Refinished Cabinet

In my spare time over the last few weeks (ie, nap time and when Trent is home to help keep an eye on Dylan), I have been working on painting the dining room and refinishing a cabinet. The cabinet is my solution to child proofing the cat food & water now that Dylan is allowed into the dining room and kitchen (he's at the point where the living room alone is like being trapped).

The cat food bowls and water fountain are like a magnet drawing him in.  Dylan knows these aren't for playing with but can not resist the temptation.  Thus the idea for a cabinet where they could be closed off from him, but accessible to the cats came about.

I found this cabinet on Craigslist for $20:

It was a good size (36"w x 18"d x 36"h) and overall in good condition.  It had expected wears from previous use, but also had great bones.  I had a vision that it could be beautiful and functional with a little work.

I sanded it down.  Removed the old knobs.  Patched the holes.  Cut a 6" x 6" opening in one side for the cats to enter.  Then came paint.  I was momentarily stumped.  The other furniture in the room is a dark walnut tone.  I wasn't convinced that I could get a color to match and, honestly, didn't want it to match.  I wanted it to be a fun accent piece.  Searching the room for inspiration, I came to the curtains.  In May 2009, I had added a striped top panel to lengthen the curtains after accidentally shrinking them.  Looking at the striped fabric, I had my aha! moment - a nice olive green color would be perfect.  After a trip to Lowes for supplies and several layers of paint (Valspar #318-6 Shubbery mixed in Olympic semi-gloss no VOC base) later, my vision was starting to come together.

Even Dylan was joining in on the fun when he could - oh how he loved climbing in and playing hide 'n seek:

Finally, the dining room was painted and the new knobs I ordered on eBay arrived:

For now only the cat food is in there as we let them adjust to the new location.  I'll eventually place their water fountain on the bottom and cut a hole in the shelf so they can access the food above. And, of course, I had to add locks to keep Dylan from being able to open the doors. 

And in it's new home:

All in all, I spent less than $50 and ended up with a unique, beautiful piece.

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Welcome, Fall

In honor of the first day of fall yesterday, I went up to our attic and retrieved our fall wreath.  I love hanging it each year as it makes the door look so nice and inviting plus fall is my favorite season.

I made the wreath a few years ago for $3.  Yes, 3 dollars.  I purchased the grapevine wreath, flowers and leaves all from the dollar store.  Then I cut apart the flower/leaf groupings and arranged them on the wreath.  Simple and affordable.

Do you have a wreath on your front door this time of year?

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YoBaby!

I recently started buying YoBaby yogurt for Dylan - who loves it and devours every bite. The packaging advertised a rewards program via the Stonyfield Farm website. Being a frugal minded mama, I, of course, went to check it out. While on the website I registered and found the page for printable coupons. I made my selections, clicked print and .... well, no coupons. Instead a webpage telling me I had printed my limit came up. Um, but I wasn't able to print any. I clicked my way over to the "contact us" section, explained my predicament and asked if there was any other way to obtain coupons. I expected I might get an automated response and then, maybe, a real reply in a day or two. I was wrong. I received a response in about an hour's time and was told that some coupons would be mailed to me. Woohoo! This was all last Monday and what did I find in yesterday's mail - my coupons. :)

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Window Treatments

When we bought our home in 2003, I made the curtains for almost every window in the house including a pair of light yellow panels for the sliding glass doors in our dining room and a matching roman shade for over the sink in the adjoining kitchen.


Fast forward to a few months ago when I took down the panels to wash. They needed a good cleaning between dust, cat fur and general age. I thought I had used fabric that was washer & dryer safe. After cleaning, I ironed the wrinkles out, hung them up and ... oops! They were about 4 inches shorter:


We decided to leave them up for the time being (they still worked - just looked a little funny) while I decided what to do. I considered purchasing new panels and a matching shade, but couldn't find anything that I liked enough and for a price I liked. Instead I thought I might find a coordinating fabric and extend the existing panels.

On Friday while fabric shopping for the ribbon blanket and nursing cover, I came across a striped fabric that I thought would be perfect. On a whim, I went ahead and bought it. I pre-washed all of the fabrics that night to be sure I don't repeat my mistake in the future. Sunday I checked the measurements of the existing panels and created new top sections for each:


Then on Monday I made a matching valance to hang in front of the roman shade in our kitchen:


Altogether I spent about $25 on supplies including the spring rod to hold the valance - a mere fraction of what it would have cost to completely replace them with store bought options. And now we have a look we both like that's unique to our home.

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Free Starbucks Coffee

Did you know signing up for the Starbucks Card Rewards program can get you a free coffee? I was oblivious until I saw signs at one of their stores 2 weeks ago. All you have to do is pick-up a Starbucks giftcard on your next visit and then register it online at Starbucks Card Rewards.

