STAND ON YOUR OWN

When I'm bored, I love to flip through the pages of design magazines or stroll the aisles of over-priced home goods stores looking for better, less expensive ways to pull off ideas I find interesting but can't afford. Stores like Pottery Barn, West Elm, Crate & Barrel and Room & Board have interesting, often innovative, furniture designs but peppered between the coffee table and settee are somewhat strange, incredibly over priced accessories. Take the silver-dipped acorn collection I stumbled upon at West Elm a few weeks ago for $129. "Silver-dipped" simply meant one of Kathie-Lee Giffords minion's in Bangladesh grabbed a can of spray paint and, voila, art. The other mass design stores do the same thing and, usually, these pieces wind up on a clearance shelf between the gilded skunk vase and large ball of burlap twine. The lesson (at least for me): take creative direction from some of these pieces and execute them on your own (yesterdays tip, for example, of growing gourds to use as table and/or holiday decorations). Not all mass produced accessories are created equally as bad, however, but when done on your own, you can still save a bucket of cash. I'll use the galvanized ice bucket with holder from Pottery Barn as my example. Very cool, fun to use around the pool but you'll flush well over $100 to buy it. On the other hand, head over to the Home Depot and purchase the SAME galvanized bucket for under $20 and while in the garden section grab a plant stand for $14 (dress both of them up with spray paint or leave them as-is). Your bucket no longer has to be half full when you do a little research to save a lot of cash!

TIME TO COMPLETE TASK: As long as it takes you to drive to your local home improvement store.

COST: Pottery Barn's version of galvanized bucket and stand: $129. Galvanized bucket at Home Depot: $19.99, plant stand at Home Depot: $14.99 TOTAL: $34.99

STRESS LEVEL: Having enough left over to fill the bucket: LOW