March edition Pinterest Party

We had our monthly Pinterest party on Sunday, as always it was great fun. This time we had 14 girls show up to make a craft. Quite an increase from our January party where we only had 4 crafters. Hopefully we will settle into a nice group of consistent crafters, although I do like the variety that new people bring.

I would love to see our little group split off and do several different crafts each month so each person could pick and choose which crafts interest them the most. In all actuality, this is one that I probably would've skipped. The initial project that we looked at just wasn't my thing, the more I thought about it though, the more I thought about how I could make it my own.

You see, I've mentioned before that I'm more of an earth tone kind of girl then the bright colors, also goes for pastels. I could not find easter eggs in the earthy colors that I wanted. I wanted more natural looking eggs, brown and white, with some little bluebird eggs thrown in for a pop. Lucky for me, they make spray paint every day! That was the secret to making this project my own! You will see the top picture with most of the wreaths from our group and then the bottom is a close up of my wreath. I just love how nicely the bow matches my little blue eggs.

americana

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I'm not a fan of Americana decor. America, yes, just not the red, white and blue thing. More of an earthtone gal myself.

After making my St Patty's day wreath and posting a pic on facebook for my friends to admire, I had 2 requests for a red, white and blue wreath. I hadn't planned to make these to sell, but truly, who wouldn't??? I did some searching and figured I could sell them for $20 and not actually lose money. I'm not making bank on them, but hey, it keeps my hands busy.

I completed this guy on Saturday and gave first dibs to the first person who had commented on my original wreath. She immediately accepted and in the meantime, I've been asked to make 3 more. I'll make the math easy here, 2 to begin with, now 3 more = 5 wreaths. Hope my local craft store is ready for me this week!

st pattys day wreath

I have a bit of a wreath obsession. I like to always always have a seasonal wreath at my front door. When Diane mentioned the other day that she had been wanting to do a green wreath for st pattys day, it got stuck in my head and wasn't going anywhere until I had it done!

The initial wreath was fun. Mostly because I hated it at first, I suppose making this wreath is a good lesson in perseverance because the longer I worked on it the more I liked it. Takes a TON of ribbon and pins though and more than just a little time. Cute, no?

Now at this point, I struggled with the idea of a bow... I had bought wire edged decorator ribbon for a proper bow, but I just wasn't in love with that idea for this wreath. I had snapped a picture and sent it to some friends, bow or no? In the meantime, I decided this sweet little polka dot number was just what this wreath needed.

Do you not just want to hug that bow???

Giving back with coupons

Happy Leap day ya'll!!! Enjoy it this year, you'll have to wait a while for another one!

One of my new years resolutions was to continue to give back as much as I could. One of the best ways I've found to give back is to find useful stuff on sale, with a coupon and buy it for as cheap as possible to give as a donation. It costs me quite a bit of time, but very little money. Besides, I absolutely love the challenge! Not to mention the gratification of seeing it all come together as planned. Most recently I've been collecting consumables for womens shelters. I've gathered quite a bit of stuff for free including razors, chapstick, lotion, toothpaste and some nail care items. A friend of mine was doing a newspaper article about couponing for a cause and wanted to see some of the stuff I've gathered for this particular group. Here's about 1/3 of what I have so far. I'm so excited to finish this project and get these gifts to these ladies!

Pinterest party, February edition.

Most recently, we decided to make terrariums. Now, I learned something very important about making a terrarium, if you do one in the winter, the plant selection sucks! You aren't going to get the pretty colors and textures like you will in the summer. That's ok though, truly it doesn't matter when you're spending time with friends! Here is what my terrarium looks like after living in my house for one week. Even with my black thumb, it's still alive! Most of the girls did theirs in a container with a lid, but I was awfully fond of this container when I found it so I made it work. Besides, I love that my plants can grow out of the top!

Pinterest obsession!

Is everyone who tries pinterest just totally obsessed with it? I just love love love it! A friend of mine got the brilliant idea to start a facebook group for those of us who are obsessed and actually commit to get together once a month to create a craft together that we have been eyeing.

So inspiring to be among these wonderful ladies all doing something we enjoy!

