Dump Treasures

Oh how I love a good sale, it is a great feeling to score something really amazing at a great price! Whats better than that? Getting it for Fer-eee (free)!

Our town dump has a little area called the "Clear Mart" - it really is my favorite store! My husband always knows I am in the mood to score some great junk  treasures when I offer to go to the dump with him. Sometimes these items cost a dollar or two but today I found four great things for free! 

My husband is NOT a fan of my dumpster diving...even if it is in the "Clear Mart" and not actually in the dumpster. (He has NO vision.) The first find was an easy one,  I spotted it while sitting in the truck as he unloaded the garbage. 

A great mailbox! I have BIG plans for this mailbox to be a part of my mailbox wall that is one of my visions for my entry way. 

This is the only thing I got on the first round of dump wars...........

I also spotted this super cool chair that clearly is screaming to be my first reupholster project. 

Hubby said no......

I put on my best pouty face and told him as he was driving away that he knows he has no powers against my pouty face.....so he turned around. 

At first he told me that it was unsteady, then he laughed and told me that it was just because it was on the gravel. What a joker he is.....

Then I spotted this perfectly cute flower pot and wreath! Clearly gems just waiting to be cleaned up and adored. 

On the way out of the dump he said "My pickup just decreased in value by putting this crap in it!" What a fun day we had.

Here is a little before and after of the wreath. Don't let the picture on the left fool you, those fake flowers looked much worse in real life, oh and that is not the chair we got. He had already tucked it up in the loft of the shop before I got home from an errand! He really didn't want it laying around! :)

I pulled the fake flowers off and lightly sprayed it with white spray paint. Now it is hanging sweetly on my cabinet door!

Chalkboard Hand Sanitizer Containers

This idea came to me shortly after posting that I didn't have any ideas for Teacher Apreciation Day. It is sort of a combination between the hand sanitizer I posted about yesterday and my chalkboard soap dispenser I made last year. Honestly, the chalkboard sticker that I used combined with the water that gets splashed all over my bathroom and it wasn't long before my cute little soap dispenser was looking pretty sad. But there is no water involved in Hand Sanitizer and I did not use the chalkboard wallpaper so I am expecting these to hold up well!

Step 1: Empty hand sanitizer container, no need to rinse or anything since hand sanitizer will be going back in.

Step 2. Scrub off the label

Step 3. Spray paint with chalkboard paint, before I did this I was bummed that I only had green chalkboard paint and not black but I am sooooo thrilled with how they turned out! I painted these with about 4 coats letting dry for 20 minutes in between.

Step 4: Let dry for 24 hours (ok, so I let them dry for about 4 hours)

Step 5: Prime with chalk by rubbing it all over the container, then erase

Step 6: Write your message, tie a piece of chalk around the top, attach a tag that say "Hand Sanitizer" and you my friend are done!

(Message on the back)

                         (I espcecially loved this one that had square sides that I could write on)



Scrapbook Display Board

I purchased this piece of artwork the first summer I was married for $2. It hung in our house for several years until I just couldn't stand it anymore. There is nothing wrong with the picture but gigantic pictures of the ocean, just not my thing.

So I did this. (If you love this picture you might want to quit reading now)

I warned you!

Many coats of black spray paint later. Some wire and a few mini clothes pins and now I have this....

An interchangeable way to display some of my favorite scrapbook pages in my home! And I LOVE IT! So much.....I did this project several months ago actually and I STILL feel happy everytime I see it!

Here are the pages currently displayed on the board.

Sorry about the photo quality of some of those photos of my layouts I was too busy lazy too take them down and try to get better shots. But you get the idea!



