I heart a fabulous deal!

As a stay at home mom, I make it my job to save as much money as I can. I love Goodwill, Deseret Industries, and places like Children's Orchard, Kid 2 Kid, etc. for saving big on kids clothes. A couple weeks ago my local Children's Orchard had a great sale. Fill a bag of select clothes for only $5! 

Score.

I ended up with 2 bags full of cute clothes for my boy. I got a total of 24 pieces for $10 plus tax. That's about 42 cents each! You cannot beat that!

 Most of the pieces were Old Navy

 with an H&M

 baby Gap and Pottery Barn Kids mixed in!

I just had to tell someone. My husband doesn't quiet understand just how awesome it feels to save big like that. Well now back to wrapping presents and other final touches for Christmas. Have a safe and Merry Christmas!!

The Circle Skirt

I love the site MADE. Dana has so many wonderful ideas and tutorials. About a month ago I made a circle skirt from the tutorial on her site. I opted for the 2" elastic and kinda think the 3" would have looked cuter, but it seemed so huge in the store. I got my fabric at none other than the D.I. (Deseret Industries- it's like Goodwill/Salvation Army, etc). The fabric is a silk-y type material. It turned out really cute despite the fact that I made it.

 And it twirls... :-D

Well there are a couple other projects I haven't posted, but they'll have to wait until after Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone! I probably won't be back until after the New Year so happy New Year 2011!

Snowflake cuteness

So here's one of the projects I haven't shared yet, well I haven't shared the update on it. When I originally shared this project a reader commented that their friend had done this project as well and had added snowflakes and ribbons to theirs. Such a fabulous idea!

I just used a $1 snowflake stencil from Walmart and white paint I had on hand. So simple, but it makes all the difference! 

Before:

After:

 I still need some cute stockings. That probably won't happen until next year.

And here's a look at our cute little Christmas tree...The lights would have drowned the poor tree so I just put some silver mini ric-rac and some dollar store mini ornaments. The Noel ornament was left over from my wreath. Actually it broke so I left it off the wreath, but did my best to revive it for the tree.

Hi, I'm Alex and I'm a procrastinator...

It's true. I have a problem.

I often put things off as long as I can. I'm especially bad at procrastinating doctor's appointments, I hate doctors...*shiver*. That's neither here nor there, but seriously I realized that I have a bunch of crafts I haven't posted yet because I haven't taken pictures of them. I made a very cute skirt almost a month ago, but didn't take pictures because it was windy the day I wore it. So as I kept putting off pictures for the perfect day, I just plain forgot. There are a couple other things I've neglected to share. I'm going to do my best to fix that this week. Between the dishes from this weekend, laundry, and Christmas shopping, I will take pictures and post! Hold me to it, please. 

Is everyone else done shopping? I'm really slacking this year for my family. I have my dad done and that's it. You'd think I'd be doing better since the hubby said not to worry about his family, he would shop for them. hehe. Sorry guys you might not get anything at the rate he's going...or you might get airport souvenirs from the trip out to see you guys. You've been warned, act excited. :-)

Sometimes Procrastinating pays off...

Last night I was editing our family photos (taken by random people at the Magical Forest, but actually turned out pretty good), and I was trying to decide which card from Shutterfly to use. No joke I was going to order them last night, but I fell asleep while my husband was looking over all the choices to give me his opinion. An seriously there are SOOOO many options I love.

This is where the procrastinating pays off...today as I was reading through all the new posts in my Google Reader I came across Larissa's post at Just Another Day in Paradise... Thank you Larissa, for letting me know about the 50, YES FIFTY free holiday cards for bloggers! Yippee. 

Now comes the hard part of trying to decide on which one to go with.I'm torn between the flat stationary cards printed on card stock or the flat photo Christmas cards printed on, you guessed it, photo paper.  Here are just a few of my favorites...

 

 

 I love the colors in these two!

So if you have a blog, go here and check out their promotion for more details on how to get 50 FREE HOLIDAY CARDS!!! Don't forget to check out their other great products. How about thank you cards for all the relatives, friends and neighbors who send you gifts. Or with the New Year coming up, why not design a custom calender for your family or I am thinking of giving one to the grandparents so they can see pictures of our little Tiger all year round!