Our first craft that we did was inspired by a mirror on pinterest decorated with vintage jewelry. I would have loved to have done mine the same way, but even shopping on ebay, enough vintage jewelry to fill the frame of a mirror was expensive! I was lucky enough to snag a mirror for cheap from a friend who is moving. A lovely oval mirror with an unfortunate gold frame.

I really struggled to find something that I just loved to do my mirror in. I finally settled on some 'fake' sea glass. It looks just like sea glass, it was just machine tumbled instead of ocean tumbled. Considering how much glass I needed to complete my mirror, machine tumbled was fine by me! I also got some tiny starfish and sand dollars to embellish my mirror once I had the glass all glued on.

Lots of hot glue (and burned fingers) later, here is the completed project! I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

resolving

I know, I know... I'm really anti new years resolutions. I feel like if it's important enough, you should just get up and do it RIGHT NOW. I think though if I put down some actual ideas of things I'm going to do in my future, I will be less likely to break them. So in no particular order:

- get and stay more organized

- create more

- be less afraid to 'weed the garden' this includes people, places and things

- continue to practice honesty at all costs

- do as many things as possible that make me feel good: volunteering, fundraising, etc.

- get back into couponing, not so much for myself, but for a cause

- be a role model

The End! Have a happy and prosperous new year!

several month wrap up

just because i haven't blogged doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything, here is photograph wrap up!

First, when spring hit, we decided we needed to put a more tropical feel on our patio, so we put in some tropical (yet cold hardy) plants including banana tree, hyacinth, and bamboo. Topped off these beds with some red lava rock to complete the tropical look. These will be a constant work in progress as all flower beds are!

I've been unhappy with this space for quite some time. It was completely done in very dark paneling (circa 1983) and it's such an odd shaped space it was hard to do much with. I decided by lightening it up (hello 10 gallons of white paint!) it would at least make it feel roomier and we could go from there. Hubby had built a bar last year so he covered it with bamboo (free from our neighbor, it was headed to the chipper) and put a small thatch overhang to give it a tiki bar feel. The sailboard in the loft was free from freecycle, and the bar stools you see in the picture are now a yellow. I'm sure there will be more pictures of this space as we do some more decorating, but for now, I'm beyond thrilled with how it turned out!

Sometime after the 4th of July this little (and she WAS little) angel wandered up to a friends house. Me being the crazy cat lady that I am, I couldn't resist. I've never had a mostly white cat, let alone one with two different color eyes. How could anyone not love that face?!?!?

Lastly, I bought this very expensive closet organizing system at lowes about 6 months ago (on clearance of course!) and hadn't found time to get it together and in place. So this weekend i cleaned out my closet (woah!) and after some drywall work, convinced hubby to paint it pink and he got the shelves put together and in place for me. Now begins the task of putting it all back together! Shew!

Getting Better Each Week

I try not to be one of those people who has to go to every store that has a sale, I just don't have the time or energy for that. Last weekend I hit Walgreens, because they had vinegar for .99 and I had a .50 coupon, 2 actually, and $9 in RR to use. Picked up a few other things and wound up spending a whopping $6, and saving close to $30.

Next was Target. I wanted to take advantage of some of the Hasboro toy specials they have going on right now. I'm very unfamiliar with ANY toy section, and I got frustrated, so I'll probably try again this week, and eventually I will get familar with it. French's mustard was .99 there, and I had a coupon for $1 off 2, and in their travel section they have visine for 1.97 and I had a ton of $2 coupons. Got close to 10 of those, and a couple deodorants that I had coupons for without size limitations. I think those visine will probably make a great donation item to our local state hospital, this is where I've been giving any toiletry items recently.

Next was Acme, I was more pleased than I expected to be, I spent $60 and saved close to $130. I was nervous because there were some unexpected sales that i took advantage of and I bought a few things i didn't have coupons for (gasp!) but either way, I was pleased, and my regular cashier was cheering me on, so I called it a good day :-)

not extreme...

but getting there. I'm proud of what coupons have been doing for me. I'm able to stock up on what I use regularly and donate to worthy causes with very little out of pocket. I'm particularly proud of my weekend shopping trips. At Walgreens I spent $11.45 and saved $99.68. A large portion of this will be donated to a local organization. At Acme they had an excellent cereal special going on. I wound up spending $30.76 and saved $69.82. My pantry got stocked up in a major way!