Discoveries

It's amazing what having no ingredients will do for your creativity.  Last night after we finally went grocery shopping, we both just stood there, admiring our beautifully full fridge.  But before that point, we were running out of things.  And one of those things was milk.

Milk is one of those ingredients that lactose-avoiding people like myself seldom appreciate until it's gone.  I don't drink milk, and I don't put it on cereal, so I don't really think about its existence until I cook with it.  I do, however, eat mashed potatoes, so when my roommate showed up with a box of instant mashed potatoes for our shepherd's pie, I was torn between wild excitement, confusion, and disappointment.  The wild excitement was because I absolutely love mashed potatoes.  The confusion was due to the fact that my previous mashed potato experiences usually involved both potatoes and mashing.  My roommate's promise that this strange box of powdery flakes would transform into a mass of creamy goodness left me skeptical.  To top things off, the catalyst these flakes demanded was milk, which we were completely out of (hence the disappointment).

That's when I got to thinking.  Milk makes me sick, but so do many other things.  Perhaps we could substitute one sickening product for another (witness my logic at work).  We didn't have milk, but we did have a giant carton of heavy whipping cream I'd bought to make mousse with.  My roommate and I chuckled evilly as we poured a thick, calorie-laden cup of cream into the unsuspecting potato powder.  At this point, something miraculous occurred.  The cream not only did its job, it went above and beyond.  It transformed those potato flakes into the most amazing mashed potatoes I'd had in a long time.  I think this supports the theory that the more calories you pour into something, the better it's going to taste.

Just thought I'd torture you with a picture of the finished shepherd's pie.

My roommate has introduced me to other cool ideas besides instant potatoes.  One of these is drying flowers to save.  I'd done the whole freeze-your-prom-corsage thing back in high school, and it worked out alright, but my rose ended up really dried out and blackened.  She showed me how to clamp the end of the flower stem with a binder clip and hang it upside down for several days.  As she explained, this lets all the moisture go down to the petals, keeping them beautiful right up until the end.  I dried this rose a few weeks ago, and look how colorful it stayed!

My dried rose.

Shoebox Canvas Twist

In our quest to decorate all the walls, one of the many Pinterest ideas we decided to try was the idea of covering shoebox lids with fabric to make mock canvases.  Since my fabric scrap collection was running a little thin at that point, my only real choice was some more of the old quilting fabric I'd used on my desk drawer lining project.  A lot of the versions of this shoebox project we saw on Pinterest used glue, but we thought, hey, we're using shoeboxes anyway, let's be as lazy about this project as we can.  Therefore, we basically wrapped our shoebox lids like Christmas presents, duct taped them in the back (yes, duct tape), and hung them on nails on the wall.

Here's where the twist comes in.  My quilting fabric didn't really go with the rest of our bright decor.  Especially in our dim hallway, it was just dull.  That's when we had the idea of adding felt shapes.  Right now we have hearts, but we can always change them out!  The felt sticks to the fabric, but if you want, you can pull it right off.  We're thinking about cutting out snowflakes for winter, flowers for spring, clovers for St. Patrick's Day, etc.

The whole movable part is actually something several of our friends have discovered.  They've started a trend of moving one heart each time they come over.  Sometimes we find a heart on its side, sometimes we find one upside down, and depending on how many friends we've had over, sometimes they're all mixed up.  If we had been boring and glued our hearts down, think of all the fun we would have missed....

Homemade Gift Journal

One of the most frustrating things about living on a budget is feeling like you can't buy your friends the gifts they deserve.  This is where homemade gifts come in.  They show your friend/family member that you cared enough to spend a lot of time and creativity, even if you couldn't spend a lot of money.

Unfortunately, whenever I look up gift ideas online, so many of them require special skills (such as the ability to knit more than scarves and socks, or the ability to crochet without accidentally knitting) that it can be really discouraging.  That's why I'm here to offer an option that doesn't require any talent or artistic ability whatsoever.  All you have to do is a bunch of cutting and gluing...and finding cool pictures online.

