Failed Carpentry

Due to the fact that I've been singing the blues like crazy lately, I've decided to write about two interesting adventures that I had yesterday.

As you know, if you're all caught up, I'm re-doing my bedroom. I just finished painting yesterday and I began the long process of putting it all back together.

In order to put it back together, I decided that I had to assemle the shelf that I bought. It's a crucial part of the stoarge space in my room. So I got to work.

I bought it on sale at Target. The kid's one was cheaper, so that's the one I bought.

When I pulled all the pieces out, it looked fairly easy. All the holes were drilled, you just had to screw it all together. Simple right? Not for me!

First Attempt: Acciddently screwed the bottom and side to the shelves with the raw edges the wrong way...I had to unscrew it all...Luckily, the inner shelves are held together by little dowels so I didn't have to take the whole thing apart, just where I'd already screwed it in (4 freakin' screws...)

So then, I get it set up right with all the finished edges facing the right way, and my dad came home. We had planned to go shooting when he got home from work so I took a little break from the frustrating shelf-building.

When I got home, back to work it was.

I got another set of the dividers on the shelf and go to put on another piece...the it was the bottom piece. I'd put a center shelf on the bottom...I had to redo it again after getting to this point.

Finally, I got it all put together, I put the little cardboard backs on it and ended up with this finished product (This morning...I gave up last night.

The drawers look blue in the picture but they're actually like a green-ish teal so they go with my color scheme in my room. The look very nice and I'm happy to have finally defeated the shelf!

I think that I'll save the shooting story for tomorrow. I think it might be too many pictures for one post if I throw that one in today. I'll just give you a sneak-peak.

I got to shoot my mom's 38 Special for the first time ever...I'm a pretty good shot with this thing...I think I'm gonna buy my own...when I'm 21.

My dangerous new toy

When my grandma (basically my favorite person in the universe. I can't believe I haven't really mentioned her in this thing!) died, she left a few sewing machines behind that were given to my mom do with what she pleased. My mom, being the psychic that she is, knew that I'd eventually want to be a wonderful seamstress/quilter/all around awesome sewer so she kept this beauty safe for me until I discovered exactly how much I loved sewing.

That's my very own!

And of course, along with a sewing machine, you need several other little materials. We uncovered me a magnetic pin-cushion, and an old miniature ironing board that was my great-grandma's.  

Looks pretty old, doesn't it?

So of course, I promptly took a page out of my mothers proverbial book and Christmas wrapped the board with fabric and pinned it up so it would stay put.

And ended up with that awesome finished product to iron my little heart out.

After doing some practicing and trying to decide what the heck I'm going to make, I started into making a little bow. It was a little bit of a disaster...

Don't worry, the second one turned out great! I don't know what I'll do with it, but I'm sew (hehe just being a little punny) excited to start sewing up everything made of fabric that I can find...And I just might be up all night trying new things and becoming a professional sewer before my very own eyes....

P.S-- I'm considering starting another blog or doing a weely post or something in which I try a new little DIY/sewing project every day for however long I have ideas for. Yea or Nay? 

What I Learned At Work Today [WEEK 1]

Welcome to my Weekly post, "What I Learned At Work Today"! (I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I ran out of time at work!  This will be a Sunday post after this!) If it looks like that photograph was taken on the floor of the the handicap stall in the bathroom, it wasn't... (okay, it was...) We're not allowed to have cell phones on the call floor in any way shape or form, including camera-form, so I had to do something! Don't worry, I threw that paper away.  I decided that due to the fact that we are fairly slow on Sundays and I tend to learn very interesting things while I'm at work, I would share with the blog-world.  Sometimes the things I learn are from Pinterest, sometimes they are from blogs (okay...via Pinterest most of the time...) and sometimes, I'm just awesome and I learn things for myself from my experiences or from the things that hear while on calls all day. Not all of my "What I Learned At Work Today" posts will be long and they won't all explain what this is, but I thought you might like a little bit of background behind the idea. I will do my best to credit everyone that I learn things from if it's possible!

Today, I leared a couple of things.  First I learned that...

Saving money starts in the kitchen!