If you do this before July 14th, Starbucks will mail you a coupon for one free beverage. There are also some other perks [pun intended ;) ]. Check out their website for more details.

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Scrap Organization {Stickers & Rub-ons}

Over the years, my stash of scrapping supplies has grown. This includes lots and lots of stickers and rub-ons. I used to keep them in a single poly 8.5x11 envelope. When it was about the bust at the seams, I found an idea on Two Peas from another member to organize them in a binder using these 99cent poly envelopes from Target:


This has been wonderful for me. The envelopes come in several colors, all translucent. I prefer the clear so I stocked up on several trips. Each holds a category - letters, words, kids, animals, etc. I labeled them using my Dymo label maker.

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Picture Moulding Ledge

One of the walls in our bedroom is just a mass of, well, wall. There are no pieces of furniture along it except for a tall, skinny bookcase in one corner. The door from the hall is at the opposite end. I originally just hung 3 frames with pictures from our wedding & honeymoon as I wasn't quite sure what else to do with the space.

As you can see in the photo below, it looked pretty bland especially with the old white walls:

Just before we painted the room a couple weeks ago, I was thumbing through the winter 2007/2008 copy of Lowe's Creative Ideas. It was near the bottom of the mail pile and I had almost forgotten about it. So glad I found it though because it has instructions for building a picture moulding ledge. It looked so good in the pictures and fairly simple, so I added this to my "to-do" list for the bedroom.

Now that the painting is complete and we didn't have any set plans for yesterday, it was off to Lowe's for supplies. Thanks to both Trent & his friend, John, for their assistance when I needed an extra set (or two) of hands to install it. Here are the results:

And a close-up detail:
I plan to add a few additional pictures later. But, I'm loving the result. It really pops against the newly painted walls and adds more interest to what was just a wall. And, it cost only $20.

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Leap Day Specials

Several retailers are offering Leap Day specials. Here are a few you might want to take them up on:

• McDonald's free McSkillet Burrito - buy any medium or large drink today or tomorrow during breakfast hours and receive a free sausage McSkillet burrito
• Einstein Bros. Bagels and Noah's Bagels - 29cent regular drip coffee
• Scrapbook Express - use coupon code, SELEAPS10, to save an extra 10% on orders over $30! (The Silhouete is excluded from this coupon)
• The Memory Zone Scrapbook Store - It's a HUGE Leap Year Sale
• Gotta Pixel - Leap Year Sale
• Circuit City - 2008 Leap Year Sale
• A&E / History Channel - Leap Year Sale
• Cuties N Cotton - Leap Year Sale + Free Shipping
• Ronzoni Healthy Harvest Pasta - Free box of Ronzoni Healthy Harvest® pasta
• Frontier Airlines - Leap Year Sale
• Walgreens Photo Center - Save 29% on your photo order (code: LEAPDAY) and 29c coupon specials

For Leap Day babies only:

• Papa John's - free large, one topping "Perfect Pan" pizza (online code LEAPDAY)
• Boston Market - free lunch up to $10 value
• Morton's The Steakhouse - free steak and seafood dinner to people with this special birthday on Leap Day 2008
• Einstein Bros. Bagels and Noah's Bagels - free menu item, side, pickle & drink
• Also check my Birthday Freebies post for deals available on your birthday whether it's 2/29 or any other day in the year.
  

Other fun stuff:

• Celebrate the Year of the Frog at a zoo or aquarium near you

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Saturday Painting Project

Yesterday we had plans to stop by Ace Hardware for a rain barrel. The drought here continues to get worse and this may be the only way we'll be able to water any of our outdoor plants this summer. The last time we attempted to buy one, they were in stock one day and out of stock by the time we went to buy one a couple days later. On Friday, Trent called to be sure they had some - yes and 3 different types. The one we wanted would be $10 off on Saturday. Sounded good. Until we got there and, yes, gone again! The sales associate told us one man bought them, but he didn't know why. I know why - to resell. The lots in this area are far to small for any one homeowner to need more than 2 or 3 and they are a hot commodity around here with the current restrictions. I was very displeased, but wasn't willing to shell out $99 for a really ugly terra cota one they did have in stock. So, our rain barrel shopping will wait until another day. We have a plan. ;) But I'm keeping that a secret for now so I might actually get one this time! LOL

While we were at Ace, and everything was 20% off for Ace Rewards card holders, we decided to look at paint. I have been wanting to paint our bedroom and kitchen. After almost 5 years of homeownership, over half of our home is still "builder's white." And, honestly, those walls are starting to look more yellow than white. Time to spruce things up.