Gift Journal - Front View

Back View

First, you start with a hardcover journal.  I usually find the big ones for around $10 at Walmart.

The next step is to find a bunch of pictures the intended recipient would like.  Since the journal above was a gift for my best friend, I printed off pictures of our favorite movies, books, characters, singer (Josh Groban), quotes, inside jokes, and pictures of fun times we had together.  On other friends' journals, I've used pictures of their hobbies, school spirit, quotes about funny memories, references to tv shows...the sky's the limit.

After you print off all the text and images, you can cut them out, either cutting exactly around the shape, tearing around the shape, or using decorative scissors.  I have some detail scissors that help, but they aren't a necessity.

For the next step, you can either cover the journal with a bigger sheet (I used sheet music in the one above) or, if you like the pattern that's already there, leave the background as is.  I like to use a glue stick at this point to stick everything down to the journal.  It makes the next step a whole lot easier.

Finally, open the decorated journal and lay it cover down on a piece of clear contact paper.  Cut the contact paper a few inches larger than the book on each side, then peel off the backing.  At this point, you'll want to be very careful as you lay the book back down on the sticky surface.  My contact paper always wants to curl up and stick to itself or wrinkle as you press it out.  Try to get it as smooth as you can.  Remember that you can pop any bubbles that occur with a pin.  When you get to the extra inches, curl them back over the edges of the cover to hold everything together.  You'll need to trim around the spine, since you can't really curl that part back over.

And finally, voila, finished gift.  Easy on your budget and fun to make.

Fabric Lined Drawers

Some of you may remember my post a couple months back about the painted turquoise desk.  Once I had finished the exterior, I began to focus on what I'd put in the drawers.  I looked at some of the different contact papers they carry at Walmart, but I was very unimpressed.  I even went so far as to look up specialty contact papers online and was shocked at how expensive everything was.  It seemed that my drawers would just have to stay unlined.

Then, the fabric happened.  I'd been playing around with some old quilting fabric scraps to cover cardboard shoe-boxes and happened to leave the fabric sitting out on my desk.  It matched PERFECTLY!  I knew I had to use it.

First, I lay the fabric in the bottom of each drawer and used a box cutter along the corners to cut it down to size.  (Some of the tutorials I looked up online suggested an Exacto blade, but my Exacto blade was pretty wimpy and I found the box cutter to be a lot sturdier.)  Once I had the fabric the right shape, I used a foam brush to coat the bottoms of the drawers with Mod Podge and pressed the fabric in place.  To make sure everything stayed, I went back with a couple more layers of Mod Podge after the first coat had dried.  Finally, the next day, I coated everything with a couple of layers of clear varnish.

The result is a really pretty vintage look that goes great with my desk.  One thing that I didn't expect is how the glue dulled and yellowed the colors of the fabric.  Fortunately, my fabric started out pretty bright, so it still looks good.  It might be a good thing to keep in mind though, when choosing your drawer lining fabric.  Another thing that surprised me was how rough it all ended up.  Even with the coats of varnish, it's still very rough to the touch.  This hasn't caused me any problems though, and it may even keep my things from sliding around my drawers so much.

Cheap Colorful Lamps

One of the first things we noticed as we moved into our apartment was the notable lack of light sources.  Neither the bedrooms nor living room have any overhead lights.  We knew right away that we were going to have to overcome this deficit with a large quantity of lamps.  Some of our lamps are unique, such as my roommate's twinkle lights (basically Christmas lights) from the wedding section at Walmart, or my string of Japanese paper lanterns I got on clearance ($6!) at World Market.  And some of our lamps were personalized by yours truly.

Since I was running out of money at that point in my preparations, I started where all good moneyless college students should start: the thrift store.  We're lucky enough to have several of these in my town, but one in particular has an amazingly cheap selection, so I went there.  The lamp aisle boasted a whole assortment of boring, wood or metal lamp bases.  I chose a couple in the $2 range, snagged a plain shade for 99 cents, and made out of there like a bandit.  I found a flowery shade to fit the other one at Walmart for $3 on clearance.  (Moral: clearance is a beautiful thing.)

