Workspace

Sometime after the wedding but before Christmas (November?) Brett and I purchased some new workspace furniture. I can't call it office furniture, because it's simply a little nook in our kitchen. Also "office" sounds a little official considering we sit here to blog and Facebook. 

The shelf, the table, and the drawers came from Ikea and the good news is that if you don't live near an Ikea (we don't) then you can get these shipped pretty inexpensively. 

I wanted something really clean, really simple, and smaller than the tiled table that we were using before. I've been really pleased so far! I'd be lying if I didn't say that the drawers collect most of our junk, but it's contained and that's what matters. 

In December, Brett and I decided to change up our budget strategy. Here's a piece of marriage advice that even a total noob can tell you: FIGURE YOUR MONEY SITUATION OUT FOLKS. Seriously. Don't even mess around with that.

For about a year, Brett had been doing most of the legwork with our budget. He's a numbers guy, so the fit felt natural at first. He paid the bills, checked our online accounts, and created our monthly budget. In December, it was family meeting time. We sat down and he confessed that he didn't really feel comfortable making all those choices without more of my input.  He often felt like because he "allocated" our budget categories that he was also "giving permission" for us to spend money or not. And that- was just not gravy with him.

In addition to sitting down together each month to craft our budget and set our savings goals, we decided to get a white board to keep track of our more fluid budget balances, like groceries, entertainment, mad money (I'll talk about this in a second), etc. So if we want to go to a movie and there's $5 in our entertainment budget- it's not a matter of Brett or I being the keeper of the keys and saying "yes" or "no." It's just not available to us because our budget won't allow it.

Another thing that Brett and I do that works great for us is a budget category called "Mad Money." It's simple an equal amount of money that each of us get to spend on whatever we want. Mine usually goes towards drinks with my friends and Brett's is typical spent on vinyl records. The point is that we have the same amount of money and we can spend it, guilt free, regardless of the other person. We trust each other implicitly, but it's really nice to have a chunk of change to spend each month with a little less discretion.

Lastly, this month we started using mint.com and we LOVE it. Each of us can access it from everywhere and that makes it convenient, transparent, and fair.

You can also see our "I love you because..." board. This was one of my first Pinterest projects. We try not to go more than a few days without jotting something on it. Usually a pun of some kind.

I also keep several cookbooks handy. If you look closely, you'll see I have about 6 slow cooker cookbooks! I do our meal planning here because I use magazines, cookbooks, and Pinterest to help me plan. We have a mug for pens and a small dish for paperclips, business cards, junk. Of course, most days there are stacks of mail and coffee mugs and sunglasses, but those were cleared for the purposes of this demonstration.

Probably my favorite new addition to the space is our new calendar from our friends Kyle and Rachel. It's cute, just like them.

This is one of my favorite places in our apartment. It's small, but it really gets the job done!

(PS: I'm trying out some fancy blog photo edit stuff. Thoughts? Sorry for the onslaught of colors.. I'll pick a scheme soon, I just wanted to play around.)

Craft Room Tour

So a really wonderful thing happened a couple weeks ago. After much debating and waiting (anticipating) Brett and I decided to pull the trigger on an Ikea purchase we'd been lusting over. Some new office furniture for our workspace downstairs, specifically. I'll probably show off some photos of this later, but what I'm most excited about is what I'm going to show you now. 

I love to craft. I like to sew and paint and gift wrap and crochet and make wreaths and do all sorts of other projects that are potentially messy and awkward to do on the living room floor. However, as you might know, that's exactly what I've been doing. The other caveat of being a crafter is that you start to accumulate lots of supplies. While this tends to be a good thing because you don't have to buy everything new every single time you want to complete a project- it also becomes a bit of a storage issue. 

I'd tried to create a reasonable storage space in our second bedroom closet by putting up some extra shelves and setting up a TV table for my sewing machine, but I'll be honest, that just was NOT hacking it. Anytime I wanted to get something out, I had to unstack a big pile of stuff and it was cramped and awful and really not at all functional. 

For a long time our second bedroom has also been barely functional. It's a quasi guest room, man cave, storage space, and headache. While it's still sort of all of those things, we've decided to make it do all those things a little better. Brett is good at piecing away at furniture and decor that improves his space and makes it more enjoyable. I decided to take a page out of his book and create a functional craft space that I could use and love.  With the addition of some extra furniture, I was able to have space in the second bedroom for crafting, but not intrude too much on the other functions we needed it to serve (guest room, storage, Brett's man cave). 

One of the wonderful consequences (intended purposes actually) of getting a new desk downstairs was freeing up the table we had been using. We hauled that bad dad upstairs (it is heavy!) and with the addition of two new Ikea shelves, suddenly my craft room was in business. Shelves make all the difference people. 

