A Home Created With Ingenuity & An Eye On The Bottom Line

"Megan from 'little me, big God' shares how she and her husband have managed to create a beautiful and comfortable home for themselves and their family...and have not bought a single new piece of furniture in the last five years!"

Five years of marriage, two years of stay-at-home-motherhood and a growing appreciation for modern frugality has taught me that my ideal home is made of stories, character and experience which requires mostly imagination and elbow grease rather than a lot of shopping.

It helps that my husband Joey is an uber-talented wood-worker, usually up for a challenge and mostly indifferent about my design adventures. His eye for style trends toward traditional, which helps rein my eclectic, artistic-trending eye in a bit. We have managed to avoid purchasing a single piece of furniture over the course of our home-making and talk about the “one day when we buy a sofa” like it’s the day we will win the lottery – our first stop will be the furniture store.

In the meantime, we use Mom’s – a decade-old Broyhill that’s holding up as well as can be expected – and flank it with a glass-top discount table and the first table Joey ever made (in the back yard, from a child’s chest of drawers a neighbor threw out six years ago).

Most of the artwork is original, including home-made frames and prints, a couple of original graphic oil paintings and the massive abstract oil painting my son mastered in the driveway when he was 18-months-old.

The curtains in our living and master bedrooms are big box home store drop cloths, cut and clipped to make drapes.

In our bedroom Joey re-created a headboard I fell in love with on a website, for about a quarter of the retail price. I use inexpensive, discount white quilts for bedding and change out the pillows to fit my mood.

Our son’s room is complete with a one-of-a-kind crib and dresser/changing table. Other thrifty decorations in Waylon's room include more original artwork, safari photos from a calendar and a home-made mobile.

I day dream about the improvements I would make if we owned our house - a new fireplace and mantel, a complete paint job, kitchen makeover and numerous other projects! But as a rental, it calls for temporary and quick alterations. I am proud of our intrepid frugality in our money-focused world and am in love with a home made of our own collaborative designs, hand-me-downs and thrift and discount store finds.