Confessions of a Serial Cheapskate: Fancy on the cheap!

Another resolution of mine is to try to ENJOY life more - like try to make everyday life special. For me that means making "movie night" a bit of an event as opposed to just pressing 'play' on the Blu-Ray player. It means taking special occasions and making them, well... special-- more than just preparing a good meal-- making them really special-- get out the good dishes, set the table nicely, and let the meal linger.

That's how our New Year's Day dinner came to life. By all means, it wasn't the fanciest of meals, but it was tasty, it was inexpensive and it felt pretty special.

I present to you, New Year's Day dinner-- cheapskate style.

Centerpieces: 2 Dollar Store Hurricanes = $4

8 Silver Glitter Ornaments = $.25 for all (post holiday sale at Target last year.)

Total: $4.50

Drink Flags: FREE printable from the TomKat Studio

and a cloudy glass-- should've hand-washed. Would love a new dishwasher in the new year too. Gross.

The black dishes and flatware are our everyday dishes. The white dishes are our "good" dishes. A little mix and match and setting out more silverware/dishes than we'd normally used makes the place setting a bit more substantial = FREE.

We don't usually have a tablecloth on our table either, so a simple white tablecloth made the meal a bit more luxurious. FREE.

And a quick tip -- a tablecloth with a subtle pattern or "grain" allows you to easily line up your flatware with precision.

Grandma's hand-me-down salt and pepper shakers (below), worked perfectly with our sparkly theme and also mimicked the New Year's Eve ball. FREE.

I had planned to purchase some simple black ribbon to tie around the napkins as a simple napkin ring, but #1. I forgot to stop at Michael's while I was out getting the groceries for dinner and #2. I've also made a resolution to "use what I have"-- as a carry over from last year's resolutions, so.... since our dinner was going to be for 6 and the drink flags printable produced 12 flags, I decided to use the extra flags as napkin rings. FREE again.

Totally works!

Then using the designs of the printable, I made my own menu cards. I have just enough knowledge in Photoshop to be dangerous, but definitely no real skill so it took me much longer than it should've, but, I think they came out OK. Plus a menu card makes the meal more special right? Free.

more spotty dishes-- that flatware- ugh! Should've paid more attention before taking photos.

We did four courses, served one at a time. Most of the items on the menu included ingredients that we already had so there was very little that we actually had to spend money on for the menu. I think the whole meal cost less than $30 for the six of us. I even made artisan bread from scratch from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day website-- it was SOOO good!! There was wine for the adults and grape bubbly for those not of age. The wine was a gift-- so we remembered good friends while drinking the wine and it saved us some money too!

Guests were welcomed with a Happy New Year sign also from the TomKat New Year's printable collection. FREE.