My sewing machine is always accessible and is available on a big, clean worktable. I've got nooks for each type of craft supply on my shelves and a big bulletin board for ideas and inspiration. 

At this point, it's not that beautiful aesthetically speaking. I don't have any cutesy bunting hanging up, or cute jars for my brushes and pens, or adorable animal figurines and so I'm really missing the hipster mark that I usually like to achieve with my general living, but IT IS FUNCTIONAL. And so we have a start. (Stay tuned for bunting.) 

Bonus Content for Readers Who Hung in This Long: 

Look at this cutie patootie. 

He was totally scoping out that Crate and Barrel mailer. "Two deers and two houses!"  (He was really just fascinated by the gel adhesive, but it was still cute.)

Christmas Printable Round Up

Still looking for ways to inject a little holiday spirit around your house or office while spending virtually no money?

Might I suggest the Christmas Printable!

Here's the one that I have on my mantel, available here. (In other color combos, I might add)

These printables are great because you can just transform a frame you already own, use it for the season, and then swap back.

Here's the print that I've had in the frame I'm using now, a quote from Da Vinci which is one of my absolute favorites. (I've posted this once before, here.)

Created by  My Best Friend Jules

Free printables are a dime a dozen on Pinterest and in that case, I say "AWESOME!" You can find a printable in every possible color scheme so there's no way you won't find one that will make your Christmas decor at least a *pinch* more delightful.

 Here are some of my favorites, so you don't have to dig. (Note, click on the photo to navigate to the post where these printables are found. Click on the caption to navigate to the homepages of these sites.)

From AKA Design

If you click through the design below, you'll also find some pretty adorable Grinch printables I'm fond of! 

From The Letter 4

I'm super partial to these vintage-style Christmas prints available here. These are a couple of my favorites. (Looks like lots of printables on the entire site!)

From Paulo Viveiros 

From Paulo Viveiros

From eighteen25

Here are a few other very simple ones with nice, clean designs from Printable Decor. (These can be downloaded to a much larger size in the original post.) 

From Printable Decor

From Printable Decor

Chalkboard printables are SUPER popular and will definitely fit in with any color scheme. Here's a fave: 

From My Fabuless Life

lemon squeezy has some adorable printables all handily rounded up in "24 Days of Christmas Printable" posts from this year and last year! Here's a favorite:

From lemon squeezy 

BONUS! Download these gorgeous printable gift tags (If I haven't convinced you to make your own, that is.)

From lemon squeezy 

Ultimately, if you want it (and you have a reasonably functional color printer) it's out there for you for free. Prints, gift tags, invitations, cards and so much more! 

Day 3 and 4: Treats! Plus BBQ Beer Chicken

Days 3 and 4 were all about the treats. A Christmas coffee and donut one day, followed by s'mores the next. Yum. (PS, can you spot the sneak peek for my next Christmas Craft post?)

Very effective cooking method

This delicious treat was made complete with yummy hot cocoa. 

I also made something wonderful for dinner. Something truly amazing and fantastic. If there are three things I love in this world it is barbecue, beer, and my crockpot. This brought them all together. 

Here's the recipe for Barbecue Beer Crockpot Chicken. 

We had Schlafly Christmas Ale on hand so that's what I used. Folks, I drank a beer at 10 am. I'm serious. You don't just throw out perfectly good, unused Schlafly Christmas Ale. It doesn't matter WHAT time it is! (Don't worry, it was my day off.)

Sauce + Chicken. Simmer baby simmer.

 Shredded up and deliciously sauced.

I served it up the way the recipe recommended, with a serving of slaw on top! 

We demolished it. Exhibit A: 

I SERIOUSLY recommend this recipe. It's pitched as a summertime recipe in the original post, and I know its December but it is like 70 degrees. Close enough.

Bathroom Bloggin

So my awesome cousin Katie (who blogs at Life with the Little R's) suggested that I do a house tour for a blog post. At first I thought- great idea! The second thing I thought was- oh my gosh no, my house is a pit!

Ok, it's not a pit, but Brett and I are constantly struggling to determine an overall aesthetic or design concept and to challenge things further, we are renters so we can never decide how much money or energy to even devote to our temporary setting. That said, we are people who need our outsides to match our insides and we try to keep our space clean, cute, and clutter free if possible.

We got lots of great decor items as wedding gifts and we've tried to make special places to showcase some of those awesome things. I've got some plans for a major switcheroo in the office nook of the kitchen and with our upstairs bedroom, and I want to do at least a little staging in each room before it's picture worthy anyway! So the easiest option was to start small.

