Yesterday marked our 1 year anniversary living in our little home so I thought I’d share my ideas/tips on how to decorate your house on a ‘budget’.

Technically, I didn’t really have a budget but I’m quite thrifty so most of our home decor are fairly inexpensive. It was our first time moving out of home and I didn’t want to splurge on decor because I was still experimenting on what works.

This post will focus on our lounge/living area and if it goes well, I plan on making another post for other rooms.

If you’d like to see how I turned our house into a home, click below.

Before I start, I didn’t really have a theme or specific inspiration when I started buying home decor. I just bought what I liked especially if the price was right! (that rhyme though) Thankfully, my partner has given me complete reign on the home decor front. I’ve picked and chose everything and he never really complained. If it was up to him, our house would have car parts but I couldn’t treally let that happen. He has his man cave garage for that.

Anyway, I thought I’d share my my favourite decorative things in our lounge and hopefully it will give you some inspiration.

1. Flowers

I love having flowers around me. It makes me happy and it just brightens up the room. In my ideal world, I will have fresh flowers every week in my house. However, flowers aren’t cheap so this expense could easily add up. I treat myself to fresh flowers once in a while especially if I go to the markets but I’ve resorted to fake flowers.

All the flowers in the photo above are all fake. I got them from dollar stores and The Warehouse. My favourites are the orange tulips and purple flowers on the right. Btw, I don’t know much about flower names/types except for the popular ones like roses, peonies and tulips…

I usually have three places in the lounge that has flowers. If I have fresh flowers, I exchange one out. The one on the left is not there anymore as I’ve moved it in our bedroom. The purple flowers in the middle and tulips on the right were both from The Warehouse. I got the purple ones on sale for less than $5.

I think I got two batches of the orange tulips when they were on sale at The Warehouse. The fake flowers there aren’t the cheapest. The single stem ones like the tulips are usually $16 a bunch but they occasionally go on sale for half price.

The vintage-looking pitcher vase and wall print are also from The Warehouse which I got for $2. The wooden diffuser is from Farmers. I haven’t changed this part at all because the colours go so well with the van and surfboard photo above.

These are the fresh flowers which are obviously so much better than the fake ones. Tulips are my favourite flowers and I usually get them from the dairy across North Shore Hospital. The others are usually from the Takapuna Sunday markets.

By the way, my vases are from either Kmart, Warehouse and opshops/thrift stores for no more than $5.

2. Candles

I am a candle hoarder. I have backups of ones that I actually light but I also have decorative candles.

The candles on the left were the limited edition jar candle from The Warehouse. I got them because I love the container which I’m now using to hold my makeup brushes. The ones on the right are the Botanical Garden natural wax candles from Farmers. These were more expensive but I got them on sale and the box they came in were pretty. They would be great as gifts too.

I also recommend these Chef Selection candles from The Warehouse. I’ve basically tried all of the scents and I really like them. Once they’re done, you can clean them out too and use the mason jars for something else. I find that The Warehouse does have their candles on sale quite frequently so I stock up when they’re 30-50% off.

As for decorative candles…

I like to have them within cute holders and my top pick is the Kmart geometric copper candle holder. You can use these as vases too. The candles inside are just cheap ones from The Warehouse again.

My other ones in the lounge are by our TV. On the left is this bell jar candle. The beaker candle also goes so well with the flask vase. They’re both from Kmart.

https://instagram.com/p/yQrHaaABeI/?taken-by=astylecollector

I also love these tea light bulbs I scored on sale from The Warehouse. They are so cute and I couldn’t believe I found it in store! If you want a vase version of it, I’ve seen bigger ones in Junk and Disorderly from $20.

3. Wall Art/Prints

Our walls are white and since we can’t really paint it a different colour, I needed some wall decor.

I got this set of wall prints from The Warehouse on sale for $25 which was steal. It was a set of 6 and the biggest one is on another wall (shown in a photo in the flowers section above) which has the van and surfboard. I found this to be a perfect fit for our house since we live within walking distance to the beach. I love the vibrant colours.

https://instagram.com/p/1z0W1OABXR/?taken-by=astylecollector

I also have this Live, Laugh, Love thing on the wall. Yes, this is very cliche but I’ve had them back in my old room for a few years and the colours go well with the wall prints too. I would like to replace them with another piece of art but this works at the moment and it didn’t cost me a lot. I bought the words from Spotlight and painted them myself. It was an old DIY project of mine.

4. Centre piece

Your coffee table is usually in the middle of the room which can be a focal point. I want our centre piece to be simple but also stand out at the same time.

The tray and silver bowl were both from Kmart. The little decorative balls (which were on sale for $5 a bag) were from The Warehouse and it comes in different colours. If this isn’t your style, you can also have candles or cool coffee table books. The reason I added the tray is because we don’t actually have a dining table so having it makes it easy to clear the table when we’re about to eat.

5. Rug and cushions

Another way to spruce up your lounge is to add a rug and some cute cushions. This photo was taken months ago so its outdated as you can see from the centre piece. The rug is from The Warehouse (similar one is on sale at $39.50 but I got mine for even cheaper at the start of the year) and most of the cushions are from Kmart (from $5-10).

https://instagram.com/p/56AJeRgBQ4/?taken-by=astylecollector

To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of our cushions but I don’t want to replace them at this point. They’re usually on the floor anyway but Kmart has some really nice ones at the moment!

Our couch is the one we splurged a bit on as it was brand new. Both the couch and coffee table were from Big Save Furniture.

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Those are my top decorative things in our lounge. I do switch it up quite often so they’re not all together at the same time. I’ve enjoyed decorating so much but it can be time-consuming. It doesn’t have to be that expensive though! As you may have noticed, there’s a trend going on here as I bought most of mine from The Warehouse and Kmart. Those two stores are my top picks to shop at but scouring your local opshops/thrift stores is a great way of finding cool home decor too.

I’ve shown you bits and pieces of our lounge above so to end this post, I’ll give you a better overview of the other furniture we have.

By the front door, we have this Kmart ladder shelf thing which was $39 and it was quite easy to assemble. I have my iPod dock there when we want to blast music, some cook books and a big jar my mum gave me. I eventually want to get a pot plant on the side of this shelf as well.

This is the focal point of our lounge because it’s the main thing you see when you open the door. This triangle shelf thing is the reason why our lounge furniture is mostly black. This was in my partner’s old bedroom and we wanted to keep it when we moved in together. I believe it was from Freedom Furniture.

Most of the decorative pieces here are from Kmart. The radio on the bottom shelf is vintage and was owned by my partner’s dad.

Our current TV is small but this may change by Christmas so at the moment I have space to put flowers on the TV cabinet. The purple flowers on the right are real and I didn’t know where else to put them. The copper basket with blankets was from Bed, Bath and Beyond.

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I’m still not 100% happy or finished with the lounge. I don’t think I ever will as I keep changing my mind but I really like how I’ve transformed this area.

I hope you liked today’s post and thank you if you’ve reached the end of it. I think this post has the most photos and longest one I’ve written. Please let me know what you think or if you have any home decorating tips for me.

Have a great Monday!

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