I love before and after

It's Black Friday! I didn't even try and venture out to the madness of all the chain stores. Instead, I stayed local and went to my favorite baby consignment store and got some awesome deals. She was having a buy one get one or two for a penny! So, I got Anna a winter coat and a snow outfit for only $6. Then, I got 2 pairs of shoes for $4. Two toys for $6, 3 books for $2 and 3 shirts for $2. With tax and everything it was only $22. Not too shabby. I seriously love getting these kind of deals.

Well, I have really started enjoying getting stuff at thrift stores or on clearance and changing them into something better! Last week I found these little box frames for 99 cents each. I sanded them down, primed and painted them red, then put scrapbook paper in them and cut out letters and this is what I got:

Before: not very cute colored frames

There were large fake sunflowers in them.

I got this sign at Kohls for a dollar. It was yellow and had a bath saying on it. I sanded it down, painted it white and put vinyl on it.

I don't know if I'm 100% satisfied with the placement of it. I might move it, or put another saying on it.

Bed pillow shams

Well, I finished the shams! The first one was easy, everything went as planned, but for some reason, I messed up a couple of times with measuring and sewing on the second one, so that was somewhat frustrating. I like how they look with the duvet cover. However, they are kind of plain, so I either need to add some material to the middle, or add some smaller throw pillows in a beige color or something.

The hard part about making these, is you want the sham to fit snugly around the pillow, but it's kind of hard to know for sure where to sew to make that happen. Plus the corners can be tricky to fill out. I bought some cheapo pillows because we're not going to sleep on them and the corners aren't full.

In case anyone is wondering, we're going to be painting our room next week, so I bought samples of paint and tried them out. So that's what the patch of paint behind the bed is. I'm going to paint the room the color on the left. I'm doing this tomorrow and I can't wait. It's going to look so nice. Much better than plain white walls.

Here's an up-close look of the sham.

I got the pattern online. Here is the link, should anyone be interested in making their own.

http://www.digsmagazine.com/lounge/lounge_pillowsham.htm

First day of substitute teaching!

I decided a while ago that it would be a good idea for me to start subbing once a week for the next little while. This will allow us to earn some extra money that we can put into savings or use for home improvements.

I had my first substitute teaching experience yesterday. It went very well and I'm glad because I was a little nervous and wasn't quite sure what to expect. Of course, the night before, Anna decided to wake up right when we were about to go to bed and it took over an hour to get her back to sleep, so I was so tired the whole day! I got there and found my room and had to log in to the computer to take attendance. Well, I was trying to figure it out, the computer was being so slow. The kids start coming in, I finally got it, and then my foot hit the power cord that was on the floor and shut the whole thing off. Figures, right? Well, it was a Friday before a week long vacation and the teacher actually gave them a big, long assignment due at the end of class. I kind of felt bad for the kids.

Overall, subbing was easy. I just kind of sat there in front of the class and made sure they did their work and didn't get too out of hand. There were some funny instances that I want to share.

1. My personal favorite: a student opens the door, sees me and not his teacher and says, "Whoa, is it just me, or did Mrs. Sell just get a lot hotter?!" Then closes the door and comes back a minute later.

2. A guy and girl were passing a note, right in front of me. I went up and took the note away and the kid says, "What? You didn't say we couldn't pass notes!" I told him, that should be a given that you don't do that during class.

3. One kid didn't want to do his work, so he kept raising his hand to ask me questions like, "Do you think the world will really end in 2012? Or "Did you vote yes or no on Prop 8?"

Then, there are always the shockers:

1. One guy was kind of trying to hit on this girl, but she had a girlfriend...and a boyfriend. She was bi apparently. It was odd, because she looked like a teacher's pet kind of girl.

2. All the swearing, but I wasn't too shocked by it, just when one of the students called the absent teacher the B-word. Hmmmm...

