OL Black Friday Sale!

Halloween Party!

Last year Peter and I hosted a little Halloween party for some of our friends. All of us girls signed up for different food items before the party & it ended up being really cute so I wanted to share some pics! 

Dry ice green koolaid and vodka punch, halloween cupcakes and chili and cornbread in mason jars! 

Benson was a sock monkey!! I made his costume out of sweaters I bought at a thrift store.

Bat garland made out of a black table cloth from the dollar tree. EEK letters bought at Jo Ann's and covered with spray adhesive and glitter!

Votives with black licorice... easy and cute! Also, halloween straws from the dollar tree.

Candy corn filler in a giant mason jar. 

Meatballs in the crockpot.. yum! And cute halloween cookies made by my mom.

An upclose pic of the delicious chili and cornbread in mason jars made by Jen.

Upclose pic of the halloween cupcakes

Crescent Mummy Dogs!

Last but not least, the bar with a DIY chevron pennant banner!

Hope you enjoyed our halloween partay... can't wait to have another one this year! Just gotta figure out   what Benson is going to be... the most important detail of the party, of course. :)

Valentines Decor - Dollar Tree Style!

I ran into the dollar tree recently (I'm sure to buy some necessary items like cute ankle socks and 500 various tubs to organize with) & noticed that they had some suuuper cute valentines items! Although I have a very love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with valentines day, I still couldnt resist!

First up, the picnic table in our kitchen eating area:

The mason jar in the middle is filled with red hots and then I stuck a few cute, soft little hearts on sticks in the red hots. Oh and then I cut the hearts off some extra sticks I had and filled the side mason jars with those. woohoo DT rules! I wish they carried mason jars though. Someone work on that for me!

Felt table runner and heart plates below are from Target - compliments of Anna. thanks mom!

I printed out these little L-O-V-E letter cards to put on each plate around the table.. corny but again, I just cant help myself! ahh

Now for the dining room table... (yes there's more - cupid threw up on my house for real)

Wooden candle holder filled with red hots and more hearts on sticks! I sure do get a lot of use out of my wooden candle holders. And for some reason I have like 4 of them in various lengths...  why? I think every time I went to Canton over the course of a few years I'd forget I already had 1 (or 3) at home and would make Anna buy me a new one. oops, thanks again mom! :) 

And last but not least, an easy vday garland! 

I bought a pack of foam hearts at DT and strung them together with a needle and some red thread. Might sound time consuming, but I promise it only took me like 5 minutes to do! 

Oook I think thats all the valentines decor that anyone can handle... I apologize to all you vday haters out there & will blame all of the above on my love for the dollar tree, budget decorating, and anything and everything holiday related.  hah try to still love me! :) 

Junk Cabinet Organizing on a Budget!

Sooo its time for another post where I embarrass myself with a "before" photo that shows off just how disgusting I really am deep down. This time its our junk cabinet -- the cabinet in between our kitchen and tv room that contains pretty much 2 types of items -- weird, rarely used home items or benson's belongings. Feel free to judge me, cause I'm judging me just looking at the picture again...

For some reason January has become organizing month in my head, so when it rolled around, I decided this grosssss cabinet was first priority, but knew I couldnt really spend more than a few dollars to get this baby organized. Challenge acceppptedddd. (how i met your mother reference.. anyone get it? no? im the only one who still loves that show?? oh well).

So to start, I took everything out of the cabinet & got rid of what i could & categorized what was left over. Then I gathered some bins I had around the house that weren't being used and made a beloved trip to the Dollar Tree to get whatever else I needed. (love you $tree!).

I gave everything that needed to be in the cabinet a home of sort in either a bin, basket, or tupperware container & after adding some perhaps over-the-top homemade labels to the mix, my lovely little organized masterpiece was complete!  

You can actually see whats in there now, wahooo! Just hoping it stays this way! 

Oh & here are a couple of pics of the countertop below the cabinet.. I cleaned it off & made it a little cuter at some point during the cabinet organizing process! 

Alright thats all for now... hope you are inspired to do some January organizing!! 

