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!

room on the bandwagon for 1 more?

There's such a trend in blogland right now of hanging plates on the wall. I've been wanting to do this for some time but I just didn't have any plan in mind for what I wanted the plates to look like. I like some of the more random patterns out there.

So last weekend when I was on my weekly yard sale trip, I picked up a few plates. I paid a whopping 10 cents each for these.

I forgot to take an 'in the middle' picture of this. But you can guess by them being outside and on cardboard, it had something to do with spray paint. I do love myself some spray paint!

Few coats of red later and they all looked the same. I was then planning to stencil some birds on the plates. Well, that didn't work out so well. I had some carbon paper and it just made a huge mess! So I wound up spraying over the mess (again!) and free handing birds on 2 of the plates. There's a reason I took this picture from such a crappy angle, because my artistry is not wonderful. My hope is that nobody gets up close and personal with these plates. From a distance though, I'm rather proud of them!

oh dear...

Be still my heart... Oh how I need this!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/56258324/vinyl-wall-art-swirl-tree-with-owls

birdies

are so trendy in decorating right now, so it's funny I should find this at a yard sale. It appears to be several years old judging by the amount of rust I brushed off. So of course a coat of paint is in order. I asked my facebook peeps whether it was crying for flat black or antique white. All of the votes were for black, which is where I was leaning anyway. The black gives it a goth vibe which I'm totally digging. I may paint the birds an accent color? once I decide where it's going to live

where will you live?

Is just what I thought when I saw this white ottoman along side the road. So pretty, so retro with your pretty silver legs and lovely round shape. of course I stopped, asked how much, and the owner said $10. Within like 3 minutes of me browsing through his other offerings, he was down to $5 and I snapped it up. Right now it's sitting at the foot of my bed holding my decorative bed pillows (so they aren't tossed on the floor). Maybe it will find a home in a spare bedroom some day?

TEAK

still waiting on my patio to be finished. Hubbster has a full time job though so I'm sure not as naggy as I once was about doing that sort of thing. A friend of mine said that her sister had a teak patio set that she was looking to get rid of, her yard wasn't big enough for it. It needed some help, it had been grayed, but for $30, I figure my woodworking husband can probably fix it as long as it's not rotten. so the table has a leg that's fallen off, and the rest could be screwed down tighter, and the bench is wobbly, but it's probably like $10 in hardware for a beautiful, simple set!

quirky bench

how cool is this? maybe a little Indian looking? like India, not native american. Also at a yard sale, at a nursing home. weird right? I think I paid $10 for it, and if nothing else, it makes a cool conversation piece in my living room, and a little extra seating (or kitty seating)

$5 at a yard sale today. I'm a little in love. I've also already been offered $10. a local retirement community has a community yard sale twice a year, I always go early and clean up! This time I started at the back of the community and worked towards the front. certainly a fantastic idea! I'll be showing you more finds throughout the week.

Monday monday monday...

So, it's Monday. Truth be told, I had an enormously rough week last week. Hubby wanted to have friends over for a bbq yesterday. Somewhere between 3 cases of beer and 60 pounds of ice I've done did something to my back. I'm still functional, just not bending down.

Oh, and it hurts to breathe... and my limbs keep going numb. Maybe that's a nerve thing? I don't know, Aleve and I are going to work it out for a few days and if it keeps up, it'll be time for some acupuncture.

So at 5pm yesterday, when people should be arriving for our bbq, we had gale force winds and funnel clouds were spotted locally. Grrr... at least picnic food is cheap. The stuff that can't be frozen anyway.

So enough about my whining. Here's the goods from the weekend. Well, what I took pictures of. From top left: clorox jug, rolling rock bottle, milk glass jar, large blue ball jar, medium blue ball jar, white milk glass then 2 more ball jars.

See a pattern?

I've been seeing all these lovely things on blogs about the blue mason jars. Not to brag but really they're everywhere around here at yard sales. I'm seriously kicking myself now after doing a bit of research though. I paid 50 cents a piece for every thing you see in my sink. They had cases of the blue mason jars but I didn't want to hoard. Truth be told, I honestly thought 50 cents a piece was a bit high. So I got one of each size that they had and moved on. Of course these suckers are selling for $7-8 a piece. Can't win them all I guess.

So I plan to do a little candle scape with them. Maybe some stones around them and such. You know, old jars are all the rage at pottery barn. I saw on one blog though that the blue mason jars could explode and be DEADLY when candles are put in them. Seriously? You know how hot they get when you pressure cook them to seal the lids? I think I my compromise though and buy some LED candles for them.

The brown jug goes with my laundry cuteness plan. It's really an old clorox jug, and since it does have a cap, how cute would it be to actually pour my bleach in there? I don't use a ton of it anyway, but I'm saying it's cute and useful.

deal of the day!

This was my favorite yard sale find of last weekend, an outdoor slate top table, wait for it, $10!!! Took some wheeling and dealing, but won't that be beautiful on my *new* patio with my to be built pergola and seating? I picture many cold beverages being set on this table in the future :o)

big plans!

Ok, so I saw a blog online, which I don't have the ambition to find again to link to, but regardless, it gave me an idea for an old trunk. So when I saw this one for $2, I had to have it. The plan goes something like this: Turn the trunk on it's end, put casters on the end, one shelf in the middle, the bottom gets a large X out of wood to hold wine bottles, the top gets slots for sliding stemmed glasses in, then it becomes a portable wine bar. I'd love to think that I can find some time this weekend to at least start getting the inside of this trunk sured up to hold some weight. Not sure what I want to do with the hardware just yet, I may just wire brush it and spray it black... Also, not sure about the body of the trunk, I need to look at it some more. any suggestions are welcomed!