Not having worked in a year and a half and then working yesterday, made me extremely grateful that I get to be a stay-at-home-mom. If I had to go to work everyday and leave Anna with someone else, I would miss out on so much of her life. I'm so grateful to get to be home with her. I love being a stay-at-home-mom. I love seeing all the cute things Anna does and telling Dan about them. I love creating our house into a home. Working yesterday also made me so grateful that Dan works hard every day and that he has a good job that allows me to stay home.

Hopefully, the rest of my subbing experiences will be positive and it will be a good experience overall.

This and That...

I finally got around to framing our family portrait and hanging it on the wall. It took a while, but I was able to come up with some vinyl and our name. I wish I had a font that was cursive and not so thick. I love the bottom part with the word Family and the swirlys. I need to add something to the top, but at the moment I'm tired of thinking about it, so it will do for now. :)

I need to add some stuff on the wall on the side, because it looks a little sparse, but I'll get around to that eventually.

I got Anna this dress the other day, and I LOVE it. It looks so cute on her and it matches her room, so I was extra excited about it. I love having a little girl to dress up, it's just so much fun. The best part is that I only paid $2 for it. I sold a few things at the consignment shop and had some store credit. I bought a pair of outside shoes for Anna, plus the dress and my total was only $4. Love these kid of deals.

She's just too cute.

I got another Kohls gift card in the mail this week, plus I signed up for their emails, so I got a $5 gift card you print and you can use them together, so I got a free $15. They were having an additional 25% off of their clearance, so I looked around and got some awesome deals. The picture below is missing a few things. I got a cute black polka dot shirt (which I had wanted a while ago, but it was originally $36), 2 shirts for Anna, a few baby clothes for my friend who is due in March, that yellow sign that has a bath tub phrase on it, but it's all marked and dirty (I'm going to sand it down and paint it and put it in Anna's room), and a metal picture frame (I spray painted it and will show it later in another post). My total? $8.22. So basically I paid a dollar for everything. Saaaweeeeet!

Anyone with a Kohls nearby should sign up for their emails and get a free $5. They can also have really good clearance deals on baby clothes, so if anyone needs to buy some baby shower gifts, check them out first. That way you can buy more for a friend, but not go over budget. Or even just clothes for your own kids. I'm just thankful I've been blessed lately to find some good deals.



From the Mouth of Babes

Anna is learning how to talk and it is the cutest thing ever! Her vocabulary is growing. Here is a list of some of the words she can say.

Dada

Mama

Dis-this

bye bye-she says this one perfectly, to cars in the parking lot and random strangers in the grocery store.

baby-she started saying it normal, but then switched to saying babyis, adding an s. Any little kid or infant is a baby to her. J

hi-it’s comes out very light and somewhat breathy, but is still discernable.

ba-ball, or balloon

wa-water

there it is-this one is a little muffled, but I know what she is saying. We’ll read a book together and I’ll ask her where the ball, flower or bunny is and she’ll point to it and say, there it is. So CUTE!

Uh-oh-she started saying this when we were out shopping. She would be sitting in the cart and her shoe would come off. I would say uh-oh, and put her shoe back on. She then started to take her shoe off on purpose and wave it, looking at me, saying, uh-oh! J She now has started saying uh-oh, just for the heck of it. She's getting better about when to use it correctly.

Buh-bug. The last few days, she has started to say bug. There's a picture of a ladybug in her farm animal book and I've started to tell her what it is.

Sa-sock. As soon as we come in from the car, she knows her shoes and socks come off and she wants them off!

Ckllldle dll-cock a doodle doo! I say this every time we see the rooster in her farm book and she tries to imitate it. It's so cute.

light-she's become fascinated with lights. I'm tired at the moment and can't think of how she pronounces it. :)

It's really funny how babies learn and really just how they are. I don't know how other babies are, but Anna really is a creature of habit. When things happen consistently enough, she knows and expects it. For example, when Dan comes home from work, he wears his work keys and ID around his neck. These are on a nylon type necklace, that clasp together in the back. Anna loves keys, so she always reaches for them. If you pull hard enough, the clasp becomes undone. She loves to pull them off Dan's neck. She knows this happens that when Dan comes home, that's the first thing she wants! It doesn't matter if she's in her high chair, or reading a book, every day she knows it's time to get daddy's keys and she will not relent until she gets them.

