Decorating outside the box

Thinking outside the box is the key to Thrifty 101. I wanted to update my kitchen with new valances, a place to display the kid's school projects and I wanted to diplay something on top of the cabinets that would draw your eye upward and take advantage of the space and show off the size of the room.

I knew the "big" thing I wanted for on top of the cabinets was some kind of metal wall hanging. This is what I found:

I found this beauty at Ross for $7.99 and fell in love with it. It is a fireplace screen. Would you ever have thought to hang a fireplace screen as wall decor? ~think outside the box.

My second challenge came with the valences for the kitchen. I knew I wanted a simple black ones but the ones I was finding were more then I wanted to pay. I already had the rods from the previous valences....this is what I found:
I bought 2 packages of "black cloth napkins" at Target. I hung them over the existing rods, and then hung some grapevines over the top of them as an accent. I LOVE how they turned out, and it was exactly what I wanted at 1/2 the price I would have paid with actual valences. Cloth napkins as valences? Again, thinking outside the box.

We bought a bedroom set a while ago that came with this mirror:
The original mirror in the package was broken. The company sent us a new mirror so I had this nice wooden frame that I knew just what to do with....
I bought some sheets of cork board from Wal-mart and hot glued them on to where the mirror once was. Now I have the place for my kids' art work and it's a decorative piece for the kitchen.

Lastly I wanted a metal star to hang over the kitchen table. I've been looking for a while, but the size I wanted was very expensive. When I found this one it was antiqued baby blue:
I finally found my star at a craft clearance outlet. It was on clearance priced at $5.00. Like I said, it was baby blue, but I came home, sprayed it with primer, painted it with excess accent paint from my kitchen, then highlighted the seams with a can of black spray paint I had in the garage. So the only thing I spent on my unique star was $5! Now that's thrifty!

What do you think? Have you done any "outside the box" decorating?