Thrifty Bathroom Face Lift

Deciding what to do with our second bathroom has been a struggle since me and hubby moved into base housing. Not knowing when we are leaving, whether or not we're staying in base housing, and not really being able to do any remodels is the most difficult combination of scenarios to have to deal with.

This poor bathroom hardly ever gets used, but nonetheless it's really the bathroom that our guests ever see. I decided to give it a slight "facelift" to help it out. 

Again sticking to a minimal budget is always what I go for. 

I went with neutral decor, simple, and easily replaceable, since who knows when I'll decide to change my mind and style once again. 

I gathered some ideas from my one and only trusty source. See some for yourself: Bathroom ideas on Pinterest

For the glass jars I added small toiletries that we've picked up from hotels and gifts in case any of our guests ever decide they need something. I always feel like then they won't be embarrassed or shy to ask if they need a little lotion or spray mist ;-)

As you can see it is simple but perfect for a guest bathroom. Just so you can get an idea of the thriftiness of all of this here's a lift of where the items were found. 
Towels - Ross
Toilet paper basket - Thrift store find
Black small towel holder (which is actually a plate frame) - Thrift store find
Glass jars (both big and small) - Thrift store find - all three for $2
Canvas - Ross 
Candle holders (both glass and wall holders) - Thrift store find

I think all in all it works out great. It's simple. And most importantly it will always be easy to clean. 

Hope you enjoyed! If you have any ideas I would love to hear them! 

Don't forget to follow my Bathroom Inspiration board on Pinterest! (Link up top) 

Good Old Milk Can - For Fall

My mother is why I have a slight obsession with the old. I can still remember all the countless weekends I spent following mother around at garage sales, rummage sales and vintage shops. I guess in a way, I am extremely thankful, otherwise how else would I have developed an eye for great possibilities. :)

This little guy was rescued from a garage where Hubby and I lived. The Landlord was going to throw everything away, and I came to save this wonderful milk can before it was too late. 

At first I wanted to paint it a bright and wonderful color, so I did. 

Here you can see it in an orange/salmon color. It was great with my summer decor, but I got bored and wanted to change it up. 

Don't mind the crazy puppy walking in the background. 

I got my inspiration from here, finding this little beauty on, of course, Pinterest. 

I had some left over paint and decided that this Warm Chocolate from Behr would work perfect. 

It says Gidden on the container, but it was actually Behr. 

And of course you'll need a paint brush. You can also use a sponge brush, but I had a clean paint brush handy and ready to go. 

I did three coats of paint. Here it is at its first coat. I really liked the pink color undertone, but decided against it and continued to add two more coats. 

I let the paint dry about 20 minutes in between each coat. 

Here is the final coat of paint. 

I absolutely love it! 

I couldn't decide if I wanted to wrap the entire thing in Burlap or just add a simple bow. I again decided against my first idea and went ahead with a simple bow. 

I cut a thick strip of burlap. It wasn't by any means even or perfect. Beauty of the DIY world. 

Fraying happens when working with burlap so I would recommend working with it in an area that you don't mind getting messy... Like hubby's extremely disorganized garage. 

Making bows is really easy. I've heard a lot of people say they do not know how to make bows. Don't be afraid it's not that hard at all. 

Wrap the burlap around the milk can. I tied it a little high, only because once it was tight I pulled the burlap down, so it would fit really snug against the milk can. 

Make two bunny ears. 

Take the right bunny ear and tuck it over the left bunny ear. 

Then pull. I think this is where most people give up. It looks pretty sad and ugly. But don't worry. 

Start playing with the bunny ears, pulling and tugging. 

The nice thing about burlap is that it is really bendable and really easy to work with. 

Here is my pretty burlap bow. 

I wanted to add my milk can to my porch decor. So here it is with my pretty yellow mums. 

You can still see some of the pink inside of the milk can lid, but I plan on putting a pumpkin on top, so I didn't care to paint all the way inside. 

Here it is with the rest of my porch. It's coming along nicely for fall time. I'm still deciding what direction I want to move with some pumpkin decor. 

You can view my fall post here. 

I had completely forgotten about my BOO rug that I purchased at Big Lots at the end of last year's season for $2! 

There it is folks, an easy DIY! 

~~Follow my Fall Board on Pinterest~~

Buffet Table Decor Idea - Fall Decor

I was obsessed with getting a Buffet Table for our dinning room. I basically dislike our actual dinning table (revamp project soon to come), so I wanted to compensate by getting a Buffet Table to decorate and love.

