Grocery List/Meal Planning (and a free download!)

I just stumbled across this awesome blog with loads of organizational ideas as well as lots of other free downloads, like wallpapers and party printables. Here is a link to the grocery list/meal planning guide (with a free download!) I plan on utilizes lots of these as I get our new house organized and start doing grocery shopping with the soon-to-be hubs :)

I am about to start working on a new project (hint: I still need a garter for our wedding), which I plan to take pictures of as I go and hope it works out, haha. I have an idea of how I need to go about making it, but we'll see if it turns out right! I also need to make some new fall and Christmas coasters and pillow covers for the house, so I plan to make a tutorial for the coasters as soon as I get some time to do so. 

I also tried my hand at couponing yesterday (yes, I was one of those crazy people who went out in that crazy ass storm here in Ohio). I actually did pretty good! I got all of this (plus another yogurt I ate for breakfast) for $5.90 (!) at Giant Eagle after sales and coupons!:

They were out of the right size of Honey Nut Cheerios for their sale, so I got a rain check for 3 of those and I plan to go back next week and get those with a few more coupons and they should end up costing $0.80 each! I hope hubby likes cereal ;)

Alright, I just wanted to do a quick update and usher you guys along to Liz over at Life in Yellow! I'll see y'all later!

Halloween Decorations and Painting

I apologize. I was sick last week, so I wasn't thinking when I went ahead and made our Halloween pillow cases and coasters without remembering to take pictures throughout! Sorry! I can, however, give you a step-by-step tutorial on the coasters and a link to the blog post I used to guide me in making the pillow cases along with pictures of my finished products. The coasters were my original idea, so I can make some using  non-Halloween materials to make a full tutorial with photos if you'd like. They're very easy and take basic sewing machine knowledge, or you could easily make them by hand! For these I used a blog source to teach me how to do a blind stitch, so I can link that up too.

We started painting bedrooms this weekend! I'm excited because they were so terrible before. The old owners had painted EVERYTHING in the room the same color. The floorboards, the doorway, the frame at the top of the closet, the window frame, the walls, everything. It was horrible. And they did it in all three bedrooms! One is the pink-ish purple shown below. The other is a lime green and the master is a burnt orange (and the master has double the closets and double the doorways!). We decided in the purple room and the master to just paint the trim white and leave the wall colors for now since I like the pink-ish purple (especially if our first baby is a girl!) and he loves the color in the master. The green room will become our office and is being painted a light blue with white trim. We're also going to be painting the guest bathroom a light yellow instead of the current dark green to help give it some light. Here are some before and after pictures of the purple room. The color in the "before" picture is accurate. The "after" pictures were taken at night using a lamp and the color looks more pink, but you can still tell the amazing difference in the room. 

Before:

After: 

Since this room took us 5 hours to complete between taping and painting the trim, we decided that yesterday we'd tape the master and then start painting later this week to break up the time we spend in one room. I've taken some before pictures of the other two bedrooms, I'll post those with some after pictures once we have those rooms finished. 

I love seeing our house coming together! We also moved our dining room table into place last week and have put up a few decorations to make the house feel festive, even though he won't be moved in until closer to Halloween. It's so much fun looking for furniture to make our house our home. I'm excited to get to go holiday decoration shopping next month!!!! We'll also be having a fall house warming "open house" at the beginning of next month to show off our house to family and friends, so I'll get to have fun decorating and making food for that! Yay!!! I'll try to get that tutorial made and posted soon (aka within the next month...sorry, school and house come first!). Maybe I'll make some fun Christmas ones or some fall themed ones!

Cleaning!

Oh man! I'm exhausted from this past weekend. I spent Thursday, Saturday and Sunday cleaning and painting the new house! Thursday we spent the evening cleaning the living room and dining room, washing the walls, floorboards, outlets, etc. We also got our sectional and living room table set delivered! It looks so much better than we had even hoped for! Here's a couple pictures of the couch and tables I took with my phone: 

 

Saturday my soon-to-be in-laws, Cory and I spent the entire day cleaning and fixing the house. His dad fixed up the garage, closet and front screen door as well as removing the nasty old stove and vent. His mom and I spent our whole day in the kitchen, cleaning, scrubbing, and grossing out. It was seriously gross the mess the old owners left behind. I mean, we pulled out the stove and there was a cookie sheet under it!!! A cookie sheet! Along with a variety of coloring sheets, stickers, and really gross gunky stuff. It was pretty bad. We couldn't even finish the entire kitchen in the 6 hours we spent there. Yesterday I got to paint our pantry :) It's a nice crisp white (luckily the old owners left us all their unused paint in the garage ;))\

It's coming along great and I can't wait to see how the house looks completely furnished. We still have a lot to do and a lot of things to buy, but it's already starting to look a little more like home :) The thing I'm most excited for is decorating for fall and the holidays!!!! I'll be making a few things to add to the decor, so I'll be sure to post photos of our decorations and tutorials for things I make 

Hopefully it won't bee too long before I get to update you guys again!

New Tutorial Coming Soon

Hey guys,
It's been so crazy in my life lately. I'm sorry I haven't gotten a new tutorial up, but I am *hopefully* going to get one up here soon. We're buying our couch tomorrow and we're going to be needing some pillows to go on it and I also have another craft or two up my sleeve. Hopefully I'll still have time to sew once school really gets going and we start cleaning and decorating the house.

Talk to you later!

Tutorial: Hand Painted Ceramic Mug

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been so long since I've updated last. Things have been SUPER crazy lately. Getting things done for the house (which we still haven't closed on), finding furniture and appliances (which we still haven't bought), starting school and clinical, filling a few orders for Kara's Kreations...it's been very busy. I was looking around some blogs last week and found this idea for designing your own ceramic mugs and other dishes like plates and serving bowls. When I was in Jo-Ann the other day, I was looking at paint and found this awesome paint marker:

I decided to try making my own painted mug. I had already bought a white ceramic mug from Marcs to use for this project (it was 2/$.99!). I was trying to decide what design I wanted to try out. I thought about some really cute designs I'd seen around on other dishes, but decided to keep things simple. I love hot cocoa, so I decided to make that my theme. I sketched out what I wanted on a piece of computer paper and then got to work on the mug. It took me just a few minutes to draw it on and it dries pretty quickly. Make sure you follow the directions on the back for cleaning the glass or mug before painting and then the drying and baking directions for after you've painted it to make it dishwasher safe. Here are some photos of how mine turned out (I used my phone to take pictures again, so they're not the greatest): 

I went with simple words on each side

And added a fun circle boarder...

...that continued onto the handle

And a cute picture of a cup on cocoa on the side :)

I can't wait for Autumn to get here so I have an excuse to curl up with a mug of yummy hot cocoa! And to bust out all of my jeans and sweaters :) I hope you have fun making your own mugs! I plan on buying some more cheap mugs and plates from Marcs or the dollar store and making some fun designs to give as gifts and to use in our own home. If you guys try this out, send me pictures! I would love to see how yours turns out!