Deals in town

I am amazed by the creativity and talents we have in our little group. The Lord has blessed us with some great gifts!

Just wanted to drop a quick note to let those interested know about the great sale Rite Aid is having this week. Many of there things are free after Mail in rebate. You can see if you would find anything useful by checking it out here. Also I just went to Kroger and they have some Gerber 2nd foods on clearance for $.49 each. The varieties I bought were garden vegetable and mixed vegetable. They are in the center aisle by the frozen juice and ice cream.

Make a statement without breaking the bank

So my mom came out and suprised me and we worked on things around my house! As you can see from my table, things are not quite done yet, but you can get the general idea. So from a medical school salary and watching way to many home design shows, I did some super fun tricks to make things look cooler and nicer than they really are.

The first one was kim's idea, but I spray painted a table that I found at the flea market for $50.00, added some toile on the seats (all but one and spray painting the table), but I think it looks nice overall.

The curtains are just a piece of fabric sewn down the sides, I then found curtain hooks that clip on (not making button holes) and tada!!




Another trick is art work, yeah so I know that little pic is not very spectacular, but it is something that adds color to the walls, and all I did was make stripes on a $5.00 canvas.

The last prodject was from a Lowe's magazine. I needed something really big to fill the space on my wall, and did not want to spend a could hundred on a picture of a mirror. Their idea was to take a 4X4 board (I cut a few inches off of mine), choose 2 colors for a background and boarder (I did black and gold) and then glue mirror tiles ($8.00) into a pattern. It's not magnificent, but it makes the room larger and gives it the effect I was looking for!

So there are a few of my design on a dime idea!! Any one have any more tips?

YES!!

Hey Y'all!!
I just wanted to let everyone know (maybe you already do) but today is the last day for Deseretbook.com to get free shipping!! They have lots of cute christmas stuff! Use the promo code: freeshipoct when you check out.

Also I got a free $10 off when you spend $50 if anyone wants to use it. The code for it is 8CCDIR just post a comment if you are going to use it becuase it is for a one time use only.

happy shopping!!

Scandalous!!!

 

So I thought this picture was too cute!! Chaney came down last Friday and we had a slumber party. I was giving Mekynzie a bath and Chance jumped in her little bath tub too. It was so cute, we had so much fun!! After the kids were in bed, Andrea came over and the three of us had so much fun!! Yeah!! Thanks to all of you guys for being such great friends!!

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

This is the world's easiest recipe & it is healthy too! When I was at BYU, one of my roommates was on Weight Watchers and she always made these cookies & I loved them. I guess they are only "1 point". Diet or no diet, these are really yummy cookies and you can eat as many as you'd like! :)

Ingredients:
1 box spice cake mix
1 can pure pumpkin (15oz. can)
Chocolate chips, or mini chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray cookie sheets with non- stick cooking spray. In a large bowl mix together the cake mix and the canned pumpkin. Add chocolate chips. Drop cookie dough onto cookie sheets and then bake for around 10-12 minutes.

P.S. Michelle- can you re-post your bread recipe? I didn't get a chance to write it down, that's such a great recipe!

Nothing gets better than pumpins!!

So i found these cute pumpkins!! I am in the process of making some for my kitchen table!! I am doing the fake ones so I will have them for next year!! I thought you guys might doing this too. Hopefully the directions are ok becuase I cut and pasted them but the blog is anenchantedcottage.blogspot.com if you want to check out her other cute things aswell!!

Photo Pumpkin InstructionsComment Response: This project was done on artificial, store-bought pumpkins. I'm not sure how it would turn out on real pumpkins, but feel free to try. Unfortunately, the pumpkins would need to be tossed at the end of the fall season as I doubt they'd keep from year to year...

So here we go with the step-by-step instructions! Be sure to let each step dry completely before going on to the next step. (See yesterday's post for the list of supplies needed for this project. I sure wish I could have found white pumpkins rather than orange to start with - it would have saved me a few steps!) (you can click on any of the photos for a larger, detailed image)

Step 1) Gather your supplies. You can use any size pumpkins, but be sure the copies of your photos are smaller than the height and width of your pumpkins. Trim your photos, leaving a thin white border around them. (Tip: I printed mine on my inkjet printer. You may have some color bleeding with inkjet copies, just as I did, during the decoupage step. I believe there's less chance of bleeding if you use actual Xerox/photocopies from a print shop or photos printed on a laser printer.)

