I have a lot of aspirations to have, not exactly a fancy house, but a nice house, one that matches my own sense of aesthetics and personal preferences.  But, as anyone who has a house but does not have a personal decorator and the budget to match knows, getting there is a lot of work and time and effort.

Since I’ve got lots of other things I also want or need to spend my work and time and effort on, the not-fancy-but-nice-house goal gets only very sporadic attention.  I have lots of ideas, but mostly they are just ideas.  Very occasionally I’ll make a push with a craft project of some sort, and a couple months ago my husband and I actually muscled our way through the process of finding and buying a new couch(!), but mostly new improvements tend to be pretty small wins, fitted in along with everything else that is life.

But you know, some of those small wins can actually be pretty nice.  Little things can add up, and even if they don’t, something nice is still something nice.  If it’s something nice in your home, then you can probably get to enjoy it over and over again, for as long as it persists.

So, here is a short list of four little things I did to spruce up my house this winter.  And they each make me just a little happier every time I notice them.

1. A framed postcard.

I have a bit of a habit when it comes to buying greeting cards and post cards.  Definitely when I’m traveling I like to see what I can find, but it’s pretty easy to tempt me with a nice spindle of them just about anywhere.  I love the fact that you can buy beautiful art for under ten dollars.  And there’s such variety!  It can be like a treasure hunt.

Mostly the cards I collect live in a shoebox, because I don’t send greeting cards or post cards very often.  But most cards are a perfectly good size to go in either a 4×6 or 5×7 photo frame, which means they’re easy to frame.  You just have to pick a good spot and choose a little bit of art that will make you happy in that spot.  In the case of this postcard, I’d picked up several photo frames for a ‘project’ I was trying to put together, decided this frame wouldn’t work for that project but that it did look so sweet with this card and, you know, there’s this spot at the end of my hall where I’ve been wanting to put something.

Ta Da!  I get to enjoy it every time I walk down my hall.

2. Glue-on strip-covers to guide/hide power cords.

This is the least-small item on this list, because there is some work/money involved first in getting the right strip-covers, and then in installing them just how you like (i.e., planning before doing).  My husband had ordered some strip-covers for a project of his own, and when I realized I’d need more than just the left-overs to tackle the spot I wanted, we went around and around the local Home Depot trying to find more (finally, success! in the lamps-and-lighting section—to an extent; I still like the original, ordered strip-covers better).

Once you’ve got them, you can chop-saw them down to just the right sizes—so long as you can get the cords themselves to cooperate with the tidier (as in, right angles rather than strung along a messy diagonal) routing path.  And voila!

Quibbles about the specific covers aside, I really like fact that we now no longer have cords dangling over the entryway between the family computer and the projector.  Everything is tidy.  Everything is not a trip hazard.  And everything is sorted without a scribble of cords and nails all over my pretty walls.

3. Decorated pull cord.

My husband has his own goals when it comes to improving the house, usually on a more practical, less aesthetic front than my goals, and he had installed pull-down black-out curtains in the bedrooms.  Yay.  The bedrooms in this house are all south facing and sometimes you really just want less light for a variety of reasons.  Unfortunately, in the guest bedroom, I couldn’t reach the handle to pull down the new shade because I’d put a desk in the way, and so I really needed some sort of pull cord, which, silly enough, kind of stumped me for a while.  I wanted something that looked vaguely nice.  But where do you even buy a pull cord or tassel thing or whatever (especially now that JoAnn’s is no more!)?

Then I realized I was being too literal.  I just wanted some nice something that was also heavy enough to make a grab cord fall straight.  And I have scads of baubles that I collect, mostly with the vague idea of turning them into jewelry of some sort (and so they tend to live in boxes, waiting—not shoe boxes this time, but I think you see the trend).

This bauble was actually sold to be a pendant just by itself (I got it at the Colorado Renaissance Festival!), but I never wear it because the colors aren’t quite right for my everyday, even though they’re super pretty and definitely the sort of thing I like.  So, perfect!  Just add ribbon for the cord part of the pull-cord (yes, I also have a collection of ribbon, though in my defense I usually get that with some specific idea of what I’ll do with at least most of it, sort of).

And so now I have a pretty pull-cord in the guest bedroom, a glass bauble that hangs in the sunlight.

4. Whimsical light-switch cover

This one was actually a present from my husband.  Isn’t it ridiculous and great?!  I know he picked it out because a while back I got a similarly ridiculous-and-great cow picture that now hangs in the guest bedroom.  So it’s definitely to theme.  And fancy light-switch covers have long tickled me.  I had a whole set of shiny copper ones that I put up in our old apartment, but that I mostly couldn’t use when we moved here because this house mostly has these wide, push switches instead of the usual narrow, flip switches.

I put this up in our main bathroom, and I think everybody smiles when they see it heading out.

Bonus-5. Thrift-store spoons

Well these I actually picked up last summer, not over the winter.  But they do make me absurdly happy, so I’m including them.

Everyone in my family is always fighting over the bigger spoons and forks, but when we try to find new ones to buy, then we argue about how to pick which ones of those.  My husband likes a really hefty spoon, while I prefer something solid but not hefty.  And, you know, a bit of curlicue is nice, too.

So, cue wonderful discovery!  While on vacation, we wandered into a local thrift store and I found these.  I love them.  It didn’t get me a matching set of anything, of course, but I’m only going to use them one at a time anyway, and every time I do they make me happy.

Here’s to small, pretty, happy things!