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.