Wise Tip Wednesday – Ready for Some College Football?

My hubby and blessings had been counting down the days until college football season. They love everything about college football, especially University of South Carolina Gamecock football! I enjoy it, too, but I really don’t like having to adjust my budget for football party food, decor, t-shirts, etc. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but items with college logos are rather expensive. You don’t have to spend money on all of these things to enjoy the football season, but they sure add to the fun and excitement!

A while ago, while surfing the web and Pinterest, I saw many college decorations but they were just too expensive to buy. I set out to decorate on a budget. I made a list of supplies, watched sales ads, and visited our local Hobby Lobby with store coupon in hand. I was on a mission!

I ended up purchasing a grapevine wreath, small wooden letters (USC), ribbon, 3 silk flowers in garnet, black, and white, and paint in garnet, black and white. (We usually keep black and white paint in our craft cabinet but happened to be out at the time.)

My little man and I painted the letters white with garnet & black polka dots. Then I made the bow and pulled the stems off of the flowers. We laid our design out on the wreath to get the perfect placement. Then we hot glued everything into place except the ribbon which we attached with wire. This is our end result:

DIY College Football wreath gamecocks www.ruckusandrubies.com

Not bad and it cost me less than $15 to make the wreath! The pre-made wreaths I saw online were $30 and up! An even better idea (that I didn’t think of until after) is to use floral wire to attach everything to the wreath. Then you can remove all of the decorations from it when football season is over and decorate it with seasonal objects for all of the other holidays and events throughout the year.

We had lots of paint left over and I was really feeling crafty and accomplished at this point. So, I decided to decorate an old dollar store plate that was just taking up space in my china cabinet.

My children chimed in with ideas of the pictures they wanted me to paint on the plate. This didn’t really cost me anything to make, but I guess if you calculate the $1 for the plate and the cost of the paint, it was less than $2.

I did the same thing for an old dollar store vase I had laying around the house and it didn’t cost me any more than the plate:

With the leftover ribbon, I decorated an old plate as well as a lighted glass block a friend of mine gave me. I added black dots to the ribbon for more “gamecock effect”.

My blessings decided they wanted to have gamecock bedrooms, so we found some leftover plywood in my sweet hubby’s shed. My little man cut the plywood into pieces with a hand saw. They painted and decorated their signs and we attached ribbon for hanging. My girls made signs with their names in gamecock colors with polka dots. My little man decorated his with footballs and one of his favorite sayings: “Fight Like a Gamecock”. The signs really didn’t cost us anything because we already had all of the materials on hand.