About Me

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Wife, mother, friend, and entrepreneur...my desire is to see women come together as friends with fun things to share! To use creativity to enjoy life and hopefully make a little money at times :) I enjoy exploring these things- I hope you enjoy them too!

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

"From Rarely Used Dining Room to a Room of My Own!"

What started out as a dining room...
Then I repainted and re-staged to accommodate the pool table we bought at a garage sale!...
THEN I decided to add a bench and repaint...
Now, thanks to my wonderful husband, he's convinced me into letting me have the room all to myself- the boys have the game room and each one a bedroom...my hubby uses the living room as his office...so here it is in progress...
Pool table is still stacked on the right, and I'm waiting on my little loveseat from Wal-mart!!!

Here's the end product!! (Without the t.v. from upstairs, however)  But thanks so much to my husband for helping me put that couch together- everything else is stuff I already had and re-purposed!!

So happy with the end product! And from now on, THIS is where I'll be doing most of my posting!! :)

Monday, February 27, 2012

"Finished My Necktie Pillow!"

So months ago I had this "great idea"( sarcasm is in quotes)...I bought several neckties CHEAP from Goodwill with interesting prints and I wanted to TIE (pun intended) them together to make a rug...turns out you need a LOT of ties for that...so what I did instead was cross-hatch the ties in a square- and I found I needed a backdrop- so I used a piece of black felt...This is what it looked like-
And from the back...
Now I had this finished and wanted to make a pillow out of it...but I DON'T SEW very well...I'm going to learn!!  Sooo, I've been keeping an eye out for a great pillow to add this to whenever we visit Goodwill (I'm telling you- some days our Goodwill is like gold!!)  Tonight I found a fantastic pillow- has a gold cover with a zipper- brand new for $3.03!!  Here's the pillow by itself.
This is going to be a hand wash pillow- definitely decorative or for someone without small kids...I remember too well all the spit up I had to deal with when Noah was little!!  So I used my trusty Fabric Adhesive Spray- it also adheres a lot of other stuff- very strong.  I sprayed the back really well, tucked under the edges and here is my new pillow for my new room!!
Here's another view-
It definitely unique, and I like it so much, I may do a couple more...matching the prints was part of the fun! 

So, What do you think? I'd appreciate comments on my blog, so I know what direction to keep marching in...thanks always for your time, friends!!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

"Easy End Table"

So I had these 3 cut-out press-boards that I bought on clearance at TJ Maxx about 2 yrs ago and I've used them at different times for different things...I got all 3 for $10 because they were a little beat-up- and you know, all you need is some good spray paint!!
Here is a photo of when I used them to grandstand some product I was selling...can you see them underneath?

Then they just laid around- so I decided to make them into a small table for my new sun-room!! Here's how I did it...I bought small L-brackets and half-inch screws and screwed the panels together like this...
It needed a little extra bracing underneath, so I grabbed some scrap 2X2 in the garage and measured and cut it to fit.  Then I screwed both ends from the outsides...
Now all it needed was black acrylic paint, including over the screw heads, and then an overall coat of spray polyurethane...and now- it's, well, TA-DA!!!
Finished product!! Just waiting on my new little loveseat to pair it with!

"Some of My Favorite Past Reno's"

This is Noah's old room at our last house in Danville, IL...you can see by the following photos how it was transformed...when we peeled up the carpet, we found where there used to be 2 walls and double doors...my parents and sister bought the house from us and live there now =)
The actual windows of the room are rounded- even the glass! It was such a neat house to work on and live in!!
3 months later this is what it looked like for our Open House Christmas Party- we used it for extra seating- wood floor still unfinished at this point...
After the New Year, the yucky ceiling came down- both boys were big helpers!!
Now the walls are framed and the doors are up! But there is still a ways to go...

Monday, February 20, 2012

"Decorating Ideas- Halloween"

Most of the decorating I did for our big Halloween Party with our teenagers, came from the Dollar Tree- which gave me a lot for my budget...following here are just several pictures of how I used the articles to decorate the house...
Fingers and eyeballs in the pantry!


Then I used cotton to spread all over pictures that I DOWNLOADED from horror flick searches on the web...I inserted them into the frames to give a spooky feeling...since I wasn't selling them, I didn't have to worry about copyrights!!
Look closely at the pictures! =0


So I wanted to take pictures of all of our party guests and I needed a couple of backdrops- in comes my shower curtain liner (which needed replaced, anyway for about $6 from Wal-Mart).  I laid the tarp out in the yard, and used a bottle of red acrylic paint- 97 cents- and flung it randomly over the liner, and at one point, covered my hands in the red paint and put a couple of stamps on the liner dragging down- needless to say, I was going for a "Psycho" feel!  It turned out pretty great! 
Made for some terrific photos- although this one I could see the bottom of my door :)

See the eyeballs sticking out of the plant in the corner?  For about $3 a piece, I bought styrofoam balls and painted black circles in the center.  By shoving dowel rods in the bottom, we could put them in bushes outside and all sorts of places for trick or treaters- for nighttime, we put cheap kids' light up sticks in from the top and the EYES GLOWED =) 
And here is a pretty decent photo of them glowing in the dark!!