     Because I'm about to become a Military Spouse, I know that I'm going to have to be good at handling our money. (Heaven knows J won't be the one doing that! He can't resist a good looking jacket...) It's not unlikely that if we're stationed somewhere that doesn't have a big city around for 50+ miles, I won't be able to find a job, so we're going to be living off of BAH (if we're off base) and his Lcpl. income... Having read a lot of Military Spouse blogs (and a lot of mommy blogs and couponing blogs and blogs where their money is kinda tight) I have noticed that the place everyone starts is the kitchen.

    Food is something that we use up, then just have to buy more. It's like...laundry. It never ends. You simply have to do it every week or else it piles up and then...you have to go out naked. Not a good situation. Well if you don't do something about food, you starve!  And we cannot have that!  So, what do we do? We learn ways to make our dollar go further when it comes to what we put in our bellies. So far, this is what I've got.

1. Couponing is very smart. You can read more about what I already know about couponing in my post, Couponing: Simplified.
2. Freeze stuff. I learned all about what you can freeze and how to freeze it here at Simple Organized Living. The cool thing about these types of sites is that other people comment with the things that they freeze and how to freeze them. This is cool because that way, you can buy in bulk when things are at rock-bottom prices and freeze it...if it's feezable that is. Which is where the list comes in!
3. Meal Plan!  This didn't really come from anywhere specific. A lot of people say it's a good idea.  It saves moneys because you can shop with a very specific list and you won't end up spending money on things that you don't need.
4. Don't buy prepared meals (TV dinners, boxed dinners, etc.) They are more expensive and there are a lot of things that you can cook yourself that will taste even better than the prepared meal.
5. Get a really extensive recipe book or create a recipe repetoire online. Having the tools to cook at home make it so you don' tjust decide to go out which will end up costing you a lot more money than monthly grocery shopping!

If I didn't credit someone, I decided that on my own. If I did, click the link. You can learn something today too!

Next, I learned that...

Computer animation is the Coke Zero of movies

You must be thinking...Whaaa?? Well, I have two sister that are diabetic and I drank diet soda most of my childhood (we're soda drinkers...I have a coke, like, every morning...don't judge, I'm tryna quit.) That means that when I started drinking regular Coke, it was like I had see the light...I realized what I had been missing all these years and it brought joy to my life knowing there was real sugar in my pop. Anyway...Later in my life, they came out with Coke Zero. I thought, "Hey, maybe I'll start drinking that. Zero Calories, Zero sugar, still tatest good...That's awesome." Well after one sip I was disgusted. It was sooo close to tasting just like Coke, but it didn't. It wasn't even like it was an off-brand like Shasta or something, it was just...still not that good old, coke in a red can taste. Needless to day, I didn't make the switch.

Anyway...Today, I was eating my Wendy's salad in the break room and a movie was on. I think it was Tin Tin? Honestly, I'm not really sure. But I couldn't really tell if it was animated or live-action. I had to ask the kid sitting on the couch. Now, computer animation is pretty cool. I love Pixar movies. Up! is truly a modern classic...But isn't the whole point of animation that it's not supposed to look real?  It was frustrating because it was so close to looking live-action, but it wasn't.  Do you understand the connection? Good :)



A DI Kind of Day

Today, I took a trip to a couple of different Deseret Industries stores. Known to we Utahns as the DI. For those of you who don't know, the DI is basically a secondhand store that is run by the LDS (Mormon) Church. It is a non-profit store that takes any and all donations. They have tons of clothes, appliances, furniture, house wares and basically anything under the sun that you could thingk of. They have it.

I went with intentions to find things to decorate at my wedding with. It might sounds strange to shop at the secondhand store for something like this, but I think it's smart!  I found myself exactly what I was looking for. I didn't really intend to buy 22 Mason jars...but I did. Each jar was only $.50.  I couldn't help myself.  I gave myself some rules before I left to shop. (1) I wasn't allowed to spend more than $30.00 and (2)  If I couldn't fit it all in the box, I couldn't have it. Lucky for me, I'm really good at packing stuff into a box : D. I ended up with jars of different sizes that will look great filled with stuff and painted and all cute...I'm so excited about it!