Once I got these hideous objects home, I went to work.  Having picked up a can of bright yellow spray paint at Walmart ($3.50), I taped off the power cords and gave the lamp bases several coats.  It was a little frustrating because the paint kept wanting to slide down off the wood.  I wiped them down when I got them, but if you want your lamps really smooth, I recommend cleaning them even better to make sure all oils are off.

For my plain lamp shade, I took a Sharpie and wrote the cursive lyrics to a favorite song (Hidden Away by Josh Groban) around it in a spiral.  Something I didn't realize before I started was just how much room you have on a lamp shade; I ended up writing out the entire song three times just to fill it up.

Thus, we come to the finished products:

Finished products

The entire cost for both together was very low: $3.50 spray paint + $4 lamp bases + $4 lamp shades =  around $11.50 for two personalized lamps or $5.75 a piece.  Not bad.

I'm Still Alive!

Sometimes life just comes in and steamrolls you.  I fought my way through a particularly tough couple of exam weeks, spent a weekend at home kidnapping my brother for his birthday, and returned, only to get pummeled by the longest lasting stomach virus in the history of the world.  Oh, and I spent the whole weekend making a clay model of the larynx.

But, I have returned.  Ready to trade back the saltine crackers and EmergenC for my dear, long-abandoned, little blog.

I have a list of projects I'd like to put up in the coming days, so for today I'll just leave it brief.  Since I last updated, my roommate has discovered the secret to amazing apple cider caramels, I've diced raw chicken *and* fried it on the same day, I discovered that chicken soup left on the burner will eventually turn into a blackened mess, and nothing, not even bacon fires, can harm a $17 Orgreenix pan.  (Unfortunately, they didn't pay me to say that.)

I also learned that when kidnapping someone, driving up really fast beside them is good.  Making sure you have all the doors unlocked before everyone tries to jump out?  Even better.

TARDIS Door

There comes a point where fangirling gets out of hand.  And somewhere rather past that point exists that breed of fans who plan their decor around their favorite fictional hero.

Those fangirls.

My roommate and I were overjoyed when we discovered that we were both Doctor Who fans.  She enthusiastically allowed me to hang my David Tennant poster in the living room, as well as my 11th-Doctor-themed prints.  It was however, too much for my fangirl heart to believe when we simultaneously agreed upon a TARDIS-themed front door.  I'd seen them all over Pinterest, pinned them in my board for future house/apartment dreams, but never really hoped to have one so soon.

Since we aren't allowed to paint anything in our apartment, our first idea was to cover the door with butcher paper and color it blue.  However, something better presented itself when I realized my mom had given me some old white contact paper to line our drawers.  Original purpose forgotten, we covered the door with two long strips.  Since it was already sticky, we were glad not to have to mess with glue.

For the next step, we bought some blue acrylic paint from Walmart.  We ended up using about two containers, applying multiple coats with foam brushes.  The contact paper was slippery, so it took awhile to get the paint to actually look solid.  (When a little bit of paint spilled on our carpet, it came up nicely with nail polish remover - just something to keep in mind.)

Once the paint was dry, my roommate took a navy marker and outlined the rectangular indentions in the door to make it look less flat.  We found the "Police Telephone Free for Use of Public" sign here on DeviantArt, printed it out, and stuck it on with hot glue.  For the windows, we used 12"/12" squares of white cardstock and drew panes on them with a navy marker and ruler.  For the top black Police Box sign, we spray painted a strip of cardboard black, then printed off these letters to the scale we needed them, cutting out around each word and spacing them out.

Feel free to save and print.

Hot glue served us pretty well for most of this, but as it's fallen down, we've also had to resort to some super glue, especially with the heavier cardboard.  The top part was also a piece of cardboard that my roommate free-handed and we painted blue.

Now we're off for an adventure with The Doctor....

