Paint chip Easter egg garland

No posts this week! BOO! Ive been UBER sick with some nausea  that knocked me off my feet. No, Im not pregnant. (*phew*) Glad that mess is over. Now I can get back to enjoying my babies! By the way, Iris was THE biggest helper this week. She played well with her baby brother, listened well, always asked if I needed something, and even brought me a pillow, blanket and stuffed animal when I was laying on the bathroom floor. Sweet angel.

Anyway, I was finally able to sit up this afternoon, so I did a small craft. It only involved cutting paper, so I got through it.

My uncle sent me a link to a blog that had paint chip Easter egg garland, but I didnt bookmark it. When I went searching for it, I found several bloggers who had already done it, so I dont feel TOO bad for not giving credit… In the examples I saw, there were no paint names on the paint chips, but on mine there were. I dont mind it though. I kind of like the quirkiness of it.

I also saw a post on Serving Pink Lemonade where they passed on a free download for a Jesus sillouette. I didnt feel like going upstairs to the printer, so I just found an image of Jesus, enlarged it, put a piece of paper up to the computer and traced it. Then I cut out the words “He is risen” from the same piece of paper. I put them all on a piece of scrapbook paper and set it in a frame I got (and spray painted) from the Dollar Store.

Im usually not one for having pictures/images of Jesus around our house; I guess I feel that all our interpretations of what he looked like are inaccurate, and I like for people to have their own face of Jesus in their lives. But this is just a silhouette, and its a good little reminder for the beautiful holiday we will be celebrating next weekend.

Bird house decoration

I found this green wooden little birdhouse at Goodwill for $1. Iris’ room is decorated in birds, so I knew I could fix this up to match.

It was easy. I just cleaned it up, spray painted it, and put these two little birds on it, which I found at the Dollar Store.

For a $2 project, I think it turned out pretty cute!

By the way, the picture in the pink frame to the left is the one of me teaching Iris to walk at Boggy Creek Farm, which I mentioned here. I just noticed that after I posted it! Awww…

A week on our own

Nathan went out of town Sunday for a week-long training on some security system for work, so its just been Iris and I this week! But we have stayed busy, hopped around town and taken advantage of free and inexpensive little treats all over Austin.

Monday was pretty much my shopping/laundry day, but I DID go to Target to get some shelves for the baby’s room. I got 2 packs of 2/$6 shelves. Now, the room isnt finished, so you only get a small sneak preview…

Tuesday, Brandi and I went to Michaels to get a tie dye kit so we could make our March of Dimes team shirts. For most of the afternoon, I worked on the baby’s room, put our new fish in their new homes, and got decorations for Iris’ birthday party at the Dollar Store. Oh how I love that place…

That evening, Brandi’s hubby had dinner plans, so we decided to have our own dinner! We made spaghetti (wtih veggies in the sauce!), took the kids to the park, and played with them outside. It was such a nice evening.

Wednesday morning, I took Iris to a place called Acrotex, where they have open gym time for kids who arent registered for weekly classes. We havent been in awhile, but Iris had a blast tumbling, rolling and climbing on everything.

That afternoon, we had a tie dye party! Kristen, Brandi and Laura came over and we all attempted to make our team shirts- Hippies for Healthy Babies! WOOT! None of us besides Kristen had ever done tie dye, so it was more of an experiment than anything. But they turned out awesome!

Mine

Brandi’s

Brandi’s Hubby’s

We ran out of dye, so we still have to finish our kids’ and Nathan’s.

Today is tax day, so lots of companies offered freebies! I took my reusable mug to Starbucks (TWICE!) and got some amazingly tasty free decaf coffee! I also took all of our extra supplies back to the Keep Austin Beautiful office, where they gave me free tshirts for Iris, Ava and Chloe- for all their help in cleaning up our park! The shirts we had for them originally were HUGE. After Iris and I had a nice long nap, we went to Ihop for Kids Eat Free in April! Yupp! We had ourselves a little brinner (breakfast for dinner) date.

We found canvases 2/$6 at Michaels this week, and I have never painted on canvas before, so I really wanted to try it! Brandi came over this evening with a bunch of acrylic paints (thanks Patsy!) and we tried our hand at painting! Here is what I came up with!

Tomorrow is our last day with Nathan out of town, so I plan on staying home and getting everything cleaned and washed. Of course, we may find something fun to sneak out and do, so maybe I should start my cleaning a little early!

After 4 days of working on the closet….

…its FINALLY DONE! Man, what a chore!

I had a budget of $15 to organize the closet, so if I would have had more, it would look even better, but I think for $15, it looks PRETTY amazing!

Before (Nathans side)

Before (my side)

Disgraceful, isnt it??? We are not very good at putting clothes and shoes away. Until now. Now I am the Closet Nazi. Everything is to be put back EXACTLY where it came from EVERY time. (thats the plan anyway)

After (Nathans side)

After (my side)

Im so proud

The beginning of my gardens

So I have planted all my herbs in their pots, planted flowers in the front yard and planted some in the backyard. I still have a lot more to go, but heres proof I really have been working on it! This is a pic of one of the sections in my backyard. It looks the best so far.

Not really magazine perfect, but it will be!! Here’s what it looked like before I started.

