The Awesomeness of Dollar Tree!

I have discovered the awesomeness of the Dollar Tree! Before being introduced to the DIYers of the blogosphere, I was less than impressed with the Dollar Tree, because I was looking for things that didn't need any work. I was looking for something that looked great and was quality and just generally awesome in a store that sold things for a dollar! What was I thinking! But now that I follow a bunch of blogs that take something that is less than great and make it something awesome (with usually not much more than a can of spray paint) I went into the dollar tree this weekend with fresh eyes! And I found some good stuff! One of those things was the non-slip drawer liners. I had no idea they sold drawer liners at the dollar store! And I had no idea the difference they would make!

Our master bathroom drawers are full of stuff that we use everyday! I actually organized them a couple of weeks ago to cut down on the clutter and hopefully make the drawers look like civilized people used them, but when we would open or close the drawer, the stuff would move everywhere and mess up the organization that I worked so hard on! Here's what they looked like:

They don't really look like someone took an hour and a half out of their day to organize them do they? **sigh** But not to worry! Enter these lovely dollar tree finds!

Those little white bowls are so cute and perfect! I thought I was going to have to get some tiny pot holders (six for a dollar at Dollar Tree!) but then I found these! They were a dollar a piece, but I wouldn't have to spray paint them and they have cute little designs around the rim!

So with about 20 minutes of taking everything out of the drawers, cutting the drawer liner to size, and deciding where to put everything back in the drawers, I had bathroom drawers that don't make me cringe when I open them! YAY! Here's how they look now!

As you can see, I only had use of two of those cute white bowls, so I have three left over to do some more organizing with! Yay!

And I had a little bit left over in my drawer liner roll, so I put it to good use! My kitchen drawer, which I organized with a shoe organizer was also having some problems with stuff moving around when I would open it. I didn't have enough liner left to cover the whole kitchen drawer, but I had enough to do what I needed! Here's the before and after :)

Before:

After!

I'm now realizing that the drawer liner is not centered on the rolling pin (funny how you notice things in pictures that you don't notice in real life), so I will be fixing that momentarily (yes, I am that OCD lol).

So how about you guys? Have y'all hit up the dollar store lately and found stuff that you loved? Or have y'all spent hours on organizing drawers only to have them look hideous as soon as you open and close them like twice?

I Have Made A List!

My mind has been going ninety to nothing here lately with all the DIY ideas that I have rummaging around in my head thanks to the fantastic blogs that I follow and Pinterest! I have made a list and checked it twice have put the things in order of what I want to tackle. I love lists, don't you? There is no greater feeling than crossing something you have done off of your list! Anyways, I'm going to share with you some of the things I have been looking at doing and maybe you can tackle some of them and tell me how they go! :)

One of the things that's on my short term list is this little guy! We have WalMart sacks coming out of our ears and falling out of our pantry which makes it look super gross. So I'm on a mission to make this! The only thing is...we don't drink coffee, so I'm either going to buy a coffee can and give all the coffee to my mom or ask around to see if anyone has an extra coffee can laying around!

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This is one of those "Why didn't I think of that" things! It's so simple and would save us sooo much time! This is definitely on my list! But again, I have to find these things, because the bread that we buy has the twisty wire kind and not these kind....looks like I'll be hitting up my mom again ;)

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I haven't quite figured out how to do these...but they are pretty much totally awesome so I'm going to figure it out! I may get some white cardstock and cut into it with my exacto knife and mount it to a canvas frame? Idk but I'll figure it out eventually (probably with the help of google).

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This I just want mainly because it is so cute! I loved the Mother's Day gifts we gave our moms and I would like to have something where we could write cute stuff to each other too! Or regular stuff like "don't forget to take out the trash" or something along those lines :) But it's cute scrapbook paper and a frame! Doesn't get much more simple than that! :)

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And we definitely need a dry erase calendar! We could buy some from Wal-Mart or Target, but this just looks so much more fancy! We'll see what we actually do when we start comparing prices (how much will it be to print it and buy the frame as opposed to just buying a calendar from somewhere).

