Decorate your room, cheap grad student style!

So as I mentioned yesterday, I got a lovely bouquet of flowers from my parents for Valentine's Day. I had planned on buying a vase, but the flowers desperately needed water in the meantime, so I made my own:

I always buy these big water bottles because I refuse to drink the tap water here (it's really gross in the college), and I hate just throwing them out, so I recycled some of my old bottles. Here's what the bottle looks like:

I cut the top off of one bottle, but it ended up being too short (it kept tipping over), so then I cut the top and bottom off of a second bottle, and taped the two together. Here's the finished product:

It's a little too tall, but remember two things: (1) I do not own a pair of scissors to trim either the bottle or the flowers, and (2) I did this at 3 am. Note how I tied the raffia bow that came with the flowers to cover the tape. (It was pouring out, so when I walked back to my room, it got a little wet.)

I ended up going out today to look for a vase, but all of the vases were too small and too expensive for my budget. I think I'll stick with my homemade version, which cost me a little over £0.84 (roughly $1.60) to make.

Craftiness is an underrated skill.