Some Lessons Learned

This has been a crazy week!  Between classes and jobs, it's been hard to juggle everything, much less update my poor blog.  Here's a brief overview:

1) Last night we made parmesan chicken and pasta with marinara for our boyfriends and had a movie night.  It all turned out well, except for the oven, which insisted on filling the air with smoke, and the fire alarm, which insisted on going off.  With all our doors and windows open, we sat down to our first relaxing dinner of the week.  Lesson: don't overwork your oven.  It will rebel.

Fire alarm: "nice meal... now let me sing you the song of my people."

2) The day before yesterday, we decided to try tea tree oil to get sticky grease stains off one of our cookie sheets.  The grease didn't budge.  The tea tree oil, however, quickly took over our apartment.  We both woke up smelling it the next morning.  Lesson: if you *absolutely need your space to smell like something other than it already smells like*, put out a bit of tea tree oil.  And if you already like your apartment smell, then don't.

Tea tree oil: "HELLOOOOOO"

3) Back at the first of the week, we were struggling with a horrible mosquito infestation.  People would come to visit us and leave covered in bites.  Deciding that violence was our only recourse, we found a cheap bug bomb to set off (only $5!).  And set it off for two hours.  After letting the apartment air out for 30 minutes, it only still smelled mildly of permanent marker.  It was worth it, however, when we started finding dead mosquitos lying around, on the shelves, windowsills (they were trying to escape!  Mwahahaha....)  We were elated with our success.  Then, they appeared.  Massive mutant mosquitos that had somehow survived.  We gave up hope of a mosquito free apartment.  Lesson: mosquitos don't die.  They only regenerate.

How I felt walking away from that bug bomb.

Ways to Hang Wall Art

So now that I have all this free wall art, what do I do with it?

My first project idea from pinterest was buying a bunch of cute frames and spray painting them the same color.  This was all well and good until I discovered that the very cheapest thrift store frame was $5, and I wanted an assortment.  So, I visited the Dollar Tree.  Once I had my five ($1!) frames and my can of $3 bright yellow spray paint, I managed to come up with the following.  The only downside I discovered was that the paint tends to wear off if something rubs against one of the frames.

My next project idea, inspired by my last RA's hall decorations, is a clothesline of prints.  This was pretty easy with some jute string, nails, and clothespins.  We put it in our dining room.

The tribute for my last idea should really go to my amazing roommate.  We were trying to do some rolled paper frames I'd seen on some blogs, but we just couldn't get them to work.  So she had the idea of just cutting the cardstock into cool shapes.  When it came to arranging the finished product, we decided to put them around a dull corner to bring it out...and the effect is SO COOL.

Apartment Pics

Sadly, I must confess that I've neglected my blog the last two days.  Since our classes start back tomorrow, we've been celebrating our last days of freedom with movie and game nights hosted in our freshly decorated apartment.  We broke in our kitchen with homemade caramel corn, red velvet puppy chow, chocolate chip cookies, and crock pot queso.  (It was also a fun opportunity to try out our nice, serving dishes!)

I'm a little sad about starting classes tomorrow, but part of me is excited for my last year.  We'll see how I feel after my first Japanese class tomorrow....  (I don't speak a word of Japanese.)

Anyway, I thought it was about time I finally posted pictures of the rest of the apartment, beyond just my bedroom.  Then tomorrow I can get into the ways to hang wall art that I mentioned in my last post.

Living room!  (Yes, our door is a TARDIS.)

Another view of the living room.

View from our front door.

Our dining area!

Our little kitchen!

Kitchen, other side.

Our Doctor Who Appreciation Wall (near the front door).

Note the twinkle lights!!

Free Printable Wall Art

I'm excited to announce that the decorating is almost done!  (This means more pics to come soon.)  Since so many of our wall decorations started out as free printables, and since searching down these printables took some time, I decided to compile my sources into one easy place so others could make use of them too.  The only ones that are actually mine are Fox Robin here and the one I made with Picasa; the rest of them are from other sites.  In the next few days, I plan to post pictures and ideas about how to arrange and display printed wall art.

Fox Robin

1.  I love foxes.  And I felt like they should be represented on my site.  So I drew this little guy (and named him after Disney's Robin Hood).  Feel free to download and use him as wall art too!  (DeviantArt is actually a good source for wall art.  My other DeviantArt drawings can be found here.)

