When You're Too Cheap to Buy Real Flowers

I LOVE real flowers. I am thrilled every time my husband comes home with them for me, but most of the time I just can't bring myself to purchase them. Something prevents me from purchasing them every time, and I don't necessarily love that about myself, since they do bring me so much happiness and that is well worth $10-$20. In any case, this particular situation was a dance recital for my niece, and I just didn't want to stop at the store with my kids to purchase flowers, quite frankly. So I did a little YouTube surfing and found this awesome and easy tutorial to make flowers out of paper. I will not take any credit for the idea because I just copied her instructions - they truly were easy enough for my kids to do, and use just colored paper and glue.

Here's a perfect example of my weird, resourceful, scrappiness at play: I have a friend who gives me all her leftover packets of napkins/chopsticks/soy sauce when they get takeout, and I am so glad she does. We use the napkins (since we don't buy paper napkins those are a real treat), use the soy sauce in cooking, and use those chopsticks for SO many things. I mean, who knows when you're going to need a stem??

Up close, they are obviously paper, but from a distance they actually looked like a real bouquet, and they will last longer than a week, hopefully. They were a hit with my niece, so the ultimate goal was achieved - free minus the time it spent to make them!