Also, I found these wicker basket deals that you put your paper plates on so that they don't dump your food off of them. I got 10 of them for $5.00. I'd call that a good find!  I'm planning on putting the jars on the wicker plates with hot-glue after decorating the jars with different things inside and out and putting something cute on the plate. Then I'll have these adorable little hand made center pieces that won't cost me more the $30.00 to make!

I feel very accomplished with my outting and I also feel like this DIY wedding is going to be possible. I'm so excited to start making and buying more things that are going to make our wedding special.  Oh, thrifting, how I love you!

Wedding Planning

I believe that I have a blogging problem...
In my other blog (Doing what you shouldn't is half the fun) I pretty much keep things about life lessons and thing I learn about myself and the world around me, where as here, I feel like I can talk about my life in a more...specific manner. There, I keep things vague and just explain what I learned from some type of experience. So I just made a really short story long. Basically, what I'm saying is, I'm blogging for the second time today just because I want to talk more about my life.  Weird huh?

Now that we have orders and we know that J isn't going to be a million miles away, I actually feel comfortable beginning the planning of my wedding. We want to shoot for sooner rather than later, of course, but we can only do what we have the time and money for.  I've been to my share of expos. And I have a dress that just needs to be altered. And I definitely have ideas of what I want to do, but I want to do it...inexpensively (When I say that, I mean cheap, but I don't wanna sound like a redneck...)

So tomorrow, I'm going to go thrifting. I don't know if I just made that up, or if people actually say that, but I want to try and get some inspiration for things we can do to make our wedding special, but inexpensive.  My basic idea is that if we kind if do things little by little and spread out our spending, it won't feel like we're spending a lot (AND if I discover that I'm a pro thrifter, then we really won't be spending a lot).

Neither of us are made of  money, and seems how we don't want to wait forever to get married, we have no choice but to make it pretty DIY. But, I've got a crafty family and a lot of fantastic ideas due to the ever fantastical Pinterest.  I think that is going to be fun! I'll definitely post again tomorrow about how I found awesome stuff. I'll post pictures. Don't you worry.

If you happen to be reading this and you're a military spouse (or going to be one), or just happen to know stuff about weddings, and you have information that  might help make my life easier in the planning process feel free to share!

Thrifty

I, like most women these days, have an obsession with Pinterest (<-----That's my page)I'm allowed to be on it at work between calls and I pin like crazy!  Most of the time though, I don't actually do the stuff that I pin or use it. But I always think, One day, I'll be so glad I pinned this. And some times that is totally. Sometimes they're simply pipe dreams (I mean, come on, I'm never going to plan meals every sunday night and post a menu on the fridge...).


Today, my sister, my mom, and I took a stroll through The Quilted Bear (It's a store filled with home-made stuff that people sell i.e. home decor, jewelery, etc.) and there were so many cute things that I thought were so cute and I'm so sure that I could make with my brain tied behind my back. Seeing all this stuff made me think of all the crafty little things that I have seen on Pinterest and how I should be using the knowledge I've gained from it to actually do some of those things I pin and want to try sooo badly.

So, we went to Savers, The Desert Industries (The D.I.) and the overstock stores and looked around for things that we thought we could "up-cycle".  I decided on buying an old jelly roll pan that had been all burnt and used for one too many Totino's Pizzas that was completely perfect no bend or imperfections and I bought it.


J has some strange hate for fridge magnets. But I LOVE them. I think they're cute and I buy one pretty everywhere I visit. I have magnets from all over. He says that he want a stainless still fridge and NO MAGNETS. When I saw these little magnets boards I thought, Perfect! He never said anything about hating magnet board magnents! 


So I brought it home, found some fabric I had laying around (I opted for fabric because the pan was pretty beat up and I didn't think that spray painting would look as good or last as long) and I began working away. I just sorta winged it.

First, I fliped the pan over so that if I was cooking a pizza it would be all wrong and I started gluing with some fabric glue. Basically, I wrapped it like a present and I got glue EVERYWHERE. I've got some work to do on my crafting skills but this was a start and I'm so proud of my finished product!

I'm so excited to put  my own spin on other craft ideas I discover from other pinners. I'm so happy with how this turned out. :)