What I'm working on...

Next Sunday is Princess' birthday.  She will be six years old.  This year is requiring a little more creativity to make the money go farther, but I am having fun.  My most exciting deal of the weekend is all about sewing.  I am making a dress for Princess' birthday.  I was able to get everything in the picture for $20.87.  That is over 7 yards of fabric a zipper and 4 spools of ribbon.  Yay!!  I went to JoAnn's armed with coupons and my teacher's rewards card.  JoAnn's accepts competitor's coupons, so I printed a 40% off Micheal's coupons to go along with my 40% off JoAnn store coupon and my 15% off teacher rewards card.  The lady in front of me was checking out when she found out that her 50% off coupon was only good on fabric.  She wasn't getting any fabric, so very kindly and cheerfully turned around and handed it to me.  Talk about a blessing.  All of this would have cost more over $40.  Isn't it fun when we receive these little blessings?!

 This next picture is something else I am working on.  Can you guess what it is?  I will have more pics of the finished items next week.

Sandwich Thins

We are low carbers at our house.  We aren't very big sandwich people, but when we do have sandwiches The Man and I like Sandwich Thins.  I decided to give a homemade version a try.  I googled for recipes to use as a guide (I never follow a recipe to the T).  Here is where I found the recipe I used.

Rising

 Cooled and sliced

 PB and J

 Second batch minus a couple.

I have a wondermill and grind my own fresh flour.  These turned out lovely.  Princess and I like them better than the store bought ones.  We will be making these again.

Fireplace Makeover

One of The Man and my favorite things to do together is to decorate and make things look pretty. :-)  Our fireplace was an eye sore.  It was black, old and ugly.  I got tired of it and decided to see what my options were.  We don't have extra money in the budget for anything fancy so I knew I had to be creative.  It cost less than $20 to give our fireplace a face lift.  I am very please with its new look.

Before

After

First things first. I removed the old handles off the fireplace doors.  Depending on how your fireplace is you may be able to remove the doors, if you can it would probably make things easier.  Then the fireplace had to be cleaned.  I cleaned and vacuumed the entire area.  I used sand paper on the brass so that the spray paint would stick.  I then gave it one more cleaning with rubbing alcohol (this makes sure there is no residue left behind). Since I could not remove our doors I had to ensure that they were covered well.  I covered the doors and around the fireplace with paper bags and painters tape.  It is very important when using spray paint to cover as much as possible of what you don't want painted.  The paint tends to spread.  Luckily for me it wasn't too hard to clean up off my flooring.  I used High Heat Spray paint, that is normally used for grills and such.  Home Depot had the best selection for colors.  They were the only place I could find almond/creme.  I sprayed several thin coats of paint following the instructions on the can.  Once the paint was all dry we removed the tape and paper and put on the new handles.  I love it.

Taking the Plunge

I am completely new to blogging.  I have enjoyed reading others blogs for quite some time.  I love how people can be so helpful with the information they share.  Join me as I tread the crazy waters of the blogging world.  Hopefully it won't take me too long to learn and get a handle on things.