Here's another cheap decoration that got the kids' attention! Once again, Wal-Mart for a couple of bucks, supplied me with these green and black pantyhose.  I stuffed them with socks to look like legs, and used my very own pair of red shoes.  We stuck them under the garage door to look like "The Wicked Witch of the East" out of "The Wizard of Oz"!  Cheap and not too gory!!


For a CHEAP and easy way to scare up our porch lights, I used a page of my existing scrap-booking paper with a red tinge, cut it in half and just taped it to the inside of the glass. (Be sure they're not touching the light bulbs, and take them down as soon as Trick-or-Treating time is over.) Then we used a little more "spider web" to give it a more realistic touch!
Here's a great photo I put in black and white- I bought a zombie figure and taped him behind our dining room door like he was reaching out.  I got to take a lot of pictures with our zombie and our friends that turned out great!!  This is one of my favorites!  
Just one more- can you tell how much I like to decorate for Halloween?? I found these paper birds at the Dollar store and put them all over our windows, and then I found 2 for $1 fake ravens and placed them in the house...Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" scared my mother to death when she was young!!  The ravens, by the way, also tricked our cat! LOL He attacked them more than once!

I'm only posting a couple more photos, I could go on forever...feel free to share any of your ideas here! Thanks for sifting through mine!

 
Happy Halloween!!

"Christmas Transformation!"

This is my dining room/ pool room- lol!  I had just made it over a couple of months before Christmas.  It turned out very light and airy which I loved.  However, after having a huge Halloween Party and decorating it all up, I didn't want to put a ton of work into decorating it for Christmas...so here's what I did!



I went outside and cut several branches off of our overgrown Juniper trees and put them in this beautiful green glass vase.  I added a faux white orchid in the middle- that was all free!  I
I put my Christmas tablecloth over the pool table and put out the place settings a few days before dinner!
Added a few candles and found these terrific snowflakes from the chandelier from the Dollar Store...it all kept the room light and airy, but also gave it a holiday feel- and made it very easy to take apart when the holidays were over.  Because of the color scheme, it was also a great carry-over for New Years!!

"Simply Make Life Simple"

This blog will be a series of simple ideas to indeed make life easier- and who couldn't use that?
Item #1- Broken Water Cooler
        So we had this large red water cooler for awhile, but it began to leak and eventually the hinges on top completely gave way.  It was sitting empty taking up space in the closet when one day I thought, "Hey! That would be perfect to store our dry dog food in!"  So that's exactly what I did- we have 2 dogs roughly 60 lbs apiece and we buy these huge 40 lb bags of food.  Usually the cooler holds almost the whole bag and within a few days, we pour the rest in...It is absolutely less messy and looks much nicer (smells nicer, too!) than a big bag sitting around.  We leave a scoop cup in the cooler and it makes feeding the dogs much simpler!! If you have a simple idea, please feel free to comment and leave your name so I can give you credit!
      
We all like to have life a little easier!!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

"Trying Other's Teriffic Ideas!"

O.k, sooooo I needed something over the windows in our bedroom and just couldn't find the right thing.  I canNOT sew, SO that limited me a lot...I tried buying a shower curtain and tying it to the rod in the openings, but it looked sparse, so I took it down.

And THEN!

I came across a great trick to making a Roman Shade with absolutely no sewing whatsoever! And the best part was, I already had the fabric and the mini-blinds from the instructions.....so I want to share my final result and then direct you to this tremendously creative woman that I learned from!



See how nicely they compliment our existing black/white quilt? And because I already had all the materials, they cost me NOTHING but some time...

Check her out! She's a genius, too!! Ha-ha! =)

"For the Birds"

I love to find new purpose for old things, like many of you- AND, I love to search stores like Goodwill for great buys!
Here is a Bird Feeder I made out of 2 existing plates- one was already painted like a beautiful sunflower, so I painted the other one to match...

Then I just glued the two together using Gorilla Glue (which is amazing stuff)! It's also water proof... Now I can't decide whether to stake it in the yard, or hang it on chain...either way, it will be a unique bird feeder for about $7 total
 

Here's another idea for the birds!
I was able to use a couple of things I already had and wasn't using- a metal plant stand, and a handful of colorful rocks- and combined it with...this beautiful bowl from, once again, the Goodwill!! 
There was a hole in the bottom, so I super-glued one of the rocks over it and let it dry, thereby allowing it to hold water! I know, genius, right? ;)


The plate was so beautiful on it's own, I just couldn't resist!!  Hope you enjoy!
Here's a closeup!
BTW- The birds loved it!! =)