Luckily I ran into this table when a lady I knew was moving out of her house. She didn't have any room for it in her TMO move, so she asked if I would be interested. When she told me it was only $35 I thought I had heard wrong! I grabbed hubby and told him we had to go get it the next day. Of course, hubby was convinced that it would fit in the Jeep, he was wrong. It was a huge ordeal to just get it over to our house. And it finally arrived. I of course went immediately to putting stuff on it! 

As you can see, the color is pretty BLAH. But it really is a nice piece of furniture. Well anyways, I haven't gotten around to painting it or figuring out what I want to do with it. I really would like to have it match my poor sad little dinning table and chairs. 

Well here it is getting ready for fall! I really like it much more this way. Too bad I can't keep it like this year round! 

Everything that I've decorated my buffet table has been an absolute bargain. Both candle holders I bought at the goodwill last year. The two brown candles are from target, both on clearance for $1.50. The Happy Harvest sign is from Michael's I bought after the holiday season last year, I think I paid less than $1 for it. The wine bottle, was a gift, now empty, covered in burlap and a ribbon from the Dollar Tree. 

Here the red plate is also from Michael's for less than a $1. The pumpkins were both bought at thrift stores. The white vase I bought at Ross and then spray painted white. The fall flower arrangement was all bought at a thrift store. My small chalk board was a mirror I bought from the Dollar Tree and painted with Martha Stewart Chalk Paint. 

Here is my dinning table and my buffet table. My table has a table cloth that Mother gave me and a simple centerpiece. 

Here is the centerpiece. The candle holders were bought from Ross for less than $10. The candles were bought at ross for less than $3 for a 6 pack. The fall leaves were bought at Hobby Lobby and the plate at Michaels. 

Fall decor is super easy. I think the best way is to shop year round. Take everything out and decide where it goes best. Make it fun, enjoy it, and don't be afraid to change things up. 

Hurray for the FALL! 

~Follow my Fall Board on Pinterest~

Cozying up the home just in time for Fall

Once September comes around, I begin to wonder how fast the year has gone by. 

Everything is slightly starting to change. The shorter evenings. The colder mornings. The different colors. Being from California I had never realized how a season change can be so noticeable. Or maybe it's my slowly drifting point in life from adolescence to adulthood. Regardless it is both beautiful and a bit overwhelming all at the same time. 

One of my best memories of childhood is decorating for the Holiday Season. My sisters and I would joke that mother's house was a boutique for Holiday decorations. She has the best knick-knacks and decorating ideas. Now that I am in my own (rather large) house, I've made it a point to make details important. Hubby enjoys coming home to a well groomed house and frankly so do I. So I've decided that decorating for the Fall Season will be my hobby for the next month or so. Not to mention it's almost inevitable to get into the decorating mood when all the stores are filled with wonderful decor items. And to make things worse, my obsession with Pinterest has me constantly searching for ideas and crafts. 

~~Follow my Fall Season Board on Pinterest~~

Rather than giving myself a headache trying to decorate all at once - in less than an hour - which is my usual style, I plan on taking it day by day. I've realized that crafting, organizing, decorating, etc. is much easier for me if I am calm and patiently wait for the perfect idea to come knockin' at the door. 

To begin, I've decorated my large buffet table. I have yet to repaint it, which I do plan on doing.. some day, however I think it works once nicely decorated with beautiful Fall Colors. Here's more on my buffet table.

My entryway, has also been nicely tackled with Fall Decor. Again extreme bargaining at its finest. 

The front door is also adorned with your typical Fall Wreath. I did however make this one myself - the cost was about $20, all supplies purchased at my local Michael's Store. Don't forget those coupons! 

Fall gardening is also a must. I absolutely love the colors of fall flowers, especially Mums. Not to mention how easy it is to keep these little beauties alive! 

Whatever may inspire you, I say go for it. There's a limitless amount of things that one can do to make our homes beautiful. 

Share some fall ideas with me! Follow my Fall Board on Pinterest and I'll follow your Fall Board back! 

Preparing your Garden for Fall

I must admit that I am a newbie at Gardening. But I think that I did a pretty good job for an amateur. It's not that I don't like gardening, but I've never really had the chance to build my own. Mother's garden is so beautiful, that I would really like mine to start to look that way too. 

Now that summer has passed, I have decided to liven up my garden with some fall favorites. MUMS. Everyone loves them, I hope, well at least I do. 

Living in Military housing I unfortunately do not have a huge amount of space to garden. I've turned to container gardening, which seems to be all the craze on Pinterest anyway. 