Crafty Christmas Idea - Displaying Vintage Ornaments

Lately I've had an obsession with finding & buying vintage Shiny Brite ornaments... I've found boxes of them for as little as $2 at thrift stores near my house and have bought really cute tiny ones in the shapes of bells on Etsy - I love them all!
That being said, I kind of have a lot -- even my Christmas tree couldn't handle any more of them, so I had to find other ways to display my beloved Shiny Brites. :) Here are a couple ideas I tried out using things around my house..

Wooden Candle Holder

Perfect for our windowsill!

 (with my $1 poinsetta, thank youuu home depot black friday)

Cupcake Stand

Crafty Christmas Idea - Mason Jar Snow Globes

Whenever I see something expensive that I could potentially make myself, I just cannnottttt help myself and typically end up trying to make whatever it is.. many times spending way too much time in the process. But ya know what, its fun and I usually end up with something I love in the end..

Soo what did I attempt this time? These mason jar snow globes from anthropologie. Mine look pretty similar and by using things I had at home & buying a couple of mini Christmas trees, they cost me a total of about $4 for all 4 rather than the $25 - $38 anthropologie charges per jar!  yay! & booya anthro.

Happy crafting & merrryyyy christmas!

Armoire Redo - Before & After!

Peter's parents gave us their old armoire when we moved into our house & the plan from day one was to paint it, but for some reason I didn't get around to it until now (aka 2  years later). haha oops! 
Anyway, here is the before & after..

And here's a closeup of the new handles & the lacy paper I added to the panels to spiiice things up.

The "new" handles were taken off of something else a while back & I printed the lacy paper myself, so the only cost for the project was the paint (mosaic tile by behr), about $14. Yay!

File Cabinet Coffee Table!

I saw this old file cabinet in my garage the other day & an idea popped itself into my random head.. what if I turned this babyyy on its side and made a coffee table out of it? 

I had seen it every day since we moved in (the people who lived here before us left it in the garage) but I hadn't noticed its true beeeauty until now! I loved its rusty worn look & loved the color too! Soo inch by inch I drug that 500 pound hunk of lovely junk out of the garage and with the help of my buff & manlyyy husband, carried it into the living room.

After a good & thorough cleaning (years spent in a garage = nasty) I think she looks quite lovely in her new home!

Our Home: Built In Shelves Thrifty Makeover

The shelves in our tv room/den/main gathering room -- whatever you wanna call it -- have bugged me for a while. They are great shelves but when we moved in I just sort of threw some old books & other stuff on them & then never touched them again. They looked ugly. And they staaared at me all the time. So even though I really didn't have money to spend on this problem at the time, I found a way to do something about it!

I took a lot of the old books I had & found the hardcover ones & removed their paper covers... they look much prettier that way! I also found books of similar colors, like the white/cream books under the pewter pitcher. Much better! Or at least I think so!

This old wire fry basket is from a thrift store near me (not the one I always refer to, but another one) - it's called Second Chance Treasures & benefits homeless pets!

The photos are from our honeymoon -- I played with them in photoshop to make the colors pretty & printed them out!

The old cake pans are from the thrift store that I love down the street from me.. I think they were $1 each, yay. The moss frame is one thing I did leave on the shelves --- the tutorial for that is here!

The woodsy filler stuff in this jar & also in the fry basket is from the dollar tree! Loooove you sweet best friend dollar tree. Jars are from a thrift store.

For this shelf I framed some paper & also made us a mini version of the wedding date customized print I sell on Etsy. You should get one too! :)

The Plaza de Santa Cruz picture is one I had from Spain... I love it & it reminds me of spain every time i look at it!

Hope my newly made-over shelves make you as happy as they make me! Ok they probably don't, but hopefully they made you a little happy & a little inspired to use cheap/thrifty stuff or things you already have to reinvent parts of your home!

Our Home: Vintage Kitchen Tin Planter

I found a couple of vintage kitchen tin jar/canisters (whatever you call them) at the thrift store down the street from my house recently for $1.50 each! I knew they were cute, but I didnt have a clue what I would do with them. When I got some oh-so-pretty pink flowers for my birthday from my brother & sis-in-law though, I had an idea... A flower planter!

This one is an old Bisquick tin.. I love it.

I used a white bowl type thing inside the bisquick tin to raise the flowers up a little bit. Also I put some scrap burlap underneath the planter for some added rusticness (sure thats a word). Love me some burlap babyy.

Have a happy Monday!