Bedroom Project on the Cheap

I've had a crush on the whole pallet as home decor trend that has been all over Pinterest.  I was able to bring home a slightly beaten up pallet from work and gave it a nice stain coating.  A few nails and boom.  Finished.  I like the instant shelves to get the photos into a more visible position  My husband mentioned that we wouldn't be able to put a television in our bedroom now which was the plan entirely a total coincidence.

Total time for the project? 20 minutes plus overtime drying time.

Total cost?  Around $5 for wood stain.

One of my favorite frames in this group is the one with every ticket stub from our first date to our wedding day.  My purse feels so much lighter now that these bad boys aren't all in my wallet or floating at the bottom of the bag anymore.

Have you jumped on the pallet decorative piece bandwagon?  Tell me about it!

Photo Block Project

This project was so easy that we can't believe it's completely done.  It only took about two hours total.  Hubs cut the boards for me and we spray painted them last night.  We decided to go for a textured paint that would be pretty neutral with the photos.

The photos were 8"x8" and a smidge too wide for the boards.  We trimmed about 3/4 of an inch off and used spray adhesive to put the whole thing together.

We only glued one photo on before we figured out that we needed to drill a hole in the back to be able to hang them on the wall.  After that little duh moment, we were in business.  We let them dry for about 30 minutes.  

Every time we hang something, I swear that I'm going to buy my husband a level.  He gets so intense when it's thisclose to being level but he feels the need to fix it.  If it looks kind of right to me, we're good.  I guess we balance each other out that way.

I'm happy with the texture on the blocks.  You can still see a little bit of wood grain but I kind of like it.

Oh hey mom!  We saw you were getting ready to take a picture.

Finished!  I've decided that we're never moving because there are simply too many nail holes to fill in now.

What do you think?

Wedding Pictures, Finally!

Ooh.  New project!  Since we were thinking about getting some canvases of our wedding for our first anniversary, we did some pricing and it was in the $300-450 range for what we were thinking of doing.

On to a Plan B!

We saw this fun blog post about how to make photo blocks.  We ordered a handful of 8x8 photos from our wedding and the day after session we did in Las Vegas on our honeymoon.   We searched for all of the other pieces at Lowe's.  At this point we're just waiting to borrow a saw from Corey's folks so we can get this project going.  I have no idea how it's going to turn out but we have high hopes.

The whole project should cost around $50 which is much more in line with where we are right now.  I'll let you know how it turns out!

Adventures in Sewing

In college, I was a technical theater major and I absolutely loved my costume design classes.  When we were getting started, our professor would give us patterns to sew to get everybody on the same page.  I remember blowing through that pattern like it was timed.  Hands in the air and all.

My grandmother loved to sew and even had a part of her basement partitioned off for her work area.  Since she baby sat my cousin and I before we were in school, one of my earliest memories was crawling underneath the table where she would cut fabric amidst all of the scraps thrown in the box under the table and try to find two pieces that were cut exactly alike.  Every item in that room smelled like dust and old cigarettes.  My grandma quit smoking when she found out I had asthma but some smells don't disappear even over time.  

When she died, the sewing machines and whatnot were divided up and I got this one.  I don't honestly think I've even opened the case.  It was brought home from Kansas City and it was immediately put into the attic.  Corey's brought it down a few times for me and discreetly put it back when I didn't use it.  I found a pattern for a cash wallet with envelopes that I've been thinking about making.  The pattern was hopelessly difficult to follow so I cut the pieces to size and decided to wing it.  I hoisted the suitcase up on the counter and hit the buckles.  Guess what?  It smelled just like dust and old cigarettes.  Normally, I can't stand the smell of cigarettes but it took me straight back to being there with her and doing something she loved.

I've decided to name her Helga because she's a temperamental old broad.  The whole project took around two hours because I had to relearn how to sew. 

The sizes I cut from the pattern looked pretty good and were easy to put together.  I decided that I would like to have three envelopes and somewhere for my checkbook to go.  I'm going to have to figure out something to do with my cards because while we don't have credit cards anymore, there are still quite a few that I'd like to have with me on a daily basis.  License, insurance card, PetSmart card, etc.

I didn't want to add zippers to the envelopes so I just sewed about two inches on either side of the opening where you would stick the cash in so it was able to lay flat but not easily slip out.    I did it while it was inside out of your couldn't see the majority of the thread.  Another thing I changed was that the cover felt super flimsy so I improvised.  A box of cereal was exactly the length of the insert that I wanted to add some substance.