Indiefixx

2.  http://indiefixx.com/Feed_your_soul/downloads.html
So this was my absolute favorite printable art site.  They have lots of art to choose from, the prints are nice and colorful, and the site is easy to work with.  Print theme tends to be modern and quirky.

Vintage Printable

3.  http://vintageprintable.com/wordpress/
This site is really frustrating to navigate, but it's good if you want older, truly vintage prints.  Lots of good botanical prints, some whimsical animals, and old paintings.

Graphics Fairy

4.  http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/p/search.html
This also has vintage prints, but they look more like signs and book covers.  It's a lot easier to navigate than vintage printable, but not all of the art makes good wall prints.

JandAandCo.

5.  http://jandaandco.blogspot.com/2011/11/bathroom-printables-download-working.html
This one has several colorful bathroom-themed printables, as well as the "you are my sunshine" seen above.

Printable Monogram

6.  http://forchicsake.com/printable-monogram/
This is really cool.  It lets you download the monogram template in a color of your choice, then type in your own initials.

Make your own wall art.  Mine features a quote from the musical, Chess ("Anthem").

7.  http://www.pinchingyourpennies.com/2012/04/make-your-own-quote-wall/
This is a good tutorial on how to make your own wall art using Picasa.  The print above is one that I made following these instructions!  Right click and save it to print and use it.

Finding Nana

8.  http://findingnana.com/?p=5376
This site has printable chevron patterns.  It doesn't necessarily have to be wall art, but I used it that way.

Everything Etsy

9.  http://www.everythingetsy.com/2012/07/live-a-colorful-life-free-printable-in-5-color-schemes/
Several versions of this same print in different colors.

Fruit of the Spirit - see upper left.

10.  https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh-SqC2O4R_FylezAH_guPkaUOUBtu9cnZi2FkSQ8ZpxgoAO8VyWRZxA4JDWZefDP2FuOGdtdvnaliiAk5IfnZ4Q7gxlFxftWf9qV-rKqx_FXVeKjhPLxJcFiT8aTvBPZlQqzsTQOYKtoE/s1600/FruitofSpirit-Rainbow-detail.jpg
Link to the Fruit of the Spirit print.

DIY Hanging Racks

So the other day my mom pulled the following article out of her cabinet and told me she no longer needed it:

Apparently it's a French bread pan.

My mind went through this whole thought process of, French bread?  I love French bread.  Making bread is hard.  I would never make French bread.  Wait, this has nifty holes in the middle....

And so my first hanging rack was born.  Since it came in this sort of dull dark grey color, I spray painted it silver.  Then, I added three decorative doorknobs from World Market ($1.99 a piece - not bad, and they're pretty).  It was nice because the knobs went right through the holes in the middle, so I didn't have to drill any.  We also used these same holes to drill it into the wall.

Finished product.

 My next hanging rack also features World Market knobs, but this time with hooks attached (same price - I'm a big fan).  I started with a board that I salvaged from an old bed my neighbors were throwing away.  After cutting it down to size, I sanded the rough edges.  Then, I used some of the leftover turquoise paint from my desk and splashed it on sort of roughly, so you could still see the bare wood around the sides.

This way my scarf collection can double as a decoration.

A closer view of the knobs

In the end, since I got the board and pan for free and the paint and screws were stuff I already had, the total cost for both of these was really just the cost of the knobs: about $10 for the bigger one and $6 for the smaller.  Not bad, if I do say so myself....

And Thus It Begins

So the day has finally arrived, and I am finally here and moved in!  I've been trying to hold off on the posts until I actually got here, so now I can start updating more regularly.  I have a lot more about individual pieces and projects that I'd like to post later, as well as some pictures of other rooms, but for now I'll just post a few pics of my bedroom.

I've been really pleased with the apartment as a whole so far, and my room has turned out even better than I'd hoped.  We went grocery shopping today and made an AMAZING slow cooker tomato basil parmesan soup (find the recipe here).  We've also made a lot of headway in the kitchen and living room, so I'll be excited to share those pics in the next few days.