$6 Wreath

I don't know about you, but I feel like I need a vacation to recover from my Thanksgiving weekend... 

We had a sudden change in plans and the three of us went to my parents house for Thanksgiving. My parents are flight attendants and were getting home on Thursday afternoon. We decided we'd let ourselves into their house and surprise them with Thanksgiving dinner. Anyway, since we got back it's been 4 loads of laundry, catching up on emails, recovering sleep (Andrew doesn't sleep well in new places), and folding said 4 loads of laundry, among other random to-do's.

I finished this project today, just in time for December and it was super easy. All my supplies were $1 or less.

Supplies:
Wreath
Garland
Ribbon
Christmas ornaments
other things to jazz it up ('Merry Christmas' from Walmart, other sayings from Goodwill, and the berry(?) things)

Start by wrapping the garland around the wreath. If you worry about the the wreath showing through, give the wreath a quick coat of spray paint. Mine wasn't bad and with all the other stuff that gets added you don't see any of the wreath.

Next glue the ornaments on to the wreath however you would like them.

Finish by jazzing it up however you would like. I wrapped the ribbon around, hung the Merry Christmas in the middle, glued on some berries and glued on the words.

Super easy and inexpensive wreath is just what our door needed for this time of year!

 

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A bit over due...

At the beginning of the month, our family participated in a 5K walk to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He and another coworker were in charge of organizing a team from his office. His coworker felt they needed a shirt for everyone to wear so they went to work creating a design. I told my husband to bring me a copy as soon as they finished so I could make one for Andrew. It took them a while but I finally got a copy a couple days before the walk. I was going to make a shirt from the 90 minute shirt tutorial over at MADE, but I didn't have the time. Luckily I went to Goodwill and there was the perfect size and perfect shade of gray shirt.

I used the same freezer paper method I've used in the past.

The back was a bit of a challenge because the cut outs were so small. I decided to not write out the whole thing and instead free-handed an abbreviated version. I was happy I finished it, but it wasn't the best quality on the back. We had a fun time and Andrew was really good the whole time. I just can't believe I forgot my camera so these are the only photos I've got of the shirt.

Hole in the Pj's Repaired

Lately, it has gotten colder here in Vegas.  I pulled out the cold weather pj's to see what I've got to work with and I found these...

He wore a hole in these back when he first began crawling. I tried them on him and they fit in the body, but the legs are too short. So I figured it would be pretty easy to fix that.

 I started by cutting off the foot of the pj's.

Then I used some ribbed knit to create a cuff around the leg. 

I did that by cutting strips that were as long as the circumference of the leg, exactly. The knit will stretch so you don't need seam allowance. I got the instructions from no big dill. (click here for instructions)

One thing I messed up on is I cut the knit the wrong way. You want the knit lines to be running up and down so it stretches side to side, make sense? I hope so. I'm sure it's common sense, but I really don't know where my brain was at, it was late. I was able to make it work though and they turned out perfect.

He would not stand still or relinquish the diaper changing supplies for a picture. Silly boy.

A Christmas Craft

Yes, I know it's a little early for Christmas stuff, but I just finished a project we did for our craft club this month. I'm not sure who to give credit to for this idea. I know one of the ladies had one that we used as the example, but I don't know if she made it or bought it. 

Anyway, we made a stocking 'board' for lack of a better word. Most of us here in sunny Las Vegas don't have fireplaces in our homes and in the two years I've been married we've spent them either moving (yep, we moved on Christmas Eve) or travelling, I haven't hung stockings, in fact, I don't think we even have stockings...maybe I should work on that next. For me this was quite perfect.

We had a woman in our ward cut the vinyl for us that made the lettering really easy. The specific dimensions are 9"X30", which we had cut from a sheet of nice quality plywood. Then next step was a little sanding, painting, and weeding out the vinyl lettering. Once the paint dried and the vinyl was on, we drilled holes for the hooks and put sawtooth picture hangers on the back. 

It was super easy and I love how it turned out. One of the other women was painting hers red and white because she decorates with a peppermint theme, I can't wait to see how hers turned out!