Bringing a little bit of nature inside

I don't know about you but I really really enjoy all the beauty in nature that God has made. In my mind there is nothing that fixes up and decorates my house any better than bringing some of that natural stuff inside (and then having a bunch of big windows to see out of too).

  In the Spring and Summer some of my more obvious choices of things to bring in are flowers. I do grow flowers but we also enjoy picking many wildflowers from our woods or the ditches on our road. God made an amazing variety of flowers from teeny tiny to really big and they are fun to bring inside to enjoy.

  You don't need to be a trained professional to be able to have pretty vases of flowers in your house. Just put them in a vase in the way that looks nice to you. Some general guidelines are to put your tallest flowers in the middle, and then gradually work down to shorter flowers around the edge. If you are doing a mixed arrangement try to balance big and small flowers so not all of one kind are on one side.

Here are some additional tips for having healthy and good looking arrangements:

• Pick your flowers in the morning before they get dried out from the heat of the day.
• Use something to cut the stems rather than just breaking them if possible.
• Put them in water right away.
• Look for interesting greenery to add to the flowers.
• Make sure to not have leaves in the water (pull off leaves that are low on the stems) as they will rot and make the bouquet go bad and smell bad.
• Regularly (every day or two) give them fresh water and re cut the end of the stems.

 Vases are pretty easy to find at garage sales or thrift stores but you can also use jars, glasses, pretty pitchers, can and basically anything that holds water to put your flowers in.

If you don't have an abundance of flowers and for times when flowers aren't blooming some other natural things that we have enjoyed decorating with are: Pine cones, seed pods, fruits and veggies, shells, pretty rocks, nests that were abandoned, pretty greenery on it's own and feathers.

The vase above is currently sitting on our table and I had a picture of it with our yummy breakfast treat from yesterday.  If you like to make bread you might enjoy doing what we like to do and that is take some of the dough to make fry bread with. You simply pull it in a flat section and deep fry it and then we like to eat it with honey. I also used some of my dough yesterday to make balinas which are prunes covered with bread dough and fried, then roll them in sugar. A simple but yummy treat! 

  Those are some of the frugal ways I have enjoyed fixing up my home lately!