Decorating on a Budget

I saw the neatest thing when my husband and I were house hunting. A family actually painted one wall to look like a race track and glued hot wheels to the wall. SO CUTE!
The cost of paint and less than $1 a car, you could have a really fun room. One issue that could arise, them wanting to play with the stationary cars - LOL!

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You will be surprised at what a difference a coat of bright paint will do for a room. The next step is to have co-coordinating bed covers. I've frequently used a cheerful bed sheet as a bedspread and not even tried to make the rest of the bedding match.

You may be able to find inexpensive decorations at a party store to hang on the wall. I pinned up a folded bandana and hung up a cheap cowboy hat over it on the wall and on another I hung a really cheap flat form of a bull with horns. My daughter hung up a children's quilt on another wall. I also found cowboy themed drapes at a thrift store. Making curtains out of sale fabric is also easy and attractive. And you can frequently find framed posters of cartoon characters at thrift stores or just tape up posters from any store.

Oops paint at Lowes or Home Depot is very cheep. Paint something fun on their walls. If you don't think you can do the painting then find a friend who will swap painting something for babysitting so she can get a night out. Posters are cheep. To decorate our house we bought picture frames from a resale shop, paid about $1 a frame, then painted them all fun colors. I cut out calender pictures of beaches and stuck them in the frames. Made a beautiful wall. Everyone commented on how much they loved it.

My son has a sports theme. I chose it win he was very young, because I new it was a theme that could stay with him until college. We painted his room a neutral tan, bought an inexpensive navy comfortor and then accented the room with sports things. I found some iron outlines of sports players (football, basketball, skateboard) in an ABC catelog. I found sports photos in magazines and old calendars and framed them. I also found a photo collage and filled it with pictures of my son. There are some shelves that my husband made out of scrap wood and we have an old baseball mit, baseball, football helmet, football and bowling trophy that we found at garage sales or that my husband had kept. We just recently picked up a big book of baseball cards from a garage sale that I will pick through and hang some in a frame. You can find frames very cheep at walmart, target or many other stores. I found a football shaped lamp at Hobby Lobby for $10. You can also find posters pretty cheep if you keep your eyes open. Good Luck. I am sure whatever you come up with will be great.

We painted a tree on the wall in my daughter's room. It didn't take much paint, so we were able to use sample sizes. I went to a craft store and got wooden painted cutouts to put in the tree...butterflies, ladybugs, etc. The whole project cost less than $15 and her room was completely transformed. I know this may not be what your boys would want. However, painting something on the wall is so cheap and actually easy. I am not artistic at all! However, I chose something very easy to draw and outlined with a pencil so that I could easy correct my mistakes. Look for photos online or drawing websites. $15 is very reasonable and the room can be completely transformed.

I painted a tree on my daughter's wall, and a flower garden, and a climbing vine. I put little velcro squares all over, and bought some of the wooden cutouts from Hobby Lobby. I put the other half of the velcro on the backs of the flowers, bugs and apples. That way, they can move the shapes around the room. You could paint water and clouds and get boats and airplane cutouts, as well as bugs and birds. We also started with light blue on one side and moved to dark blue on the other side, so it is morning into evening. The dark blue side has a moon and glow in the dark stars.

We use the wall stickers from Target to decorate. They remove cleanly so you can change them when they get older. Just be sure to clean the wall before you put them on! My daughter was so excited that she put them on her walls by herself without reading the directions as a "surprise." They fell off within a month. Plus, she moved them around a lot while she was "decorating."

I made a duvet cover using two bedsheets, one decorated sheet and one plain. This is great because we can pull the cover off and throw it in the wash. We covered her "babyish" comforter with the new cover. I cut up the fitted sheet to make curtains.

We decorated the rest of her room with her stuff. She had a sombrero from Mexico so we put that on the wall. She had some neat stuffed animals so they got displayed. It's amazing what you can do with what you already have!

Not sure what your theme's are, but my son has dinosaurs. His room is a bright green, then I drew large dino's on his walls (2-3ft big) and painted them solid a darker green color. I bought his bedset at Kohls with a 30% off coupon (which you can get the code from coupon mountain). Paint on the walls can go a long way. When you walk into my son's room, there are dino's all over. he loves it!

Also, check out Ikea- they have cute CHEAP stuff for kids rooms.

When my son was born I decorated his nursery on a budget- and the stuff was so cute! I cut out cardboard shaped animals(sheep), and hot glued fabric to it- with stuffing in it. I could see doing something similar for your sons with cars or whatever they are into! Another fun idea is to paint chalkboard/magnetic paint on the walls. Simply going to Target/Walmart and finding some inexpensive bedspreads and sheets, finding a fun paint color to go with and maybe some cheap curtains would be fun.

you could let them pick out a theme, then let them paint (use the pop-up paints or something fun) pictures... frame and hang them on the walls?

Hi there!

It really is amazing at what a difference a new coat of paint will do! Paint with a color that you just absolutely love - that will get you going!

Also, Target sells these really neat stick on's for the walls. They don't do any harm to paint. They have several to choose from. I bought blue, green and white polka dots for my 4 year old son's bedroom. They look great on the blue paint that he has. I just stuck them randomly over one wall.

Michael's has really great scrapbook paper. You could put several pieces in several frames. Michaels also has great deals on frames, as does Garden Ridge. Look for Michael's coupons in the mail.

Have fun.

Don't forget IKEA! They have great prices on bedding. Very cute, too.

I love Carrie N's suggestin of painting chalkbpard paint on the walls. I remember my parents did that on the side of our fridge and when I was growing up that was the coolest thing ever! I want to do it for my child when she gets old enough but we have textures walls. So I want to paint it on her closet door, which is a smooth texture. They also have glow in the dark pait.
It depends on what your kids are into and if they share the same room. You could always do a boating/ocean room. some idea for that might be to find an old steering wheel (pic-n-pull if you have one) and mount it to the wall. maybe find some old gauges and do the same. You can hang ropes with knots in them (get the cheap kind from home depo) in the corners of the room. Create sails with an old plain sheet, flexi-wire and a broom stick (you can place it near their bed if it can be fixed to the wall for safety). You can paint half of the wall blue and in the blue part place cardstock sea creatures (made by you or purchased) on velro (one part on the wall the other on the creature) on the walls. The child would be able to take the sea creatures down and re arrange them.
You can do the same sort of thing with a car theme, fishing, camping/outdoors, farm, or whatever you can think of. For easy window treatments you can dip dye (using RIT dye) an old plain (white or creme colored) sheet. You can also dip dye rugs, throw blankets, bed linen, etc. I like to find old frames from thrift stores, take out whatever picture it came with and put my own in (like hand made drawings, pictures I took off of calendars, old signs, printed characters from the computer).
If you can't tell, I have a very weird house (alot of which came from garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales and habitat for humanity resell stores). =) Good Luck!

Painting the rooms will brighten it up. Pick out some new bedding. Hang kites from the ceilings.

Also check out Wallies. Some times Michaels carry them.. Then they have coupons in the paper of Sundays to get discounts..

Here is a link to more wall art..
http://www.wallies.com/wall-play-pages-1069.php

I just saw a neat trick on Clean House. They went and bought a storybook and framed the pages. Both items can be found at the dollar store.