christmas decor for less

you know me... always trying to get the look for less. This year I had so many "looks" in mind for my Holiday decor that I just made things up as I went along...

Holiday decorations are one of those things that I just can't bring myself to spend a lot of money on... so here are a few fun things I like to put out that do not cost a lot of moo-lah.


 (sorry for the terrible pic)
-lantern,apothecary and vases filled with ornaments (plastic ball ornaments $9.99 for 50 or more at Wal Mart)
-Wreath with silver poinsettia $7 total!
-Tea Light Holders- 3 for $15 at Bath and Body Works. They reflect Snowflakes on the wall which I love!
-Stockings hung by the chimney with care- $6... well the one on the left is mine from child hood so that is priceless and the one on the right is the burlap one I made.
-Silver Branches- I bought these at TJ Maxx for $10, BUT you could get some branches from outside and spray them silver for way less!
-JOY banner- gifted from my co-worker and friend ABK (thanks Amy 5 years later and I still use it)
-Shredded Sheet Music- Far right vase! $3 for a big bag of shredded music... so cute all year round even!

I am highlighting my fav creation this year... I bought some old light bulbs for $1 at the new goodwill in town and then added it with some gold ornaments I already had... love this!

quick,easy and inexpensive

It is hard to believe that this weekend is already the Fourth of July… it came so fast I barely had time to decorate for it.

Here are a few quick and easy (also cheap) decoration ideas for Independence Day!

my mantel for the summer is set with sea glass bottles and my two white little bird friends, I just added a small flag and some wooden stars ($1 at garage sale)... wah-la...instant patriotism.

My pepsi box is a year round decoration, but by adding some flags and red flowers from my garden, my entry way is 4th of July ready!

 

This is one of my favorites! some of you might know that I love to save and reuse aluminum cans... check out my friend Martha and her FREE template. I used these last weekend at a party to hold cutlery and straws!

 

This jar is filled with cupcake papers, some cheap bead necklaces and flags... all items were purchased for less then $1 each!

if you need more ideas, check out this site
and look at this house (LOVE)

 and serve these.... YUM


Just a few fun ideas! there is still time!

put your tan on

I love summer and sunshine... I especially love laying out in the sun getting a nice tan (aka burn in my case)

Since I have limited free time to just lay out anymore, plus all these haters tell you that the sun will kill you.... i have learned to love Jergens Natural Glow Lotion instead.

This post is going to wow you in 2 ways:

1- I got a SUPER DUPER awesome deal on 2 bottles of Jergens at CVS, buy one get one free plus $2 off, I got 2 bottles for $7.99 (holla)

2- one of the bottles was Jergens Express Lotion... OMG, it is amazing.



Source

This is a one time use tanning lotion, one time and your are bronze!!! Now, it is extra potent... be sure to wash your hands right after you use it!!

I am using the Express once a week and the Jergens Natural Glow everyday, so far I feel like I have summer glow and I have spent minimal time in the sun.


Go ahead, go out and get this lotion so you can put your tan on!!

Deal of the Week!!

Thank you Old Navy for having such great deals this week.

I stopped in on my lunch break and was pleasantly surprised to find that all Clearance was an additional 50% off.
I did not have a lot of time, however, I managed to find a couple cute things for me and one nice thing for B!

I spent a total of $9.48!!! The shirt I got from the Mens Dept was 98 cents!!! WHAT!

I think I will go back this weekend to find more great deals!

trash to treasure

my grandmother has an eye for style… I think I inherited about a ¼ of it. She is always calling my up with new finds and while sometimes they are too much for me to handle… or TOO stylish for me… they are usually great finds!

When she called me the other day to tell me she got two metal chairs out of her neighbors trash, I was a little hesitant to agree to take them… when I saw them I was extremely hesitant! What would you think:

She convinced me that some paint and love and these chairs would be a great addition to my deck!

Well, she was right thanks to my new bestie, Rustoleum!!

I scrubbed the chairs with wire bristle pads ($2.99 at Target). Taking off the excess paint and rust…

After rinsing them off and letting them dry, I sprayed the paint on…

Ta-Da- can you believe these are the same chairs and they cost me nothing! (well, about $10 for paint and supplies)…

Vera Sale

This weekend my sisters and I took a road trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana for the Vera Bradley Warehouse Sale! It was awesome!!!

We spent about 3 hours shopping at the sale. There were rows and rows of tables filled with deals!

When you get there, they give you one pink garbage bag to shop with. We filled our bags and then sorted through them to decide what we wanted... then we went back and kept shopping... shopping sorting, shopping sorting... finally we were ready to check out.

We each spent about $200, but we got about $900 worth of product!!

Here is a preview of what it looked like at the sale... check out the pile that one mother/daughter team had.

Here is a look at a few things that I got!!!

Most of these are gifts for others, but I did get the Navy Tote bag for work and a matching wallet along with some other travel goodies that help to make pakcing for my long travel work weeks a little more exciting.

Sell That SH*T

This was the motto for our garage sale last weekend.