We found a gallon of Benjamin Moore "Stratton Blue" (which looks more grey green on the paint chip - but teal in our house! LOL) in the "Oops!" section. It was marked $8, but after the 20% off - we got it for $6.40 (originally $35!). Another bad habit of mine - buying something like this and then letting it sit. I'll get to it later.... Since our rain barrel project was on hold, I decided to go full speed ahead and paint our bedroom yesterday.

Here's our room before:

And after with freshly painted walls:

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Small Space Organization {Crop In Style}

Probably my favorite new scrapping piece is my Crop In Style modular unit. It's a combination of four pieces - (2) Accessorizer cubes with added inserts and (2) 3-drawer Organizer cubes. I constructed a base for them to sit on using wood 2x4s and base molding. That idea I lifted from a user at Two Peas - abrandstetter.

The top left cube holds my patterned papers in a Cropper Hopper Vertical holder. I have them divided by theme and a few by category using the Cropper Hopper paper files and page planners. The latter are great when you want to organize papers with scraps or certain flat embellishments. For example, I use one of the page planners for my Disney papers and keep stickers in the smaller pocket.

Also in the top left cube are two magazine files - one for scrapbooking magazines I'm keeping for reference and one to hold blue plastic document holders I bought from the Target dollar spot. I keep chipboard shapes and 6x6 papers in the document holders. Next to them are the Pioneer Space Saver photo albums I mentioned in my Photo Organization post.

The top right cube holds my albums horizontally. I personally prefer to store them this way versus standing upright. Also it enables me to lay a few recent and/or in progress layouts on the top album until I'm ready to place them into their album.

The drawers along the bottom hold a variety of fun scrapbooking goodies. I added labels using the same font (Two Peas Old Type) that I used on the foam stamp jars. They are categorized as follows: alphas, ribbons & punches, tools, embellies, stamps, and misc.

The alphas drawer is as the name says - a drawer dedicated to alphabet embellishments [except stickers....I'll cover that in another post]. I split up all of my various alpha embellies (metals, plastics, chipboard, etc) by letter into large Cropper Hopper embellishment boxes. I labeled each box with the appropriate letter or symbol using some Making Memories alpha stickers from my stash. The boxes fit perfectly (with a few extra to spare) and still leave some space in the back for larger alpha and chipboard items that won't fix in the boxes. Another $$ saver tip here - I'm using index card cases by Better Office Products to house some of those larger items. These cases sell for $1.00 at CVS and are basically a freebie when I shop using my CVS ExtraCare Bucks.

Next to the alphas drawer is the embellies drawer. I keep those items separated with a Crop In Style Drawer Divider. I choose not to use the middle insert so I would have larger, rectangular spaces for some of the bulkier items. In the front you might notice the Cropper Hopper 3x3 Embellishment Bags. I recently bought a second package of those. They are very handy for storing little items such as brads and sequins.

The final drawer I'll share an inside photo of is the ribbons & punches drawer [pardon Cali's tail - she was curious ;)]. I don't own very many punches so it's easy to share the space with these two items. I keep them separated with an old paper file we had laying around collecting dust. I was about to add it to our donation pile when I realized how perfectly it divided this drawer.

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Small Space Organization {Scrapping Desk}

Each year after Christmas and with the New Year on the horizon, I tend to get into a spring cleaning mood a bit early. This year I thought I would share some of the scrap room organization ideas I've incorporated over the past year. I'm going to break it up into multiple posts over the next few days. Hopefully, you'll find a bit of inspiration. :) Click on any of the images for a better view.

The room where I "play" is the smallest bedroom in our house - 10 feet by 10 feet - but carries a LOT of responsibility. The computer area, my scrap space, and cats' litter box all squeeze in. Until about 3 months ago, the treadmill lived in there too. Yup, chaos! LOL :D The floor plan to the right will give you an idea of how tight things are.

My scrap desk is located opposite the door. I like this spot where I can see the tv and see the furkids coming and going. Sometimes they just lay in the hallway outside the door and watch me or nap. ;) LOL The desk itself was the first official "scrapping" furniture purchase I made when we bought the house. I got it at AC Moore for $50 using a 50% off coupon. That's just the start of my "deals" [remember, I'm a big coupon-er and money saver ;)] in this space.

The light fixture next to the desk was a hand-me-down from a friend who was moving. So glad I scooped that up as it gives me excellent lighting when working on my projects.

The wallboard and shelving are from Pottery Barn. It's a discontinued item called "Wayne Modular." I was eyeing it in their catalogs and online late last year, but it was out of my price range (the board alone was over $100!). In January, they slashed the prices by up to 90% so I managed to get 2 boards, 2 shelves, 5 ledges, and 1 pin board for about $120 (original price about $600!). The other board hangs over our computer desk, but that will have to wait for another post as this one is already getting long.