I bought some garden stones at the Dollar Store and a bunch of flower seeds, so we will see if those pop up soon!

A New Pantry!

First of all, Id like to say THANK GOD we made it through the rest of this week. We all got the flu and it was awful. We were stuck in the house all week and I think as of yesterday, everything was back to normal. Except that my belly is HUGE. The baby grew during my flu episode- glad to know one of us was healthy!

Remember when I reorganized my Laundry Room the other day? I talked about how small my pantry was. It isn’t THAT small, I guess, but for a house of this size and with this many people living here, it is. And its about 1/3 of the size of my last pantry. Because I feel like its small and I never have enough room for anything, groceries just get thrown in there day after day. So it looks something like this.

But, as you know, I have been living at the Dollar Store lately, so I bought a few more of those AMAZING $1 bins, and made it look like this!

All the chips are at the top. The next shelf down is a pasta bin, an Italian food bin (with spaghetti sauces, tomatoe sauces, soups, etc.), and a plastic baggie bin. Over to the left (where you cant really see) is where I put all of my broths/stocks. I had NO IDEA how many I had- they were all just lost in there! The next shelf has boxed foods and snacks, and carbs. Lots of carbs! The next shelf belongs to our roommate, so the only bin I used was for all of his spices. The rest is just a bit more organized for him. Down on the very bottom is where we keep our sodas and waters before they go in the fridge, a couple of my “cooking tools” like a skillet and a crock pot, and my PINK tools.

Now the challenge will be to make everyone in this house USE the bins and RETURN things to the bins. Haha!

Organized the laundry room

I have a very small laundry room. It is the room that leads from our hallway to the garage. You can walk inside but only if one door is open and the garage door is closed. Since our pantry in the kitchen is the smallest place in our whole house, we use the shelves in the laundry room as extra storage for food. It is also home to diapers, wipes, extra plastic bags (for diapers!!), re-usable grocery bags, and extra stuff for Hippie. It usually looks something like this, only usually worse.

Well I hit up my favorite Dollar Store (EEEK!) and bought $4 worth of little baskets. One for Hippie’s stuff, one for extra drink mixes (mainly my teas), laundry stuff, and storage bags. I moved all the food out of here since my next project will be to organize the pantry, and my goal is to keep all food in the pantry. Ill have to get creative there. Anyway, $4 and 15 minutes later, I actually like being in my laundry room. Now Ill have to come up with something to hang on the far wall by the dryer. FUN!

Next, Ill have to get a new washer and dryer. (juuuuuuust kidding honey…. for now…… )

Clutch from a dollar store handbag

So today, I am desperately attempting to sit up so I can actually breath out of my nose, and while Iris is sleeping, I enjoyed a nice cup of coffee and attempted a quick craft.

Last week, I bought a few handbags from the Dollar Store because even though I didnt care for their styles, I knew I could fix them up.

Here is one of the spring-y bags.

I didn’t like the straps, and it wasn’t quite the right size, so I cut the straps, trimmed down the front side,  re-hemmed the edges, and turned it into a clutch.

I also sewed a little snap.

I also bought 3 little glass magnets for $1 at Michaels, and I used one of them as a little accent on the front.

Ta da!!! This whole thing took about 10 minutes! And isn’t it fabulous!!!???

Dollar Store/Goodwill playroom pics

This is one small wall by the window. It is her favorite part of this room because we keep all of her coloring books, crayons, chalk and chalkboard here. Obviously, that table was NOT $1. It was a gift from her great grandparents, so really it was free for me! I’ve had the wall lamps for months, but since they were bought BEFORE I decided to do the $1 or Goodwill challenge, they stay. besides, they were only $4 at Ikea. However, see those DARLING wall decals on between the lamps? DOLLAR STORE!!!

This is the wall on the other side of the window. I bought these flower paintings for $1. The frames are gold and kind of ’90′s style, so I may paint them later. However, for now, I wanted to see how they looked on this wall and I dig it! I put more of my Dollar Store decals here, and I love it! (Beneath is her bookshelf which is a complete mess right now. So I’ll show you what I did with that later.)

Off to a good start! Now to fix that bare window………..

Dollar Store Inspiration

I have been inspired by so many other creative bloggers to hit my local Dollar Store and look at things in a different way. I usually only go there for party supplies or party favors but when I walked in there today, I realized that I could make ANYTHING out of EVERYTHING there!

I have some crafts lined up, which I don’t want to reveal until I have a good plan down, but here’s my new idea.

Our dining room is Iris’ playroom and now that we are having a boy too, I want the room to be gender neutral while being super kid friendly, while also avoiding (for the most part) the simple primary colors that most gender neutral things use. While looking at the room today, I am happy with what I have done so far, which isn’t much. I bought a $10 rug from Ikea and I painted the accent wall one of the blue colors in the rug. That’s about it. I have a million ideas, but nothing set in stone.

So. Here’s what I’m thinking. From now on, when I am doing the kids’ playroom, I am ONLY going to use things that I buy from the Dollar Store or Goodwill… and maaaaybe Ebay. It will be a great challenge, but after this morning’s shopping trip, I think it is do-able.

Pictures soon!

For now, I am going to get all dressed up for a night on the town with my hubby, my Valentine.