We were ready to get rid of everything in the basement. We moved it up to the garage, marked with a price and then took the best offer we received.

I of course forgot to take pictures of the before and after....

Big Ticket Item- our old patio set!
Best sellers- Everything on my $1 dollar table... we lowered that to the 50cent table on day 2.

We made about $300! Which is great considering that most of this stuff was collecting dust in the basement!

I used the money to help pay for this:

"its our first time"

spoken words of my husband as we leave our first experience at IKEA.

We loved our trip to Ikea! We were overwhelmed at first, but thank goodness we had been briefed on how it worked there. We were ready!

I knew going with B that I would not spend a whole day there, but I could have. We were there for about 3 hours!

We bought a new coffee table, some pillows, a few letter B bookends, picture frames and a frame ledge, some misc $1 items to use for gifts.

I could have spent a lot of money, but we got everything for about $250.

The Ikea is about 2 hours from home, but we drove down for a mini getaway. There is a new outlet mall in the same area so we spent time outside there getting some deals! We also found the Ballard Company outlet, which was a 4 in one store!! Front Gate, Grandinroad and another store i had never heard of. That was a really fun surprise!!

A really bad pic of the Ballard/FrontGate store... lots of stuff

Thank goodness for comfy furniture or he might not have made it through the day....

We watched NCAA basketball at a local restaurant and had some adult bevs at the bar and spent the night at a hotel. It was a great close to home get away!

 we got to go home and put together the coffee table!

it was a great weekend!!

for someone lucky

I have mentioned a few times that my husband is from the Netherlands. His family is in the Flower Bulb business. This does not mean that I know anything about plants or flowers, but I am learning. I have learned that there is more to Dutch flowers then the Tulip... yes, that is the most famous and popular but there are so many more!
There are quite a few bulbs that can grow indoors, those are my favorites! I love fresh flowers in the house!

One of my most favorite is the Amaryllis. This is such a cool flower, it grows indoors- well atleast that is the requirement for the Ohio climate. It likes warmth and sunlight. It takes very little watering.
When they start to grow it is such a fun process to watch... each day the stem gets longer and longer...

Here are some picture of my recent batch.

I have 4 bulbs planted in a pot together! Each bulb can produce 2-4 blooms!

Now for the best part of this post. I am giving away an Amaryllis bulb to one lucky winner!!!

Leave a comment about your favorite flower and you will be entered to win!
It is that simple!

My favorite flower has changed over the years... I love Lilac Bushes, I love Peonies, I have a special love for Dahlias because we grew our own for the wedding...

Giveaway is open until March 4!




I can't wait to hear about your favorites!!

deal deal deal

Not sure if you are all fans of JC Penney or not... I never stepped foot in this store in my life until a friend (abk) told me about some secret brands that are sold at JCP and for great prices...

so now, I make sure that I stroll through there for a glance anytime I am at the mall.

yesterday I found the deal of the year! They had racks and racks of clothes for $10 or less.... it was great!!

I got 3 dresses for $28. One of the dresses was $4.97!!!!!

Do you see this... Original Price $70- marked down to $4.97!!


The best part about it is that these dresses are very cute for both work and play AND they are not black! I have a LOT of black dresses, well just black clothes in general!



I encourage all of you to check out your local JCPenney.

Our first duel christmas card!

Over the 5 years that my now husband and I have been together, I was always firm on not signing his name on my christmas cards. Although we were living together and even when we were engaged, I was convinced we had to be married before we could share christmas cards.

So, here it is! The Duel Christmas Card!

Thanks to Shutterfly we are able to create a picture card, with a recap of our wedding day! I am still debating on the style, because there are so many to choose from, but for now here is a preview of what we have....

(Don't worry, his head will not be cropped out in the real deal)

Shutterfly makes it really easy to upload and create anything. Not only are we creating our christmas card, we are going to create photobooks for family members so that they can remember the wedding.
I also plan to make a 2011 calendar for my new husband with some fun pictures!

One reason we are able to make all these picture gifts is because Shutterfly sends so many great email promos!



Happy Uploading!

Me & the owl

I love to drink wine. I prefer red wine, but of course I will drink a glass of white, especially when it is a warm day.

These days it is chilly so me and a bottle of red are quite cozy together.

As you know, I recently got married... we were lucky enough to be able to provide the alcohol for the wedding (huge savings!). Even more lucky...we had lots of extra!!
The wine that we chose to buy only cost us a little less then $3 a bottle. It was not 2 buck chuck... I did not want to serve that as everyone knows that it costs so low...

We served "Winking Owl" and it is DELICIOUS. It is extra delicious because it is not expensive!

You can get "Winking Owl" wine at ALDI.

Get yourself some inexpensive wine and curl up with the owl!

The look for less

A few posts back I mentioned a cute sweater that was on my wish list for fall. Remember...

Well, I happened to find a replica for way cheaper!

Old Navy
$20 plus I had a 20% off coupon

J.Crew version- $98.00