Thinking about Katie's request for a house tour got me thinking about our upstairs bathroom. I thought to myself- I will never take pictures of this place. However, I decided to challenge myself. I decided to upgrade the bathroom using my crafty innovation, decorations on hand, and a teensy tiny budget.

Here's what it looked like to start:

A very typical rental bathroom, and one we haven't done much to improve. We've hung up a couple shelves and some hooks for my jewelry. I pulled in a nightstand that sort of floats around to different areas of our house to use for extra counter space (as you can see there is none.)

Our shower curtain is navy and cream and it's a little nautical themed. At one point, we'd picked up some strange "nautical" decor- a lighthouse figurine and this old fisherman that hung on the wall (no, really.) They were too weird and kitschy and we ditched them. Now, we've got this barely functional, hardly attractive bathroom that I'm hugely impartial to.

So, here's what I did.

Firstly, I made up a little frame for my broaches and earrings.

I had leftover fabric from the wedding and a square frame that wasn't being used that I decided was perfect. I cut out cardboard to size, used a little felt for padding, and wrapped it with the blue fabric. I didn't even end up gluing. I just used scotch tape!

I fit the cardboard into the frame, put on the frame backing (which made for a very tight fit!) and hung it up!

Simple enough. We are working with pretty much one wall to decorate, so naturally, I opted to create a small gallery with some prints (found here and here) and frames leftover and a couple other wandering decor pieces.

I'm so loosey goosey with when I hang pictures. These made for a pretty easy upgrade. (Except my printer OH MY GAWD MY PRINTER- but that's a story for another time.)

The other little project I did for the bathroom was.. wait for.. to dye my bath mat. I know, I know, but go with me for a minute here. We have this basic white bath mat. It's fine, but of course we put our grungy little feet on it every single day so it's never clean and it bugs me endlessly. The bath mat market is a TOTAL RACKET so I figured, why not spend $3 and dye the damn thing?

So I did.

I used an old wooden spoon to do the mixings. 

Here's the thing. It looked pretty stupid. I wanted it to be navy and it wound up more like cornflower. You know, cornflower. Also, a little splotchy. BUT WHATEVER OKAY. I have like a 95% success rate so I'm allowed a bomb every now and then.

I also swapped on some baskets, put out some flowers, did some "fluffing."

So, here's what it looks like now. It's a long way from my dream bathroom, but considering that the only thing I had to buy was the $5 flower arrangement- it's a pretty vast improvement!

My weird rug.

Welcome! Come inside! Fix your hair, brush your teeth, take a pee!

Well there you have it folks! My upstairs bathroom! Can't wait to show you some more!

Super Simple Saturday Craft

This weekend I made one of my favorite, simple crafts- a wreath! To me, wreaths just reek of grown-up, put-together decor and they are so much more cost effective to make than to buy. (Want proof? Search "wreath" on Etsy.)  Best of all, it really only takes an afternoon to put most of them together.

I was at Walmart a couple weeks ago and found some really inexpensive straw wreaths for sale. I picked up two and finished one to hang for the autumn season. I didn't want to get too holiday specific, but I chose some natural colors and fabrics to keep it cozy.

Depending on the material of your wreath and your technique, you have a few options in terms of how to get started. I did a yarn wrap wreath (that's got to be the technical term for it) and my straw wreath form was already covered in plastic, so I just kept it that way so that it would be a uniform size. Foam wreath forms are already set for yarn wrapping too, but I've never used one because who wants to pay $7 when you can pay $2.50? If your wreath form is bumpy, you can wrap it in scrap fabric which I have done before also.

Here's what my finished wreath looks like:

On the stairs inside.. 

The color of the blue yarn is much more accurate in this photo. It's teal, not navy. 

And from the outside! 

I used 3 colors of yarn and made some fabric rosettes. These fabric embellishments are super easy and it's tempting to put them on everything. They're also the primary reason I can't ever toss out scrap fabric! Here's a tutorial to try for them. To be honest though, I never measure my fabric. I just cut a strip, twist, and glue! I used some leftover burlap from the wedding, some leftover polka dot fabric from the pet bed project, and picked up a fat quarter sample in a nice bright orange. 

Another wreath tip- if you have them, balls of yarn are quite a bit easier to use for this project than a big skein. You are literally wrapping the entire form in yarn and a skein can be a bit cumbersome, while a ball of yarn fits nicely in your hands. I used skeins for this one however, because I'm not entirely sure that you can find a store that sell balls of yarn anymore.  

