Cafe Door to Mail Holder

The last couple days I've been working on a little project that is FINALLY done! Okay...actually I've been working on many projects the last two days...this just happens to be the only one that is complete. Clearly, this means I must share it with you!

A few weeks ago we had the "World's Largest Yard Sale" about an hour from here. Besides the fact that not only was this event NOT in a yard, I'm also pretty sure they couldn't possibly call it the world's largest. BUT, I did find that brand new set of packaged cafe doors for $15.

Michael's and I have been in an argument over Turquoise paint for months now. They've been out of the big bottle forever, but I still had some left from the little kitchen paintings I did last year and I got tired of waiting and just went for it. I ran out of paint with 7 slats left in my second coat. Had to buy two little bottles of it to finish. I screwed a couple D-hooks (25lb weight limit) to the back of the door and hung it on the wall!

Please excuse the mess in the kitchen. I did the painting on the table and everything is moved around right now to make room for a new refrigerator to come through later this week! (And don't you just LOVE where base housing decided the fire extinguisher would look best? In the middle of the wall is completely perfect. GREAT thinking. This is also why I only hung one of the doors.)

I know what you're thinking right now--what the crap is she going to use a cafe door on the wall for? Here, let me answer it for you with a picture...

MAIL. Our mail is consistently piling up on the kitchen table. I realize this is my fault because I'm too lazy to walk it back to the office and file it where it needs to go. But, still it's annoying. So, voila! A new place to pile the mail!

There is one small problem, though:

When the mail goes in long ways, if you aren't VERY careful about it...it just slides right through. But in order to fix this I would have to take it off the wall, put a perfectly cut piece of wood or cardboard or something behind it, glue it there, and replace it on the wall.

So, I'll just be VERY careful. Because...let's face it, that's a lot of effort.

I'm pretty excited about my new mail holder!

Sew...what do you think?

This week I broke out my sewing machine. We've owned it for almost 2 years now, and it's never been out of the box. I've never used a sewing machine before...so I decided to attack some items (the easiest items ever, which also happen to be baby items).

Some Bib & Burp Cloth sets with Sew On Snaps (they last longer and withstand tugging!)






A nursing cover. The strap is velcro and connects to the cover, and in the top of the cover between where the strap connects to the cover and where the velcro attaches is boning, so the front of the cover bows out when you use it--allowing you to see your baby, but not allowing everyone to see your boob. Win/win.



And, lastly, this is a 0-3 Month Pillowcase dress. It's supposedly "the perfect project for the beginner!" ...3 hrs, much cursing, and almost giving up many times...and the "perfect beginning project" was completed.


It's been fun...but I think I'm all sewn out for awhile!

DIY Fabric Softener

I have seen this idea on so many blogs lately that I had to give it a go. It's so incredibly easy and really a $$ saver!

Ingredients:

6 cups HOT water
2 cups hair conditioner (any kind, any scent)
3 cups white vinegar
Big empty container

The ridiculously easy directions:
1. Stir the 6 cups HOT (seriously, make sure it's hot) water with the 2 cups of hair conditioner until the conditioner is completely desolved.


2. Mix in 3 cups white vinegar
3. Pour into container


I will mention that I used dry measure for all this...because my brain was not fully functional this evening. So, although it's probably a bit more for liquid measure, this made about 2/3 gallon for me. So let's look at the price breakdown (and I bought all this stuff at target, so it would be cheaper pretty much anywhere else, because I had to make a valentine's day run):

White Vinegar 16oz: $1.12, so would be $1.68 for liquid measure at 24oz.
Conditioner 22.5: $1.47, so 16oz of that would be about $1.07
Water: Free ;)

Total cost of about 85oz of fabric softener: $2.75, or $0.03/oz.
The fabric softener I buy is the Tide 44oz, which is on sale for $4.47 right now at walmart, making it about $0.10/oz, which would make 85oz of fabric softener bought $8.64.

Total savings: $.07/oz or $5.80/85oz.

We will talk about the fact that I'm frugal enough to make my own fabric softener, but willing to shell out $4.00 for a gallon of Arizona tea I could make myself later.

Also, I haven't used this yet, but I'm planning on using it with the cup from the last tide bottle I bought and using the same amount as I would have from the bottle based on the load. I'll let you know how it goes.

DIY: Peppermint Stick Cocoa

Last week, I couldn't figure out what I was going to get my grandmas for Christmas. Ever since I can remember, my mom and I have made some awesome ornaments for the families. But, this year I have 3 grandmas in assisted living and 1 who gave me back a box of all the ornaments I ever gave her last year. So, ornaments were a little out of the question.

Instead, I went on a quick DIY search for simple, cute gifts I could do at home. I found Peppermint Stick Cocoa, tweaked the recipe, bought my own $1 plastic air-tight containers, created my own tags and went for it. I'm impressed with how they turned out--I wasn't really expecting much!

This is actually the only thing it looks like I'll be making for Christmas. I have all my Christmas gifts bought and wrapped, and I have directions on how to make some homemade decorations that are awesome, but it's looking like we'll be spending Christmas in a hotel so...I don't think I'll be doing anything else lol.

What do you think?

Posting Failure (+Pics)

I know I haven't posted in...well, weeks. I actually wrote a post last week, mostly, but never posted it. I'm just out of the swing of blogging. But, eventually I'll be back. I swear.

We went to an Old West Festival a couple weeks ago here. It was cute, but pricey for the events within it. I think they are trying to get it going as a yearly event, this being the first year.




And on the way home we met this cow. He's not special. We just liked him. And we named him EmoCow.


Little Man started playing football. He's really enjoyed it so far! He ought too, he's the biggest kid on the team. He's #48 catching the ball below.


And we got a Cricut...for my mom...that I love. More on this later.

Craft Time: Red & Turquoise

I got a little carried away with kitchen decorations this week. It was my only week at home without having classes, and it was wonderful. Plus a little IKEAing didn't help with my decoration overload. I found this lazy susan at IKEA some months ago. I love it, but it's brown. Our kitchen is all red, turquoise, and black. So, of course, throwing a brown lazy susan on the middle of the table wouldn't have been too pretty.

But, with $4 in paint, some tape, some sandpaper, and two 59cent foam brushes, it went from this...


To this...


And suddenly it matched!

But I couldn't stop there. Oh no sirree. By then, I was thoroughly enjoying the painting process. At this point in the decorating, I should have put more thought into it. But, instead my thought process went a lot like this: I want to paint something else. I already have the paint. I can't buy anything else right now. Hey, how about painting on some sketchbook paper? Could I find 8.5x8.5 frames? It didn't matter. There was no stopping me.

I spent a little bit of time searching "red and turquoise" online, and found a few prints/paintings and used them to imitate my own on paper. With the paint. (imitating here and here, but only using simple specific colors). I came up with these:



Where I go from here, I don't know. I have two options for displaying these (assuming I can find frames to fit them) and both include at least one more painting. I could do two more paintings, both with black backgrounds, and go with one of these hanging situations:


OR.

I could buy this really awesome red shelf from IKEA, do one more painting with the black background and both red and turquoise in it, and set the three paintings on the self (below) and just hope that it fits in our house...which we don't have yet.


Decisions decisions!

Someone should really hide the red and turquoise paint from me.