DIY door hanger

As I talked about in my Thanksgiving post back in November, my sister-in-law hosted an amazing dinner. Not only was the food great but she also did such a beautiful job on the decorations right down to the door hanger.

Did you know Hobby lobby sales large wooden letters? Well, I didn’t. She bought all the supplies for less than a $20.00.

Supply list:

Large wooden letter

Neutral paint

Holly berries

Burlap ribbon

Step 1.

Paint the wood your neutral color.

Step 2.

Hot glue berries onto letter.

Step 3.

Tie the awesome bow (nor my sister-in-law or I can tie bows… we go to my dad).

Step 4.

Glue tails to back of letter.

So simple. So elegant. I can’t wait to make one for our door.

Come see me at…

Today I am guest posting over at See Vanessa Craft. I am super excited to be doing the 20 craft days of Christmas with Vanessa. Come see what I've got going on.

It's okay Thursday...

It's okay…
that I am mad at the shipping company for turning 2 day expedite into 6 days.
that I can't wait for my husband to go back to work next week (it's too had to get anything done)
that I am upper excited to be working in Payton's class today.
that I haven't changed the days until countdown in 2 days.
that I've already picked out my birthday present (Jan 24)
that the present is already sitting in my Amazon shopping cart.
that I am really tired of this couch to 5k junk.
to be missing the working world.
to hate Zulily!

The business of money

This may very well be one of my favorite posts I write all year. It’s December so along with holiday planning we do a family planning meeting each year. We are just about 2.5 years into the Dave Ramsey total money makeover. This has changed our lives. Just the other day my husband and I sat down with our 2013 financial information. We set our budget! We set our goals! This is the year we will finally get to say WE ARE COMPLETELY DEBT FREE! (Yes, the capitals are totally necessary. We will be screaming this from the rooftops.)

It has been a long process from where we were to where we are now and every second has been more than worth it. The end is so close I can taste it! In the past two years we have paid off almost 100k in consumer debt that included: credit cards, student loans and cars. We now live on a lean budget well below our income.

Every December we sit down and write our financial goals out and put them up where we can read and reexamine them all the time.

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We read the book Total Money Makeover, please I suggest if you have ever made or spent a dollar in your life you should read it.

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We got the Financial Peace University plan (we were unable to attend at the local church hubby was deployed).

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We started slashing and saving. We rethought every area in our lives. We knew this was something we truly had to do.

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I got this wonderful wallet here that helps me organize all the cash.

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Oh Christmas tree

I love the way a lit Christmas tree looks. The lights beaming and reflecting brings life to the green teepee shaped object in my living room.

Round ornaments hold a special place in my heart, a childhood memory. My grams tends to like things matchy matchy. I cant remember the year but judging from the awful color of mauve I’d guess mid ‘90’s. Grams had this crazy idea to get her ball ornaments and spray paint them mauve to match her couch! We took off the top piece put pencils inside held the stick and sprayed away. I hated the process then and now thinking back they were ugly. For years after, anytime you went for a pencil it was painted a lovely shade of 90’s mauve. They weren’t all bad because its 20 years later I still remember them and the process.

I like memory trees. Don’t get me wrong you can do amazing things and make trees look beautiful with colored round balls (probably not mauve painted ones). I like to use the balls as filler. I love ornaments or different shapes, size and meaning.

Each morning when I get up I turn on the tree’s lights as take a minute too look at it in all its beauty. Baby’s firsts, handmade, ones from my old job, and a few really special ones my mom has given me from when I was a kid (if you look closely at the pictures there’s one dated 1985). I love memory trees, trees that you can look at and see a family.

So how do you do your tree? Balls, memories or something else?

Weekend review complete with heartbreak

We had a great weekend around the Miller house.

Saturday was a busy day like most. We shopped, we ate and someone got a heartbreaking haircut.

We recently got a Buffalo Wild wings in a nearby town which is awesome to me, it happens to be one of my favorite hangout spots. No, I don’t think the foods is all that but it does have one great thing going for it. It’s loud inside their restaurants. Loudness isn’t typically something that draws people in but with three kids this can be great. The loudness factor can determine whether my hubby and I get to have a relaxing and fun meal.
The kids had a really good time and they were really good too! Plus it was 75 degrees in December so we got to sit outside!

For weeks my husband has been trying to talk me into cutting the little ones hair. I kept putting it off and making up excuses. I never had this issue with our first two I’d cut and cut no big deal. For some reason it breaks my heart to cut Coopers. It’s just so stinking cute long.

But after my husband put up the argument about it constantly being in his eyes I went ahead and cut it. ☹

I don’t hate it. It didn’t turn out bad but don’t you just miss those curls. It also seems as if I cut his blond off.

There was also this yummy breakfast pizza (recipe soon to follow)

DIY art hanger

DIY window frame art hanger. Let me tell you we use our art hanger religiously in our home. It keeps all the artwork up on display where it should be.

I have three beautiful children! They are now all of age to use crayons and paint and let me tell you they use the HECK out of it. Naturally, as a mom I love to display their wonderful artwork. Covered fridges, doors and walls just aren’t my thing, I was filing* so much of their works or art. Filing= kindly placing in the recycling bin when children are not looking. This was making me feel bad. I mean they really do work quite hard on some of this stuff.

So…
A few months ago I came across a classifieds ad for window frames for super cheap… $4.00 each. They weren’t the thick fancy ones, but I couldn’t pass up that price. After I bought these guys I hung them up in the garage and there they sat. And then they sat some more and then some more again. My husband bugged and asked and pestered me about what I was doing with them. Thinking about my children’s endless artwork I thought up a solution to both problems.

The frames were a cream/white color so I did a light sand to a few areas and a rough sanding to a few areas. Then I applied some blue stain I had laying around. I couldn’t be happier with how the color turned out.

I love jute! I love using jute on my projects. This one was no different. I tied some jute across the frame in 3 places.

Topped it all off with my kids artwork. It’s a great way to showcase kids art and it also works great as a dryer for painted/glued projects. Start to finish not including drying time for the stain (this took about 2 hours) was like 40 minutes.