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I reallllly want to have some awesome jewelry organization going on in my life! When I moved out of my mom's house, I left my jewelry armoire behind and wow do I miss that thing! Luckily, my mom is willing to bring it halfway! So once I get that back and hopefully get a dresser soon, I'll be able to make cute stuff like this to house all of my jewelry! Right now all my jewelry is either in a plastic bin, a makeup bag, or a walmart sack....so I wear like three different pieces of jewelry...it's so sad!

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In my head I'm picturing something along these lines on top of the dresser, but a bit more modern and organized :)

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I also really want to frame the mirror in our master bathroom! I think it makes the whole bathroom look more expensive and fancy and I'm pretty sure home buyers like framed mirrors! So I'll probably get some crown molding and glue and talk the hubby into doing this with me!

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This headboard rocks my socks! It's pallet wood stuck together and then the brilliant people who made this painted that love on there. It's so pretty! I want it!!!

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I have also inherited a love of maps from the folks over at Young House Love and I just love these little heart maps!! We could frame our wedding location or our house address or where we honeymooned! The possibilities are endless and suuuper cute! :)

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More hearts, and I'm pretty sure there's no way that Blake would let me do this because it's so girly, but it could be done so cheaply! Just take an old book from the thrift store or a book that means something to you, cut it up into hearts and tape it to the wall and color one red! Oh it would be sooo cute!

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This is just perfect for our office! I love all the cheesy sayings we could put up (like the "you are my type" pictured below). And we basically live on our computers so this would be very fitting to our lifestyles!

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Leave it to Martha to do something so simple that is so awesome! She put velcro on a kitchen towel that hangs from the stove so that it wouldn't fall off! I am definitely doing this when I get a new kitchen towel (right now we just have a filler one, but I want one that is really bright and cheery like our button monograms!)

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This is awesome and would be so great for us! It's laundry baskets that you can fold your clean clothes and separate them by room and then take each laundry basket to whatever room instead of having to haul stuff a little at a time! It does require some actual building though, but it isn't that crazy, so I think I could do it! I also think I could find something that would fit this size at a yard sale or something, but laundry baskets are pretty wide so...Idk! I'm up for a challenge (especially if it means spending time with the hubby pants!)

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This is awesome! It's a piece of sheet metal attached to the back of a cabinet and canisters with magnets glued to them, so you can always find what you need quickly! I don't have anywhere that I could do this, but if I did I would definitely do it! It's just so handy!

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These I love for outside above the patio table. They would cast a really romantic glow I think :)

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This is what I want for the nook that I can't figure out what to do with. I really want a bench with a shelf underneath so we could sit down and take our shoes off or whatever and it would look custom and awesome. Blake doesn't think it's a good idea because if new home buyers don't like it, it's kinda permanent, so I probably won't do this, but I like it!

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Now this puppy I am in love with! The thing I wasn't in love with? The price! If I'm going to DIY something it needs to be worth the money I'm saving! This version calls for these certain orbs that are $18 for the small ones and over $20 for the large ones! That's just not cool in my book. But it looks awesome!

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This one on the other hand, calls for orbs that are $1.95 for the small ones and $3.95 for the large ones! Now that's more like it! I'll definitely be trying this out soon....well actually I may have to wait because I'm not sure prospective home buyers would like this....and I would want to take it with me not leave it with the house! So I'll just have to decide what to do :) But I know this is in my future sometime! (btw, the cheaper orbs are from here)

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This is another DIY lighting project I want to try! We have a small light above our sink in the kitchen and it is just the regular light fixture that comes with a new house, but I really like these made of twine and a ball and glue...I'm considering doing this in this house, but I'm also considering waiting due to the reasons above...this wouldn't be as big of a financial investment and probably not a time investment either so I may do it anyway!

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These I just love! Sherry over at young house love recently put up a tutorial about how to attach prints to canvas, so I could definitely do this! These photos are so quaint and sweet...usually I'm all about contrast and abstract and cityscapes, but this appeals to me for some reason and I may just put it somewhere in our house!

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I'm wanting some roman shades in our laundry room! I was going to do some fake ones like the ones from centsational girl, but then these don't seem to hard, so I may give these a try!

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This is more lighting ideas...they look kinda girly so I don't know if Blake will go for them, but I think they look awesome!