The almost finished project!  The checkbook fits perfectly and since I went with zipper-less pouches for cash it was a snug fit which is exactly what I wanted.

It is obviously blow money day because I had cash to throw in here. :)

Since I haven't figured out the card thing yet, I'm going to solve it with a ribbon for now.  It holds all of my envelopes closed and I even shook it and my cards didn't move.

I haven't had a chance to use it out in the world yet but so far I'm really happy with it.  Next time I need to sew something, I doubt it will take as long as this project did because of the learning curve.

Total cost?  Around $4 for the fabric.  I already had the thread and ribbon from my St. Patrick's Day wreath.

So far behind!

So, I've totally failed at keeping this blog up to date. I've been working on a lot of projects around the house lately and I'm really happy that they're saving us money that I can pour straight into more projects. It kind of defeats the purpose but my husband thinks that I have this wife thing down so it's a win-win.

I spent a few hours doing a once a month cooking thing. I managed to make 17 dinners and 20 breakfast burritos so I'm a little bit short of the full month but I'll get there. Our meals were kind of pasta/carb heavy so I need a new plan for some new recipes.

I'm a little sad that all of that food condensed down into just a few little bags but I couldn't be more thrilled about not cooking daily or getting fast food because we're too tired after work to make something good for dinner.

I tried my hand at homemade laundry detergent. It's still a work in progress since it's pretty lumpy but we're happy with it so far. The recipe if you're interested.

I proved that I'm a domestic goddess (to my husband's standards, at least). I made him a giant homemade Snickers bar for Valentines Day. It didn't take very long and the recipe was easy enough to understand after a few Valentine's Day beverages. Here's the recipe if you want. P.S. I picked out exactly where on my body that I would like to put that extra weight ahead of time so I wasn't surprised when it showed up.

I barely managed to get decorations up for Christmas but my St. Patrick's Day wreath is hanging on the front door almost a whole month early. Such is life.

On the schedule for next weekend: finish the wool dryer balls to replace dryer sheets, install the counter over our new (to us) front loading washer and dryer, and make a set of reusable Swiffer cloths. I'm kind of enjoying my weekend house projects.

Projects: The old frame + photos

One of the goals of our wedding was to only spend money on things to decorate we could repurpose in our house. It didn't really happen entirely that way but we did manage to make this sweet frame. I've never really been a 'nester' so I'm hoping that it comes with the newly married territory.

Corey's mom gave me this sweet frame and told me that I can go crazy with it. I wanted to make a frame with our wedding pictures and the wedding picture of our parents and grandparents as well. We started by taking the little curtain off the top and repainting the frame.

I needed a little help from a big strong man to help me get the back off of the frame so we could paint. Corey has officially claimed half of the credit from this project. :)

This is the finished product at our wedding. I bought our wedding photo to replace our engagement picture that's currently in our frame but it hasn't made it quite in yet. I'll post a picture of that when it makes its way into the frame.

Do you decorate your house with things you make? What's your favorite project so far?

Projects!

I might be taking a lot of the fun out of the wedding process but if we're going to spend money on things to put this wedding together, I want them to be things that have a purpose. Corey and I are going through the process of buying a house and we're trying really hard to make this house exactly how we want it. If I can repurpose things from this wedding into our house = win.

I saw this awesome idea on another photographer's blog and wanted to try it for our reception. The little ones might go on the kids table with pictures.

Inspiration:



Result:

The $6 frames I got on Etsy before:

After!


Before: The 20x24 frame that was free when they were discontinued at work:

After!

Total cost: Around $14.

I love the idea of bringing a little color into the room where we can hang bills, notes, or grocery lists.

House Design Question 1

Big news! We're in the middle of buying a house! We're so excited and we're in the 'wouldn't it be cool if...' phase of planning.

We have an idea that sounds awesome in theory but we'd love to get your opinion on it. We saw this chalkboard headboard wall in 500 Days of Summer and loved the idea. We're thinking about converting a wall into one of these to hold a lot of the studio notes, photos, and general things to decorate up the house a little bit with a personal touch.

After a little research, it looks like all it takes to do this is a can of chalkboard paint and you can mix things in to make it magnetized even if we want.

I love the calendar idea to keep us on track with deadlines, life, and where the other of us is.


We'd put it here in the dining room wall. I like the idea because I'm not really a picture frame kind of gal and I can draw my own frames around the pictures, write welcome notes to our clients that come to the house for photo sessions and things like that.

What do you think? Messy or Awesome?

I don't know who owns any of these pictures but it's definitely not me. Just using them to show ideas.