Can you convince anyone to come paint some rooms for you? I think color on the walls is the cheapest and quickest way to make a house feel homey. I just cringe at white walls, though, and love color. We painted almost our entire house before moving in so we didn't have to mess with furniture - and we were moving from a rental that didn't allow paint. Some of our rooms have nothing on the walls yet but they still look somewhat 'decorated' because of the color.
Get creative with wall hangings - I am really into black and white photography so I take fave family pics and pics of things special to us, change them to black and white, crop on an angle, and have shutterfly print them. Throw them into inexpensive black frames and wa-la!
In our powder room, which is chocolate brown, sage, and rose, I bought cheapo white matted frames from Garden Ridge ($4.99 each, BOGO 1/2 off) and googled "botanical prints" until I found a series of green leaves I liked. Just printed them right onto regular paper on my color printer on best photo quality and framed them. They look fantastic and were super easy. They really pop on the chocolate brown walls, too.
We have painted our own art before, too. Blank canvas is cheap and we used the wall paint to do it! LOL! Even just painting them solid colors and putting them in a row or square will add color to a wall that's not painted.
We have found the best drapery prices at JC Penney on sale. We have
WalMart drapes in our living room and they are paperthin so we had to back them THEN we washed them and they shrunk terribly. So, we've found that you get what you pay for. We bought drapes at Ikea for cheap and besides being thin, they look good. The sun doesn't come in that window so it's okay. But for nice curtains, JC Penney has them fairly priced - esp at sale times.
One of my fave sites as of late is
www.wonderfulgraffiti.com. I've become obsessed =) Some are, amazingly, quite inexpensive. I wish I had known about it before we started to decorate; I would have done things differently and used some of this instead. I have big plans to put some in our house soon.
Good luck and congrats!
I want muted plaids and shabby chic florals. He wants stripes and dancing friggin monkeys. He has no taste (except in wives). 
You're not much help there 