~~ Follow my Gardening Board on Pinterest! ~~

With a mixture of Pinterest-inspired and Creative Thinking, I came up with a couple containers myself. 

First Up: re-vamped old grille

Hubby had purchased this grille about 2 years ago (so it really wasn't that old) but it had quickly started to become wobbly and dirty. When he got his new grille he asked if he should just throw it away, selling it or giving it away would be a waste. It was on its way to the garbage, when I saw THIS BEAUTY on Pinterest and I was ecstatic. I painted it green and I immediately fell in love <3 

My first use of it was during the summer.

These little flowers have since passed on and now it is standing mighty and proud with beautiful yellow mums! 

I even added a couple solar lights to make it stand out at night. This little guy is still located off my porch, but I plan on moving it once I begin my porch decorations with pumpkins and such! 

When I decided to plant the Mums - the soil had been dried up and the roots remained from my summer flowers. I dug up as many of the dried roots and leaves and threw them away. The soil had bulged up so I took my hose and completely dampened the soil. I added fresh "potting mix" soil and began planting the mums. I planted them about 3 1/2"  away from the edge of my container so that the roots would still have room to spread. Once I had finished I again added water. One mistake I did throughout the summer was that I left the holes at the bottom of the grille completely open. That caused too much water drainage, which is why I think my flowers died so quickly. I closed the vent completely this time around and found that the water will still drain but not as much as before. Well there you have it, my beautiful mums.

Second-Up: scrap wood garden container

This was another project that had been sitting in the garage for days. Honey had come across some scrap wood that someone was giving away. He had no use for it, but I jokingly once told him he should make me a flower bed. And he finally did. It came out wonderful, the perfect size to sit right on my porch. It took him about 40 minutes to do. All it took was 4 pieces of scrap wood for the side, 3 for the bottom, and some screws. Luckily the bottom wood had a couple holes here and there which worked out perfectly for water drainage (otherwise I would have had him screw small holes).

For these guys I used "potting mix" soil as well. I left about 3" from the sides of the container for roots and about 1" from the top edge.

 Mother told me to pick the flowers with as many closed buds as possible, so that they would bloom at home. I in the past had picked those that were already in full bloom so that they would look pretty as soon as I planted them at home - again a rookie mistake. Live and learn, right? 

I'm pretty happy with my garden at the moment. Pretty subtle, but once pumpkin season rolls around I think they will complement each other nicely. 

Love my mason jars turned solar lights? Here ya go! 

Want to know what else I'm up to for Fall?

Visit my Holiday Crafts page. 

Coffee Filter Wreath - Fall Decor

Wreaths? Who doesn't love them? I sure do. 

This is one of the easiest crafts that I have done. My inspiration came from here-The 
Little Brown House - I however improvised with an idea from a previous project. 

It was a couple days works, ya know full time job and what not.. But also because like I said 
in another post, I'm really trying to enjoy the luxuries of creating my own home decor, 
rather than rushing through them for a sloppy end result. 

Anyways I've linked her tutorial above.. however here's what I came up with including my 
alternatives. 

The best part of this project is that I did not have to buy coffee filters. Thanks to our new 

Keurig, I had white coffee filters that I had no need for anymore. 

So let's begin:

White Coffee Filters (on hand - I believe you can get a packet for .89)

Styrofoam Circle (Dollar Tree)
Wired Thanksgiving Ribbon (Dollar Tree)

Hot Glue Gun (on hand)

Brewed Coffee (on hand - I LOOOOVEE COFFEE)

I began by brewing some coffee - I've also heard that tea does the trick - and warming it up in a large pot. I separated all the coffee filters and started to stick them in there. (Don't forget to turn off the burner) I left them in there for about 20 minutes and then took them all out. I threw them on my counter, over some paper towels to let them dry. While I was taking them out, I made sure to start to form them a little. It took a little over a day for them to be completely dry. 

Once they were all dry, I just got at it. I started on the inside of the wreath and worked my way around. I made sure that the coffee filters were shaped the way and in the direction that I wanted them. The nice part is that they are really east to work with. I made sure to stick in a coffee filter here and there if it didn't look "full" enough. 

I am using these wreaths for a window. So I wanted both sides to be decorated. Therefore I had to do the same on the front and back and on the sides. 

TADA - End product. 

I think it works, it was simple, cheap, and I can move them around the house!
Interested in more easy Idea for Fall Decor? Check out simple and cheap ways to garden!