Wal-Mart TJ Maxx Home Goods Hobby Lobby  {things are often on sale,& if not, you can get a 40% off coupon on their site any time} Overstock Amazon Local consignment stores  Do you have any other tips for furnishing cheaply? How about stores to find inexpensive furniture at?

Homemaking On A Dime: Decorating Your Home

Welcome to the first installment of the Homemaking on a Dime series! I am really excited to kick it off today, talking about decorating your home with a small budget. Even if your decorating budget isn't that small, who doesn't love saving money and finding things for a steal?  I recently found out, when we moved and downsized, that moving is really stinkin' expensive. There are tons of hidden costs and unexpected things always come up, even when you've planned well. Not to mention that many of the items from your old home simply don't work in your new home. I made as much of my old decor work as I could, but there were several rooms in my home where I was pretty much starting from scratch. Curtains and pillows and frames and hooks all add up really fast! Here are some ways that I stretched my dollar. 

Go slow This is obviously a really simple tip, but I feel like it needs to be said. When we bought our first house, I wanted everything done right away, so I went and bought a bunch of cheap stuff like $5 Wal-Mart curtains just to get stuff up and "done". Well, of course, within a year or two I hated everything and wanted to redecorate my entire house. This time, I made a vow to myself that I would go slow. I would really live in the space and get a feel for how I use it before I completely finish a room, and I will really think about my style and ONLY buy and place things in my home that fit within that vision! Yes, it can be frustrating to have bare windows or no rug in a room for months and months, but this also gives you a chance to really think about if that is the item you want, and also to save up for it!  Bring out old items One of my favorite things that I have been doing is re-using my own decor items. When I get sick of an item, I will put it in our storage area and then I don't see it for awhile. When I get sick of my new decor, I go down and look through things and come up with a totally new arrangement, and for free! This works well if you get sick of the same thing after awhile. I love swapping out things here and there on my big Ikea shelf to give it a completely new feel! It also works well to move things from room to room. Just because the owl has always lived in my living room, doesn't mean I couldn't move it to a bathroom shelf, or the girls' dresser. Most of the items I've brought from my old house into my new one aren't in the same rooms that they were there! 

DIY This one goes without saying, and if you aren't a DIY'er, don't hate me for this! Hear me out. DIY'ing can be frustrating if you don't feel like you are good at it, but it doesn't have to be complicated. That yellow chalk board on my big shelf? Yeah that thing was like $2 at a craft store (either Joann's or Michael's, I can't remember) and had an unfinished frame, so I just painted it with yellow craft paint to match my curtains. DIY'ing can certainly save money sometimes, but sometimes you have to be careful. I have looked into making my own curtains several times, and it has never been cheaper to buy all of the fabric I would need than to buy curtains from Target. Ever! Doing it yourself is also a great way to get your home decorated in the "in between". I have this giant wall next to my kitchen table that I have had an idea for, but I don't currently have time or supplies for it, so the wall just sat blank for 6+ months. I finally decided one day on a whim to put this banner up that I had made for my daughter's birthday party! I have ended up liking it so much (it is huge so it takes up the whole wall), that I am going to make one for each season and then change them out. The banner template was just a few dollars at Hobby Lobby, plus the cost of scrapbook paper (next to nothing), and I can use both sides of it, so I only need 2 to do all 4 seasons! Score! Someday, I will get around to my big project, but for now, this easy DIY is filling in just fine. 

Gifts This one can be tricky, but if you have family and/or friends who want specific gift ideas from you, this is a great way to get home decor! For my birthday last summer, my mom wanted to get me something for the new house, but wasn't sure what I needed or wanted. When she was here visiting, she noticed that we had no comforter or bed set and that was because I had been saving up to buy the one I wanted, so she got it for me for my birthday instead! If you have a birthday or holiday coming up within a few months, maybe you can hold out on a specific item of decor until then.
Functional decor Sometimes, items you already need in your home are really cute. Use these as decor! I saw on instagram the other day, a lady posted a picture of her new fish and joked that it was doubling as decor, but it totally was! She had it in a super cute little apothecary jar, with colorful rocks that matched her decor, and on a pretty tray. Genius! Now she has a fish for her kids, and decor for that corner of her house! Honey, if you were ever going to actually convince me to get a fish, this is the way... We got this little caddy system at Ikea {rail//basket//hooks//jars. In my kitchen it doubles as decor and a functional and necessary item. I need all of those things, and now it is all pretty to look at as well! 

Less is more If you can't afford to completely decorate, or overhaul an entire room, think about what is going to make the biggest difference in the room. Personally, I always think window treatments make a huge difference and are such a statement. They change the whole feel of a room and make it look completely different. Not to mention, they make things feel a lot cozier and more homey! Maybe you don't have enough in your budget to buy all the pieces you want for your gallery wall, so while you are collecting them, hang something you already have instead. Then work on collecting your stuff over time.  Other money saving decor ideas include: ::Thrift shopping:: Goodwill, local thrift shops, garage sales, Facebook sale pages, etc. ::Shopping sales:: Looking for Cartwheel deals, coupons, or waiting until things go on sale. ::"Cheap" stores:: Stores like TJ Maxx, Ross, etc. often have really inexpensive decor items. Ikea is another great place to go for things like lighting, plants, frames, and more. Some Ikea items will ship, if you don't have a store locally. ::Swap with friends:: If you are like me and get sick of the same thing, see if you have any friends who would want to swap some decor pieces with you!  If you have any other tips or ideas for decorating your home on the cheap, please leave them in the comments below! I would love to read them!! 

New Series: Homemaking on a Dime

I am super excited to be kicking off this new series soon! This series, Homemaking on a Dime, was actually one of the very first ideas I had when I started this blog, but I just haven't ever gotten around to writing it...until now! 

The series will contain 5 parts over 5 weeks. Throughout the series, I will post about 5 different frugal homemaking topics: 

• Decorating your home
• Furnishing your home
• Organizing your home
• Throwing parties
• Hosting company

All on a budget! 

I will be including lots of ideas in each post of how to do all of these things when money is tight!

Ever since we moved into our new home and downsized last April, I have been working on creating a warm and cozy, welcoming home for my family and friends and I've had to get creative sometimes with how to do it on the cheap. 

Even if you're not looking to decorate a new home, or you're not on a tight budget, I still hope that you will find a lot of these ideas helpful and inspiring! 

If you have any ideas or tips that fall into any of these categories that the world needs to know, send them my way and I will be sure to include them. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to kicking off part 1 next week!