Painted Desk

So as I mentioned in my last post, I recently acquired a really cool old desk from my grandparents.  Since it was looking a little beat up, I decided to try my hand at furniture painting.  As an ex-miniaturist and dollhouse renovator, I'm a pretty big fan of the transforming power of paint, but this was my first actual life-size project.

Before picture - isn't it a neat desk?  I just want to hide the chips.

I started off by sanding off the top and ended up scraping off a layer of some shellac-type stuff in the process.  Since I want to use the desk for writing, I made sure to sand the top extra well, but for the rest of the desk, I mostly just sanded enough to rough it up.  I also removed the drawer pulls, which were all this cool warn-off bronze color - definitely holding onto those.

For the next step, I used some powdered soap my dad had for washing walls pre-painting.  After scrubbing it down and wiping it with a clean rinse rag, I used the dry-time to go pick out some paint.  Walmart's Color Place Interior ended up being the cheapest (around $10 for a quart), and I chose a semi-gloss turquoise called Shimmering Summer Pool.

I put on a coat of primer that same evening, and voila, here we are.

Primed and ready.

With our current 100+ degree temps, I painted early the next morning.  Even so, toward the end, the paint was drying as soon as I slapped it on.  Total it took about two hours for two coats, so not too bad.  I've been listening to my new Regina Spektor album, "What We Saw From the Cheap Seats," on loop lately (I'm a little obsessed), so between her and the cat, Bon, keeping me company, it didn't seem to take that long.  The whole project was done in less than 24 hours and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Time well spent.

Close up of the drawers - aren't the pulls lovely?

There were no real mishaps during the project.  I had to chase kitty Bon off at one point, as she became intent on rubbing all over my sticky, freshly-painted surface.  (Don't worry, after a bit of a sulk, she got over it.)  The color also turned out a bit lighter than I expected.  I'm usually more of a brights than pastels person; as I explained to a friend, "When they turn me loose with paint, it's always gonna be...memorable."  But in this case, I think it'll be a nice change.  And as my friend joked yesterday, "Well, you can always keep it and reuse it in a baby room one day."

Hullo World

So, thus begins the official countdown to my new apartment.  (Fateful move is scheduled to take place on August 15th.)  As a fourth year college student, I'm finally leaving the dorms behind and stepping out into the realm of having-a-kitchen-and-paying-electric-bills.  I'm also going to have my own room finally, which will be a welcome change.

The actual apartment my roommate and I chose is pretty much the itty-bittiest, cheapest thing on campus, but that's how we wanted it.  As my first year to go no-loans (thanks to scholarships and work study), my heart is glad, but my wallet's feeling a little light.  The plan at the first of the summer was to get a full-time job to save for food costs, but thanks to my part-time/odd-job reality and the ravages of monthly car payments, I've had to adjust plans a little bit.  Since I still have no desire to sleep on the floor and live on ramen, here's where the interesting part comes in.

First, I want to admit that I've been EXTREMELY blessed by a bunch of nice and generous people.  A sweet friend at school gave me her old sofa bed, entertainment center, and tv since she was graduating.  Both of my grandmothers have pitched in to fill my cabinets with their extra dishes and utensils.  My mom gave me an old set of silverware they had saved out in their camping supplies.  My grandparents gave me an old desk they had.  And my brother agreed to let me steal his old Ikea chair (that nobody loves anyway - one of my projects is going to be to make it more comfy and lovable).

But after that, comes the need for creativity.  And that's where this blog comes in.  As an avid pinterester (read: serious addict), I've run into a plethora of amazing decorating ideas, but my budget has forced me to narrow even these down to their cheapest possible elements.  As I was thinking about this the other day, I realized that, while buying lovely decor straight from the store would be easy and simple, it would really take the fun out of it.  I decided items in my apartment should have stories behind them, that half the fun of decorating is making do with what's available, and to keep this whole super-budget-life fun, I'd turn it into a blog.  And here we are.  Let the thrifty adventures begin.