the play/sew room is now ready for playing and sewing!

*If you're looking for the Down Shadow Lane Giveaway, it's in this post.*
***The giveaway ends tomorrow night so go sign up!***

This past weekend we almost finished the mini-redo of the play/sew room! We patched the walls, painted the room, hung shelves, made some new wall art (the Seuss fabric hoops) and organized, organized, organized!

I say "almost finished" because you will notice in these pictures:

A) There are no blinds! The old ones from the previous owners literally fell off the window. Strings snapped, huge disaster. But I'm ok with it because we planned to slowly replace all the blinds in the house with the 2" faux wood kind (I say slowly because that 63" window? $80 worth of blinds. YIKES!). The new blinds are here and will be hung this afternoon!

B) There's one more big blank space on the wall (to the right of the shelves)- but I'm ok with that- I hope to one day put a quilt wall hanging there!

Either way, I love the way it is now- so bright and cheerful!

(Hmm... I just realized that I might as well call this the IKEA room)

I love this idea that's been floating around the internet and it seemed like a great way to bring a little "theme" to the room without going overboard (or using too much of my precious Seuss stash!)

Did you get a look at those IKEA shelves? They make me so happy!

We put them both up there in the corner for my sewing supplies that are most often used. Thinking way ahead, we think that they'll also work there in the corner with a changing table underneath them, should this room ever becoming a nursery.

My silhouette and I went to work labeling and organizing everything.

Between this room and the mini-bolts in my fabric cabinet, I am so excited! I love getting organized, it's just keeping it organized that's the problem! I'm hoping having everything out of reach of tiny hands will help!

IKEA hacking

I had never heard of IKEAhackers.net until my wonderful husband combined his love of playing on the interwebs and IKEA and came across it! Honestly there are some pretty cool things on there but others that are just a little too weird, oops, I mean "modern" for me... still way fun to look at!

We have this Expedit shelf in our den as our TV stand. I LOVED the clean lines and all the storage it gives, but was really starting to hate the clutter and... IKEA-ness of it (coming from someone who loves that place so much it seems like blastphemy, right?!).

(hey, don't judge. This picture was taken at the end of Noah's first birthday party... I swear our den doesn't usually look like that!)

We cleaned out all the books that were just sitting there and moved all of our DVDs to another shelf and decided we would attempt to make it look a little nicer. We looked into putting a back on it (MDF is suggested a lot, as you can cut holes for wires, paint it, cover it with fabric- whatever you'd like!), but I wanted to keep from putting nails into the piece just in case we ever wanted to use it as a room divider or something else that would require both sides to be visible. After hanging it up to get an idea of where to cut openings in the fabric for cords, I ended up hot gluing the fabric (Sophia fabric was $.99/yard last week!) to the edges of the piece, blowing on the glue a little first so that it would be a smidgen cooler and not completely scortch the wood (a little trick I learned as a first year teacher hanging posters on the wall that I planned to later take down).

and voila!

If you jump back to this post, you'll see that yellow accents in the den are sort of my thing right now... I just love 'em!

a post with a ton of pictures....

... because I'm too tired from doing all this stuff to actually write about it!

the living room re-do is almost done!

I love my new blue walls... and the way they flow right into the yellow kitchen. During all of the spackling/sanding/prep for painting, Joe said that he actually would like the photo collage in the hallway to come down. So it did-but now that wall looks so empty and lonely and boring!

Any ideas? What's on the walls in YOUR hallway?


I also started collecting/planning Christmas gifts this week. A local boutique nearby was going out of buisness so I snagged a ton of Vera Bradley purses and cosmetic bags at 50% off! I also decided that for this year's Christmas present I'd really like to give something awesome to my grandmama- so I stopped by the yarn shop for some nice lace yarn and started on this amazing Ribbon Lace scarf for her (the pattern is free on Ravelry!). So far I've only gotten the first repeat done, but I think it's going GREAT for my first lace project ever!

Well, what have YOU been up to?

I can't paint, but...

I sure can slap some Thickers and fabric up on a canvas to create something that makes me happy to look at!

We are currently re-doing our living room- I am so tired of all of the dark colors and "drab-ness" when my kitchen (which is connected to it!) is such a bright and happy place!

So far, we have gotten some new furniture, arranged it all the way that we like it and we are now in the process of taking down the (mostly black-framed) wall art, replacing it with lighter and more FUN pieces! I've also made a couple pillow covers (inspired by this and this from the awesome Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew). The next (and last!) step will be to paint in the den and the hallway! I am so excited to have this almost done!

... probably because it's been hanging there blank for a good 2 weeks waiting for me to get to it. I'm pretty sure everyone who came in our house thought I was trying to make some crazy artistic statement with a blank canvas on the mantle.

much better.

Don't forget about the clutch giveaway that ends on Friday!

Let's talk GREEN- with a giveaway!

Here's my view on being green, take it or leave it:

God made the earth.
He said that it was good.

He then intrusted us to take care of it
and to be good stewards of what we have been given.

In my opinion, the best way to do this is to not waste and try not to use products that are manufactured in places that produce a ton of waste! The biggest and most expensive change to go "green" that I've mentioned before was cloth diapers for Noah- but there are TONS of smaller and much cheaper little changes that you can do! Every little bit helps and keeps garbage out of landfills!

Today, we're gonna be going on a little tour of my kitchen- thrilling, right?

One (waaaay cheap) thing we've done is gotten rid of paper napkins! I found these cloth napkins at a Vera Bradley sale for $1 each. Booyah! Score! We keep them on top of the microwave in a little basket so we can grab one after we fix our plate and head to the table!

The next thing we did was get rid of paper towels (I mean, we're already washing dipes and napkins, right?). I have few different kinds of "un-paper towels" and we keep them in a basket right beside the sink where the paper towels used to be:

From left to right we have Owlie Towelies from Eco Friendly and Frugal on etsy (oooh more on that in a sec!), some little scrubby-ish towels made of terry cloth on one side and flannel on the other (that I made as wipes for Noah but they just work better in the kitchen!) and then some towels from IKEA (10 for $3!)

After the towels get dirtied up, we just throw them in a basket on top of the dryer (note the vinegar- I could write a whole post on vinegar, but I'll spare you and just point you to this website that can explain a TON of uses for white distilled vinegar! And no, it doesn't smell like vinegar when you use it in laundry and to clean):

Oh our laundry? Glad you asked! That stuff in the candy jar right there is Charlie's Soap (10 cents a load, people!) We also use vinegar to soften the fabric and Fuzzy Wuzzy Dryer Balls instead of dryer sheets (aren't they pretty?)

But enough about all of the goings-on in the kitchen- let's talk about these babies (click for a larger pic): Un-paper towels from Eco-Friendly and Frugal!

What I love about these:
- They can also be used as napkins! Hello, versitile!
- With two layers of flannel, they are super absorbant (especially if you use vinegar in the rinse- the vinegar helps breakdown any detergent build-up, making flannel more absorbant!) and made very sturdy. They're turned and topstitched, meaning the two layers are sewn together not once, but twice to ensure that they won't come apart.
- This may sound strange, but after using a few different kind of towels in the kitchen, these dry very well! You know how sometimes you have to wipe up water, and the towels not neccessary dirty? With some towels, they dry very stiff and make it hard to use it again before washing- not these! They dry soft and pliable and ready to use again!

What I don't love:
- I kind of wish they came in different sizes- or maybe just a little bit smaller. You know, like the paper towels that you can tear off 1, 2 or 3 depending on the size of the mess? I do a lot of wiping up little spills and wiping down counters, so that could just be me.
(but I'm sure that is something that Eco-Friendly and Frugal could do something about- special order, maybe?)

So.... you want to try a set of these?

Buy 'Em!
Roll on over to the Eco-Friendly and Frugal Etsy shop
and check out her other stuff while you're there!
(Minky wipes?! Noah's butt says "yes, please!")

Win 'Em!
Eco-Friendly and Frugal has offered up a set of these to one of my readers! This is a perfect first step (of 100th!) towards doing your part to keep garbage out of landfills! Plus you are seriously saving some money!

To enter, leave me a comment here (don't forget to include your email address!) telling me how you try to "go green" at your house (or office or school!).

Want more chances to win?
Leave a separate comment letting me know you did any of the following:
- Follow my blog (if you don't already!)
- Follow the Eco-Friendly and Frugal Blog
- "Heart" the Eco-Friendly and Frugal shop on Etsy
- Become a fan of Eco-Friendly and Frugal on Facebook

I will choose a winner on Monday, February 22nd and notify the winner by email.
If I don't hear back in 48 hours, I'll pick another winner. Good luck!

FYI.... I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE Halloween

I just do. I mean, can you blame me? The decorations, the dressing up, the CANDY?!

It's amazing.

I am getting so excited for Halloween- especially since this is our first MARRIED Halloween- well, we've celebrated together for about 10 years now, but this will be the first time we decorate OUR house and hand out candy to OUT neighborhood kids! Yay!

Joe tried to make me wait until October 1st to decorate... Nope.

September 29th was as close as I got. What can I say? It was Joe's birthday and he was in a great mood.

Here's what's going on at our house:

our cute towels from TJMaxx
pumpkins!
Yes, all 3 of those have candy in them (did I mention? ... ilovecandy!)
(Joe wouldn't let me have both a Halloween AND a harvest mantel (killjoy)... so here's my "now-until-Christmas" mantel!)
candy table
Sorry... I'm new at this... here's my sideways pic of another CANDY dish!
She's my favorite...
again.... TJMaxx score!
The front of the house... yes, it was raining. That's how loyal I am to this blogging thing.
Funkins I painted with doilies!

Lame pic of the wet flag

My DIY wreath! (It's hard to see on the front door.... because we STILL haven't gotten our new front door.... sheesh.)