Fall Kisses

This is a simple little way to spread some fall kissy poohs :) Just add some googly eyes, and use puffy paint for lips and eyebrows.

We love fall! 

$20 Living Room Update

This October marked the 3rd year that I've been in my house, and I was in the mood for a little update.

Here is the before picture:

(We really aren't this messy. I had already begun moving some things before I remembered to take the picture) As you can see, I had a tiny little rug under our trunk/coffee table. I found a much larger rug at Big-Lots for $19, and I think it pulled the living room together so much better!

Then, I finally did something with a $1 yard-sale canvas I had. The canvas originally had brown circles painted on it, but I gave it a white coat, and then I got to work using the same colors found in my new rug.

It took me about an hour to free-hand it, and I REALLY love how it turned out. It also blends well with the tree painting I did when I first moved in. Both of these DIY paintings were fairly easy to do, but I think that anyone, regardless of artistic talent, could do the abstract one. All you need is 3-4 colors of paint and to be able to draw a leaf-like oval. After getting the ovals, simply rotate the ones your fill in all the way, or leave as outlined.

Scarf Holder

I used a behind-the-door towel rack and curtain clips to create a much needed storage solution for my scarves.

DIY Wedding Flowers

When we started planning our wedding, we knew that we wanted to do our own flowers because we are crazy we both love arranging flowers. Neither of us has any training or anything, we just love to arrange fresh flowers for our kitchen table. If you like natural styles, arranging is so simple and fun :) However, simply finding the flowers was a huge deal. There aren't any whole-sale flower companies in our area, and going through a florist was pretty expensive even though we would be the ones arranging. So, we took a huge chance and ordered our flowers online. We used FiftyFlowers and could not have been more pleased.

I was pretty clueless as to how to go about having the flowers delivered, but they walked me through each step. I'm not going to lie though--it was extremely nerve-wracking because nightmares of wilted/black/too small/every other worry imaginable keeps running through your head the days leading up to their arrival (2 days before event). Istalked the diverly guy via UPS tracker every 10 minutes, and then I ran out to greet him once he came. :)

This is what they looked like when they arrived. Literally our entire kitchen was covered with gorgeous flowers. Day 1 was spent letting them refresh in buckets of water (4 hours) and then cutting them down to size and pulling away outside petals. Day 2 was spent arranging the flowers for the reception. The BIG day was spent making corsages and my bouquet. Aaron made all the men's boutonnieres including his own. He did a wonderful job :)

Loose petals to toss

Single roses in a jar with baby's breath

Upcycled Seed Saver

Easy little idea if you are saving seeds. Just use your empty vitamin containers and label your seeds. I've been saving seeds for about 3 years now. I simply dry them out on a paper towel and put them into a baggie, but I figured this may be a little more air-tight, and I can reuse them each year.

Cheap Posters/Prints

These two gigantic photo prints cost me a whopping $3.00 each. If you take your photos to Staples on a jumpdrive, they can print you engineering prints. I found this tip through Pinterest here: Link The creative lady who had the tip used wood to carve out a frame for her huge photo, but I'm unsure of what I will use yet. They turned out really well especially given the price!

I also had a poster made for my classroom. I took a picture from our honeymoon and used Picasa to add words.

This is a really bad picture of the poster, but it will look great in my room!

DIY Wedding Shadowbox

My friend Emily got married in September and her mother surprised her with a gorgeous wedding shadowbox for Christmas which was  done by a professional. When I saw it, I fell madly in love with it, but knew that it was out of my price range. Even though it was worth the money ( the woman who made it meticulously hand painted each and every petal of Emily's bouquet then put it all back together), we were completely broke after our wedding, so I decided to try and make my own version. I'm thrilled with the outcome and the price ($36.00).

Time: 1 hour

Supplies:

Shadowbox (I bought mine at Hobby Lobby with a 40 % off coupon)
Dried bouquet and boutineer
Other wedding tokens
Pins
Tape

Steps:
1. When you get home from your wedding, (or have someone do this step for you) hang your flowers upside down in a dark room or closet. In hindsight, it may have been better to take it apart and hang each flower individually (but taking an hour to do this might not go over too well with your new husband...;)

2. After you get back from your honeymoon and the flowers are completely dried out, you will need to deconstruct the bouquet. You will need to do this because your bouquet is probably too fat to fit in the shadowbox.

3. Put the bouquet back together by stacking the roses. What I mean by this is, don't make your bouquet round---make it flat on the back and stacked in the front (opposite of the "Baby Got Back" song...ha) You may think the flowers will be too delicate to do this, but mine were very sturdy, and this worked perfectly.

4. Pin the bouquet to the board. Then, as you can see from the picture above, you will need to remove any unsightly petals (this is where the professional earns her pay because all the petals would be painted the exact color of your original flowers if this were done by a professional).

5. Pin or tape the rest of your items on the board. Replace frame and you are finished!

I wanted to use our original vows, so as you see, my husband did some editing to his as he went along haha. I like to think this adds charm :)

I love the rustic look that my flowers took on ; they match perfectly since we had such a lovely rustic wedding