On the ledges over the desk, I keep a variety of embellishments and tools in Making Memories storage jars. The top ledge has the large size jars with foam stamps. I've added a simple MM metal rimmed vellum tag to each and printed the stamp types in Two Peas Old Type font.

The ledge below it has a collection of 12 of the smaller MM jars with buttons, tabs, flowers, etc. The jars are flanked by two metal tin containers I picked up at the Target dollar spot in the spring. The one on the left holds my MM paints and the one on right right I use for miscellaneous loose embellishments I'm currently using.

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Wrapping Gifts

A simple little card for tonight inspired by Dec 7 of dw2007 to use wrapping paper as patterned paper:
Yes, I just began wrapping presents tonight! Good thing too since I had almost no tissue paper. Looks like that will be on the list for my errands tomorrow. I have lots and lots of wrapping paper though. :) Each year I go shopping at Hallmark after Christmas and stock up for the following year. I also buy my cards at that time and just pack them up with the Christmas decorations so I can easily find them the following year.

Supplies: Hallmark wrapping paper & label; Die Cuts with a View adhesive backed cardstock (for carrot nose & arms); Making Memories snowflake rub-ons; Uniball Signo white & silver pens.

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Small Space Organization {Key Rack}

Ever have that "where are my keys??" moment just before you need to leave and you're already running late? Well, years ago I bought a simple wooden mail & key organizer from Target to hang by my front door to prevent moments like those. It served it's purpose well, but a few months ago I was ready for a change. And, as you can see in the photo, we weren't exactly utilizing the mail section (minus the junk in the bottom) and the key hooks were overloaded.

Searching around online, I found a simple key organizer that I absolutely loved at Pottery Barn. Nice clean lines. Lots of hooks. But, I didn't want to pay the asking price. This looked like something I could make myself for less. So instead of point, click, buy ... I drove to Michael's and Lowes Home Improvement for supplies:

• (1) 9"x12" white frame
• (1) 12"x12" plywood sheet, 1/4" thick
• (4) coat hooks
• (8) screws, washers, and nuts [The screws that came with the hooks had pointed ends which wouldn't work. I bought flat ended screws and finished them off with nuts on the backside.]
• white primer & white glossy paint in spray cans [from my shed ;) ]
  

Here's the end result which hangs proudly next to my front door:

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Coupons Galore

No scrapping for me tonight. Trent & I attended our annual HOA meeting and got home around 9pm. Since then I've been sorting through some coupons to work out a possible trade with another user at Hot Coupon World. Great place to learn about deals and make some swaps.

Right now though, my coupons for trading are a wreck. Normally they are stored by category in this blue index card box on my desk which I altered for some "cuteness factor." ;) And a few still are in there. But.... ever since my vacation earlier in the month, the coupons have been clipped, but not organized. And not listed on my Have List at HCW for trading. (That poor list is still showing coupons that expired at the end of October! *gasp*)

Here is a small idea of what the insert coupons from the last 3 Sundays (11/4, 11/11 and 11/18) look like: Yup, a big jumbled mess. I at least tossed them in an empty shoebox sized storage container so they aren't flying all over the desk or turning into toys for the cats. But they are still a mess nonetheless. Hopefully by this weekend they will start to fall into their rightful place in my "Coupons for Trade" box so I can begin to trade more regularly on HCW again. :)

Coupon Box Supplies: hand-me-down box (thanks, Christopher!); Chatterbox patterned paper; Making Memories rub-ons and TinyAlpha stickers; Doodlebug rub-ons.

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Birthday Freebies

We all love getting a good deal, right? And what better deal is there than free?? None. :) With my birthday coming up on Saturday (hint: feel free to leave well wishes *wink*), my inbox is filling with goodies and I thought I'd share how to fill yours up with fun offers for your special day.

• Baskin-Robbins - free scoop of ice cream
• Cafe Carolina and Bakery (NC restaurant) - free sandwich with a medium drink purchase
  
• Camille's Sidewalk Café - coupon for a free dessert
• Cold Stone Creamery - free ice cream
• Consolidated Theatres - pick up a free "Movie Awards" card at the theater. Have it punched each time you purchase a ticket to earn free popcorn, drinks & tickets. On your birthday, present the card & your ID to get one free admission.
  
• Moe's Southwest Grill - free burrito on your birthday
• Qdoba Mexican Grill - from the website "look forward to a big surprise on your birthday"
• Red Robin Gourmet Burgers - free burger
  
• Rockfish Seafood Grill - $5 off a $20 purchase (kinda bummed w/ this one this year)
• Texas Steakhouse & Saloon - $10 off a $20 purchase
  

Another perk of signing up with the restaurants - most email out coupons throughout the year. I added a "Coupons" folder in my Yahoo! Mail to move those deals so I don't loose track of them in my regular email. Then when we are planning to go out to eat, I can easily click & find any printable coupons we might have.

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