Beach House Decorating

We have been working on decorating the beach house that we bought from my parents a couple of years ago, and we have done most of it on a shoestring budget. The house that began as "shabby" is slowly becoming "chic", thanks to many trips to the flea market, and innumerable cans of spray paint. Our latest project has been making some wall decor.

I made some outlines of fish on sheets of newspaper, and then had my father-in-law cut out the shapes from scrap wood. Then, the wooden shapes sat around for about a year, give or take a few months. Finally, I got my kids to paint them up.

Younger daughter set to work painting (hint- when you are impatient, like us, use a hairdryer to dry acrylic paint almost instantly):

These went on the wall above the bed in one of the bedrooms:

Back in the spring, a storm threw a bunch of debris up onto the beach, but for us, it was treasure found. A piece of painted green scrap wood became a very cute sign in the hands of oldest daughter:

 We added more painted fish to make a grouping in another of the bedrooms:

One of our next projects will be to clean up and paint these vintage metal lawn chairs- I'm thinking cherry red, what do you think?

What are some of your favorite thrifty decorating tips- I'd love to know!

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Also, don't forget the book blog tour next week, featuring these fabulous "guests" (I feel like Johnny Carson- wow, I'm dating myself... maybe I should have said Conan...)

Sandi Anderson of A Legacy of Stitches
Brenda Riddle of Acorn Quilt and Gift Company
Jill Finley of Jillily Studio
Michele Foster of The Quilting Gallery
Natalie Lymer of Cinderberry Stitches
Pat Sloan, quilting queen extraordinaire