Kid friendly to-do list! (Only not a list)

In my home a traditional chore chart just does not work. My kids ages are too spread out for most versions of the chore chart to work for us. The oldest is 17 and therefore I do not remind him to Brush his teeth, or Comb his hair very often. And there hasn't been a day in years when I have had to remind him to get dressed, LOL! Of course there is a small amount of reminding going on, on the set chores that he has, garbage and feed the horse. But for the most part he is pretty self sufficient. The little guy is 17 months old and while soon I will needing to star chart of something for his "potty training progress" he doesn't really have much of a to-do list yet. The eight year old however, well he needs lots of reminders, over and over and over and well you get the idea! He is the sweetest little boy in the world, however, he would happily stay in his pajamas all day with nary a thought as to whether or not the cat has been fed. or if the hampster is dying of thirst, or even if he, himself has eaten breakfast. He has the attention span of a gnat and while I dearly love him I do not love telling him over and over and over again the things he needs to do every morning and every evening. Traditional charts are fine and I know they work well for most kids, plus they would have been simpler to  make. (Even though my version wasn't very hard.) But I like mine better for the following reasons:

1. It is just plain ol' more fun to drop the sticks into the "Done" can versus checking them off a chart!

2. The pictures reenforce what he is supposed to be doing, and he knows what to do even if his 'blossoming but not quite great' reading skills can't make out the words.

3. Yellow circles means morning to-do's and blue means nighttime to-do's. Easy to remember what to do when!

4. Every morning he gets a fresh start, so if the previous day wasn't perfect than he doesn't get reminded of those oops the rest of the week.

5. It is a pretty accent for the bookcase, versus a chart I would want to keep somewhere out of sight and therefore out of mind!

6. I can edit this at any time, either by adding or removing tasks - jobs that need to be done. I really love this feature. I also cut out extra cardstock circles so I won't have to go digging around for the right color when I need them.  And I just store them in one of the cans!

6. So simple to make!

 Step 1 is gathering your supplies of course! Let's see, I used a paper trimmer, hot glue gun, black spray paint, brown spray paint,  Large Wooden Craft Sticks, a black Sharpie, 2 empty aluminum cans, 10 of the aluminum can tops, cardstock for the colored circles and to print my chore circles on, Fancy Pantz Patterned Paper, Fancy Pantz Rub-Ons,  Matching Fancy Pantz Ribbon.

First I spray painted the top and bottom rim of the cans black, and I spray painted the large wooden craft sticks brown.

Then I cut my paper just wide enought to fit between the rims, applied some rub-ons and added the words, To-Do to one and All Done to the other.

Using my computer and free graphics I made up 6 morning reminders, Brush Teeth, Eat Breakfast, Get Dressed, Read for 15 minutes, Handwriting for 10 minutes, and Feed Cats. I snuck a couple of school related tasks that he does daily in there as well. That way he gets started schooling even if Mom is busy with the baby or something else in the morning.

I also made up 5 Nighttime Reminders, Brush Teeth, Read for 15 minutes, Pajamas, Feed Cats, and Feed Jack Jack (his hampster). He now knows that he has to start all this by 9:00 pm and then he goes to bed. So nice to not be the one doing the nagging anymore, I let the cans do that!

I just cut those out in a circle, glued them to either yellow or blue paper and then glued two corresponding circles together with the large craft stick sandwiched in between.

Glued the ribbon around the can using hotglue.

Oh yeah and you might be wondering what I used the aluminum can tops for, well I found out my sticks didn't stand up tall enough to look right so I glued 5 of them together and dropped them into the inside of each can. Makes my sticks stand up taller and look nicer!

And I was "All Done"

Little Touches...The Crayon Basket

Little Touches….


Sometimes all it takes is a little touch here and there to make a big difference in your home. The other day I was commenting to my hubby man about how cluttered I thought our house was getting. We started talking about our #1 hotspot, the little counter that divides the living room from the kitchen.

And then he said, Well we just need someplace to put those crayons and throw the rest away. I was astonished when I found out that he was right! Mischievious Mike refuses to leave the crayons alone. Yet they need to be kept in the dining room so that we can use them for school projects. Hmmmm….. Way up high in our dining room I have a collection of stuff that I have spray painted black. Up there would be the perfect spot to put the crayons. I can reach them but no way can MM, at least not yet! I pray that day is far in the distance. Anyways I went a searching for the perfect basket, and by perfect I mean any ugly basket that I could spray paint. Meet Ugly Basket….

All spray painted up……………..

Then I hotglued some burgundy ribbon around it and painted a little scrapbook tag the same color as our walls and wrote crayons on them with a sharpie! Ta da! A beautiful, functional little touch that made a big difference!.