Anna loves water bottles and after our workout, we pick her up from the kid care and she instantly reaches for my water bottle. Even if it's not in sight, she knows it's there and wants to hold it. This happens almost without fail.

Another example is her high chair. I take off the tray and lean it against the side to put her in. While I'm trying to strap her in, she's leaning over trying to get the tray because she knows it needs to go in front of her. She does this all the time.

The other thing Anna does (and I'm sure all babies do it), is try and do something she knows she can't do. It's really amazing when you think about it. Anna tries so hard to put her shoes on. She doesn't give up. Even though time after time of trying, she's never succeeded, she's never given up. Or when she tries to get up on the piano bench. It's too high for her, but that doesn't stop her from putting her leg up there and trying to get up. Or trying to eat oatmeal with a spoon. Half the time the spoon is facing backwards, and most of it falls off into her lap, but she just keeps trying. It's like babies know they're destined for greatness. They know they have so much potential and progress to accomplish. They see other people around them doing it and they want to do it too. Adults generally after a few times of failing at something either give up, or ask someone who knows how, to do it for them. Babies really are God's creation and masterpiece. They're just programmed to learn and develop and it's so amazing to watch and be a part of it.

Anna wearing mommy's shoes. She loves to wear Dan's slippers and these shoes around the house.

Some new molding?

I've talked about the thriftydecorchick blog before and here is another project she has done. I absolutely love it! AND it's not that hard to do. She added some molding to the lower part of her walls in her entry way and family room. All she did was cut some molding to make a square and nailed it to the wall. Repeat that all around the room, then paint it all white and add the line of molding to the top of that section and voilà! Doesn't it look so nice? If you click on the picture to enlarge it, it's easier to see how nice it looks. I saw this in a decorating magazine as well. Plus, she bought the cheap molding, so this isn't a terribly expensive project, considering the outcome.

I really want to do this in my house now, but I'm not sure where. I think at the moment, it would be too much work to do it in my family room. Our bookcases are bolted to the wall, our computer desk is extremely large and bulky, and I've already got Dan committed to painting our room during Thanksgiving break. I don't think he'd agree to another project. :) For some reason, he's just not as excited as I am about decorating our house (weird, I know...).

I'm thinking of maybe doing it in our bedroom, but I still don't know if it would go well. I could possibly do it on one wall of the family room, next to the front door, but I don't know if it would look funny on just one wall. I might just have to wait till we move to another house in a few years. So until I decide, I'm just going to admire her molding. :)

My 'Life is Good' project

Here is my Life is Good sign I made. I love how it turned out. I cut out the words in vinyl and put them on, but it was pretty boring, so it needed a little something more. It took me a long time to find something that would work. I originally had a simple little swirly thing in each corner, but it wasn't completely satisfactory. However, I was tired to trying to find something, so I was just going to leave it. When I showed it to Dan, he said it still needed something different. I'm glad he said that, because then I was able to come up with the swirlys it has now and I love it! It's so much better than what I had originally. I'm glad Dan told me what he was really thinking and didn't just say, good job. :) These husbands are good for something. Lol.

This is made from an art canvas (Dan found some left in his classroom). I spray painted it red. I bought the cheapo stuff from Walmart, for $1.12, then the lettering seriously cost about $1.50-$1.75. I got the idea of using a canvas from http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com She seriously has such good ideas!

I already had the ribbon, I bought for $1.50 from Joannes a while back. Soooo, it was a pretty cheap project. They sell canvases at Michaels or Joannes for I think around $8 or so. If you get a 40% off coupon, it's not bad at all.