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These I want somewhere near our entry way (maybe instead of the bench, I'll put up a shelf and put these on top!). They are so springy! And super cheap! They're just thumbtacks pushed into Styrofoam balls and spray painted! So so cute!

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I'm picturing some toilet paper art around the chevron paintings in the dining room! Not something this big, but I like the idea that I could make something this epic with toilet paper rolls!

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I've also considered something like this around those chevron prints...love the tone on tone words!

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If I had spare boards laying around, I would do this tomorrow! I loooove this!

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I thought this was so cute for a wedding gift!

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I think this would be so cute in the laundry room! I would paint the clothespins a different color, but it's so easy and fitting for a laundry room, I couldn't resist!!

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I'm not really sure how exactly I would do this but I'm thinking something with christmas lights....just have to figure out how to get power to them without a gross cord showing!

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I like this for a table runner for our dining room table! Well...something similar...this requires sewing and since I can't sew, I'll have to make this my own but I like it!

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 I think I'm going to do this in our bathroom drawers! I recently organized them, but now there's stuff sliding all over the place in the drawers when we go to close them or open them, so it's making everything look unorganized again. I'll probably hit up a thrift store, find some bowls like this and put some felt down to keep everything still!

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I'm realizing how much lighting I have in this post....whoa. But they're so cute and simple!! This is book pages cut to be round on the end glued to a paper lantern! How simple is that??

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And finally, I'm thinking something along these lines for above the TV in our living room! I love the saying, but it also ties into a cinematic feel which I've come to find that we both like!

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So there you have it! A million pictures full of fantastic ideas! Do you see now why my mind is running around like a chicken with its head cut off?? But not to worry because I made a list! Hope you all have a great weekend!!! :)

Painting The Night Away

In our master bathroom our color scheme is supposed to be blue and brown, but you wouldn't know that by just looking at it other than the random towels in the baskets in the bathroom. So! I decided to bring in some blue and brown action with some art on the walls! Well, I couldn't find what I wanted so I was going to take the fabric I used in this post and wrap it around some canvases to make some cool, easy art. Unfortunately after looking at the colors intently and putting the fabric up on the wall, Blake and I decided it just wasn't quite right. So, we set out to find something different! We had already bought the canvases and didn't want to return them so we settled on painting a picture! After some debate about what to paint (including a bird, stripes, a tree, and a couple of other things) we decided to paint a tree. And off to google I went, where I found this image:

I picked up some acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby in Light Blue, Dark Brown, and Khaki and these 11x14 canvases from WalMart (husband not included) ;)  

We decided we would do mirror colored images after Blake played around on photoshop a bit... 

...so we could determine what we wanted to do without wasting a canvas! 

So Blake would do a light blue tree on a dark brown background and I would do a dark brown tree on a light blue background.

Here's how Blake's got started:

......aaaaand that's as far as he's gotten so far. It was pretty late when we started this project so Blake took a nap and said he would finish his the next day...that was 2 months ago lol

Here's how mine started out:

Notice the tree picture to the right of the canvas...I am like the least artistic person ever so I definitely couldn't do it without something to look at. I wanted to use that as a stencil, but I don't have an exacto knife yet so I would have had to cut each leaf and bird out by hand with scissors....so I just used the picture as a reference!

I went in stages with my painting and I highly recommend that! Also, I would just used the smallest brush you have in your pack to do the whole thing. I think mine would have turned out better had I not tried to use the medium brush on the branches...anywho here is the picture play by play:

I started with the trunk and main branches that everything else branched off of. Unfortunately I didn't do my branches just right so I had to adjust a bit, but it kept things interesting :D

(def wish I had used the small brush on this part)

Then I added the "vines" which branched off from the main branches but still had things coming off of them: 

Next I added all the extra leaves and swirls: 

Then I added the birds in the khaki color! I thought it would give it some dimension and I like how you have to look a little more closely to see the birds :)

I really like this a lot! And it's not too bad for my first attempt at DIY art, right? Of course I would love to touch it up and somehow take an eraser to some of the massive branches, but I think the little imperfections give it character! Once Blake finishes his, we'll hang these up and I'll show you what it looks like, but for now they are chilling in the living room floor...poor things!

Have you guys tried any DIY art? Did you use a stencil or go free hand? How did it turn out?