The last wreath I made (with the "Moser" bunting) was from a mini-wreath form, so I'm happy to have more of a large-Marge wreath up on the door now. I'm confident this will take me all the way to November 23rd, which is the day after Thanksgiving and the first day I'm allowed to put up Christmas decorations, per Brett's regulations. 

Anyway, these wreaths are a great afternoon project and it's a super cheap way to add a nice touch to your door decor! 

PS- Happy Halloween! 

Suitcase Pet Bed

In case you sincerely couldn't figure it out (that's ok, don't get down on yourself) Brett and I made a bed for our sweet pets from a vintage suitcase we used at our wedding!

My step-mom's mom (Nanna!) found this adorable vintage Samsonite suitcase that we used for cards at the wedding. Brett and I loved it so much, we wanted to find a way to give it new life at our house. Since Fatty is drawn to a open suitcase like a moth to the light, we felt turning it into a bed was the perfect fit. Both Fatty and Stella are notorious snugglers, so we wanted to give them a cozy place of their own to enjoy . . . not that it will keep their furry butts off the couch or anything like that. 

I decided to do a bit of a photo tour of how we made it, in case you are so inclined to make one of your own! 

First, gather your materials and set them out like you've seen a bunch of other bloggers do. Then, once you've taken your photo, put it all away again and realize how inefficient blogging your projects truly is. 

For the cushion, I opted for an inexpensive bed pillow from Walmart. I decided to sew a simple envelope style pillowcase so that the material would be easily washable, and the pillow would be easily replaceable. Pet butts are not clean things people. 

I used this tutorial for my pillowcase. I promise it's a real cinch. I never could have finished this project if it wasn't. First, cut your fabric. You'll notice my crochet magazine which I am using like a carpenter's square because I couldn't cut a straight line even if you paid me to. 

A rotary cutter makes this process a whole lot simpler. My step mom has this knack for getting me the best gifts that I didn't even know I needed. 

You'll be cutting 3 pieces of fabric. One that is just a bit larger than the full face of the pillow and two smaller pieces for the envelope "flaps." The tutorial is for a square pillow, but if you use the formula for the size of your pillow, it will work fine. You'll want to sew a hem on one side of each of the smaller "flap" pieces. My hem was about 1 1/2" because it looked nice. 

Iron. Pin. Sew. My aunt Cheryl taught me that! 

This is what sewing looks like. 

Next, lay your pieces right side together and pin together your edges. Your two "flap" pieces should over lap one another, with the hemmed edges in the middle.

It's at this point you will realize that your shape cutting skills have declined tremendously since kindergarten and the pieces don't really match up and you'll start to wonder if maybe you've gotten in a bit over your head here. You haven't. Just keep pinning. 

When you're done pinning, start sewing. You'll have cut your material with an extra inch on each side. This will give you a half inch seam allowance. Since you cut your pieces of fabric all wonky, you'll need it. 

This is also what sewing looks like. In case you didn't know, always pull your pins just before you reach them with the needle. If you sew over your pins, you might break your needle and you'll have a fit because you aren't very confident in your ability to actually switch out a needle on your machine. You can, but it's easier if you don't have to. 

Trim your corners, flip it right side out, and enjoy your handiwork. You didn't screw it up!

Then, stuff your pillow in and see how it looks. You can stop here if you want. In fact, Fatty was more than willing to start enjoying the comfiness right away.

What a good looking guy. However, you'll notice that I've covered the back panel with fabric. We used hot glue to attach letters that said "CARDS" for the wedding and some residue was left behind. I just wrapped some of the extra fabric around the panel and used liquid stitch to secure it. Honestly, under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have bothered. 

We also decided to add some legs! Kimberly was practically beside herself as I painted these because she thinks I'm bonkers. I prefer creative genius. 

 Once your short little legs are painted and dried, you'll want to attach the hardware with your handy, dandy drill. God bless the drill, I say. 

I just screwed it right into the bottom of the suitcase. Simple. Then, screw in your legs. (Ok, just do it and don't snicker.)

 Flip the whole thing over, put it somewhere cute, and take your finished project photos !

Stella is quickly becoming that blog dog who poses for me whenever I ask and quite honestly, I couldn't love her more for it! 

Overall, this project probably cost under $40. The legs and hardware were about $2-2.50 each. The fabric was about $5 for a yard and a half. The pillow was less than $5. I also bought paint and foam brushes, but chances are you might have a color on hand that you like. The suitcase of course was free, but I've seen some really great options at thrift stores lately so keep your eyes open for a good deal! 

This project was a lot of fun and the pets are already battling it out for territory rights. Maybe I should have made suitcase bunk beds! 

A final, sleepy goodbye from Fatty: