Saturday, February 27, 2010

Elizabeth's $20 Budget Makeover














These pictures are absolutely terrible!! They're hardly visible. I have to figure out what Elizabeth did to my camera. Until then here are the crappy pictures.
I set a $20 budget, but the biggest improvements were free.
#1- getting rid of an entire black trash bag of stuffed animals. Allowing the lid to FIT on the toy box. Slight miracle.

#2 Rearrange the bed, and get rid of old bed canopy.

#3. Make valances out of scrap wood from home depot, and a boa from her birthday party. Used the batting out of an old torn quilt Andrew's grandma had made, and 1 old towl, for the valance batting.

#4 Make new table lags to bring bedside table up to bed's height.

#5 Built shelf in closet to "showcase" "special" things that were crowding dresser.

#6 Score Vinyl on clearance at JoAnn's.

#7 Rearrange wall hangnings.

#8 Ditch old book basket, and arrange books in closet.

#9 A bit of organizing.

We still have a couple of things to add. I need to tile the top of her bedside table, assemble her memo board, and hang the other valance. But she was happy and hopefully this will keep her room clean for a week.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Boys Table



I no longer needed this end table. I didn't want to get rid of it, so I re purposed. I bought the vinyl at walmart for $1.75, and I had the ikea fabric from the playroom. I didn't bother painting the table, because I thought the wood matched fine. The chairs were clearanced at Target. i watched them until the were $2.00. Whalaaa 15 minutes later a new easy to wipe down kids table.

Garage Sales Rock




Yesterday morning when Andrew got home form his boke ride, he had gotten something for the kids. There was a yard sale around the corner, where he had grabbed each of the kids a frisbee for 5 cents each. He was impressed with himself, as the kids had been tossing his around all week. So we stopped by the same one later, and picked up some brand new fun for cheap too. The boys are obsessed with planes and rockets. They had this Air Hog plane. You pump it up with a small pump, then the perpellar starts to spin and off it goes. Ethan can do it all by himself, and Eric LOVES it. I am shocked we haven't broken it yet. We also got a kitchen botany set. We are sprouting beans and planting seeds in different enviroments. Went along perfectly with our Gardening we're working on right now. Good fun for a rainy day inside.

Planting a Garden.





We are halfway through planting our garden. We were going to finish yesterday, but three days of rain has put it on hold. We are renting,and don't have a otn of room in the yard. But we did have a rock border around the AC units. So we went to home deopt and had a couple of pieces of wood cut. Then with a few pieces of wood from an old pallet, Andrew created our Garden boxes. Yeah! It does cost an arm and a leg to fill them with dirt. The kids had fun filling them up, and planting. They helped pick out all the plants at Lowes too.
zucchini
strawberries
jalapenos
red peppers
yellow pepers
romaine lettuce
chives
cilantro
basil
We even planted some in our hanging baskets.Now we are just hoping they all will grow. We have already lost three lettuce plants to over eager gardeners (Eric and Ethan) And the tomatoe plant is constantly attacked by rock storms. So we'll see how it goes.

Finally a new post!!

Yeah I am so excited to have a camera again!! I have been watching craigslist faithfully for a good deal. Yesterday we snagged a Canon Elph for $50, with a case and a 4GB memory card. i am so excited. I feel like I have missed so much these past two months. So I will be snapping pics like crazy. I have threatened the kids with their lives if they touch it! I'm sure it means nothing to them. Who know if anyone other than Julie will ever look at it, but it's the only journaling I do for my kids. So here we go.