Thrifty home decor, Master Bedroom beach retreat

Sometimes in order to be Thrifty with your re decorating, you have to piece everything together over time. 

A while back, my husband and I decided we wanted to re decorate our room.  The before was all white walls.  Being the beach-going people that we are (trapped inland) we decided to do a beach/resort type theme.  We started with this bedding we got on clearance at Sears.  It was a LONG time ago, but I think we paid $60 for everything:

I purchased the pillow new from a garage sale for $2.00.
We then painted our room 2 shades of tan.  We matched the tan on the palm trees on the bed sheet.  I had this idea to use bamboo as a chair rail.  

We kept our eyes open and found some some discounted bamboo at a consignment store.  We of course bought it, took it home and used a box cutter to cut it vertically in half.  We then used our table saw to cut the angles we needed.  To attach it to the wall we pre-drilled the nail holes because I was afraid the nails would split the bamboo.

We found this poster (I believe it was at Walmart or Target) that reminded us of when we went to Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia.  We also framed it in a smaller size bamboo (also found on clearance):

To use the smaller bamboo as a frame, we again used the box cutter to slice the bamboo vertically, but only on one side.  We then slid the photo and the thin cardboard into the cut in the bamboo.  As you can see, the edges didn't line up perfectly, but that's okay by me.  I think it looks native. :)

I picked up 3 of these palm tree canvas pictures at a garage sale.  I paid $1.50 for all 3.

And here is the 3rd canvas art. I found the shower curtain on clearance at K-Mart as well as the matching wallpaper boarder.  I installed an arced shower curtain (from Bed Bath and Beyond with a 50% off coupon) in the master bath this past fall.  I LOVE it.

We used more bamboo to frame the mirror in the master bathroom.  The light fixture was brass....I blogged about my thrifty light fixture update HERE. (yay for spray paint!)



This is a souvenir from our recent trip to Fiji.




I found these woven place mats at Thrift store for .25 each. 










The process of finding all the room decor at the right prices has taken a long time.  It's been fun waiting to see what I come across that would fit into our room.  By being patient and waiting for the right thing, at the right price we were able to spend much less then if we would have purchased all the items at once.