Step 2) Seal the entire pumpkin to keep the color from bleeding through. (Note: The orange of my pumpkins still bled through the new paint job a bit, visible if you enlarge my photos... I don't know if there's a way to stop this completely...Maybe use 2 coats of sealer? I only used one. Luckily, the orange peeking through here and there adds a bit of unexpected character!)

Step 3) Paint the pumpkins Black. It will give you better coverage when you apply your final color over black rather than trying to paint over orange. Originally I was going to leave the stems natural, but then decided to paint them black. It's a personal choice. If you plan to paint them black, you can do so at this point. (Lisa at The Pickled Hutch said they'd look great having photos added at this stage of the game, too! Now why didn't I think of that? So yes - you could put your photos on now and where I embellish later with Black paint, you could embellish with white or orange or any color!)

Step 4) It's now time to paint the pumpkins with your color choices. I chose white, green, and pale blue.

I like a 'distressed' look where some of the black shows through, so rather than going over areas to get complete coverage, I leave little bits of black peeking through.

(I should have left some just like this - it looks like a bundt cake with icing dripping down... okay, now I'm hungry...) Here's a sample of what it looks like painted a creamy white.

Step 5) Choose the first photo you want to use on the pumpkin....

Put it face down on a clean surface and apply a generous coat of decoupage to the back of the photo... Just eyeball the photo to center it from top to bottom and left to right, and then press the photo onto the pumpkin. While the decoupage is wet, you'll be able to move it around to straighten it. Because of the ridges in the pumpkin, the photo will not lay completely flat. Just do the best you can to press it down into the ridges, and to press the edges down flat. (Sometimes a folded paper towel is easier than using your fingers to press and rub.) Repeat this process for as many photos as you are putting on the pumpkin (I did one on the front and one on the back). If you enlarge some of my photos, you will see that there are slight creases and wrinkles in the photos due to the pumpkin's uneven surface/ridges, but that won't ruin the overall look of the finished project.)

Step 6) Apply a thin (but complete) coat of decoupage over the photos so they are completely sealed. (Note: The photos may initially look milky white/foggy. Once the decoupage medium has dried, the images will be crystal clear.)

Step 7) Once the decoupage has completely dried, it's time to apply a coat of high gloss varnish to the entire pumpkin including over the photos and the stems. (I forgot to take a picture of the little varnish bottle!)... I used Delta Interior/Exterior Gloss Varnish, a craft varnish that easily cleans up with soap and water. (Note: No cats were starved during the drying portion of this project... Additional cans of cat food were still available in the cupboard.)

Step 8) Now it's time for you to get really creative! I chose to just paint some simple black lines and 'vintage' style photo corners around the photos so they'd stand out. But you could do anything at all - vines, flowers, wavy lines, dashes, dots. You could even paint a silhouetted scene around the pumpkin (I want to try that next year!!) You could also paint polka dots or stripes all over!

Step 9) Optional Spattering: I'm doing this a bit out of sequence as I wish I had done my spattering at this point. But as you can see from my previous photos, I spattered before varnishing (bad move!) I wish I'd spattered after varnishing because while spattering, I ended up with a few great big blobs of black that were VERY hard to clean off the pumpkin (after varnishing it's a snap to clean mistakes off with a damp paper towel). Just be careful not to spatter your photos since they've already been applied at this point... To spatter, I dip a stencil brush or toothbrush in slightly watered down black paint and then just run my finger or thumb across the bristles to 'spatter' the paint (very messy on the fingertips - you might want to wear rubber gloves)...

Step 10) It's now time to varnish your pumpkins again in order to seal any spattering or decorative painting you did around the photos...

And We're BACK!!!

Okay, so hopefully nothing will get messed up like last time. I changed things a little bit with the layout, if you guys want anything added let me know... (like cute blogs to follow for ideas "tiffany you are the queen of cute blog sites," )polls, etc you want added. Also I stole some pics off of some of your other blogs so there would be a picture of everyone. Now since all the past month was erased we can add new stuff, but anything anywants reposted on there just put it in the comment section. Like I want the recipies, please!! Have fun blogging, let's hope round two goes better!!