Don’t stand back and watch, get creative and dive in.

This year for Spring Break, we took the kids to Southern Utah for a few days.  Then we have spent the rest of the time at home having an awesome STAYCATION!!!

I love Staycations.  I NEED more time with my kids just being at home.  I LOVE having all our activities and sports canceled for the week, and having time to just chill; and cross some things off our list.

Plus, I don’t love our kids thinking that we always have to big or go home!! It’s ok to just be together @ home. …or go small and travel via car to places closer to where we live.  I grew up that way, and I had a great childhood.

This was the perfect week for us to dye Easter Eggs.  Since the kids are older now, it was finally time to break out the magazines and try some of the fun stuff we have seen other people try.  I thought it would be fun to show you what we did. I thought it would spark some ideas for you for this upcoming Easter Holiday.

I was ready to dive in and get creative too.

I thought I would give each project we tackled a level of difficulty.

Then you could assess if you want to attempt it with your age of children and decide if it would work with your family.

You don’t have to do all of these that we did.  You could just choose one to try if your looking for something fun and new.

Level 1 being Easy- 5 being Advanced. 

1) means it’s something that a 5 year old could manage

2) something that my 7 year old can do on her own

3) something that my 7 year old can do but might need help with in some areas

4) something that my 9 year old can manage on his own

5) something that my 12 year old can do, but she is super capable

(these all really need ADULT supervision)

OK.  Lets dye eggs

We had such a great time together.  Usually I stand back and photograph, but mostly I participated this time. Oh! and I just realized that the girls and I decided that it was a bun day today.  It is going to storm today so why do your hair? Buns for the hair it is!

  Jex didn’t join us, because it is the last day of ski season.  Skiing is everything to that boy, so we let him pass this time.

I found that these mini muffin trays, hold the eggs so well.

I picked this one up at our local thrift store this last week.  I even spray painted it to make it look adorable, not even knowing I would use it for this purpose.  So go search out your thrift stores.  I’m going to use it for jewelry or little craft supplies when I’m done with this.

We just used the normal dyes that you buy at the grocery store for egg dying.  I made a few fun colors out of vinegar and food coloring too. I always buy two egg dying kits because none of the kids are patient enough to wait on colors.  I also never like the process to take hours.  That was a trick I learned a long time ago.  It’s worth the extra $1.50.  

We made sure to leave a few eggs white, because we had some plans for those.

The kids and I liked trying to make some of them hombre, and dipping in two colors and seeing what happens.  We tried all sorts of fun things when it comes to the dying part.

THE GOLDEN LETTERED EGG

Ok!  One of our favorite decorating tricks was actually with spray paint.  We took a white egg, and added a sticker.  Make sure to press it down hard.

Then we took the egg outside and spray painted them gold.

Once they were dry we took the sticker off

Seriously so much fun!!  These would make great place cards at the dinner table on Easter.

Level: 5 because of Spray paint

GOLD SPONGING

We did another fun one with some Gold Paint.

We did some sponge painting on the eggs.  We used gold paint and some sponge brushes.  If you don’t have sponge brushes, you could use sponges cut in strips.

They give the eggs such a fun feel. 

Level: 3 for sure.  Tess did this mostly on her own.  For sure needs a good hand washing after.

PUFF PAINT POLKA DOT EGGS

We have had a good stash of puff paint on hand for a while, so I thought why not?

The important thing to remember with this is that it takes a while to dry. 

So you can only do about half of the egg at a time.

We did polka dots mostly, and even wrote a few words like Stella’s IDK for I don’t know.(cause she ran out of things to say)

Notice how only half of the egg is polka dotted.  This is the kids tray.  They need to come back and finish the egg.

Level:I would say this is between a 3 and 4 for difficulty.  Tess needed some help with this, and Isaac just needed help getting started.

WASHI SHAPES AND STRIPES

Can you say WASHI?

We use it for everything at our house.  We put washi tape on everything.  We decided to put it on the eggs to.  It made them look awesome.

Some we just put around the middle of the egg as a stripe around the middle.  I cut teeny tiny triangles, and put them all over an egg.

Depending on what you are doing with the washi depends on the level.

Level:1 for just a simple wrap around stripe.  Difficult shapes would be a 5.

GLITTER EGGS

Glitter is just too fun not to be added to the mix.

This was simple.  We just used a simple glue pen and added it to our egg where we wanted the glitter to be.  You can draw shapes, symbols, letters or words.

Then with the help of a big person, the glitter was added.

Tessa wrote the number 8, because she is turning 8 this year.

8 is a big year in our church.  It is the year you are baptized, and she is excited about that.

Level: 1 for using a glue pen and drawing the design, 5 for adding the glitter

NOTE: I like the Heidi Swapp glitter it can be found at Hobby Lobby or Michaels.

MARBLE EGGS

The last one the kids loved was the marble eggs.  It seemed to work best with white eggs; not dyed. I tried it on a colored egg, and it worked but not as well.

It involves fingernail polish and a bowl that you don’t care to keep.

Fill the bowl with warm water, and add a few drops of finger nail polish.  Then stir with a small straw.

Drag egg through the polish until it is completely covered.  Then just allow the polish to dry. 

The pink one in the center is mine with mint nail polish on it.  It didn’t work as well.  You can see though, how we have done a few of these different techniques together on one egg.  This pink egg is dyed, it’s got mint polish, and gold glitter on it.  So try doing a few together and see what happens.

These polish ones look really cool and have a great marble effect.  If you want to use another color when using the polish, just rinse out the bowl, and then pick a new polish color. Start the process over.  When you are finish, throw the bowl away.  You may want to use rubber gloves for this technique.

Level: 5 for sure!! Stella did these all by herself.  She even did mine. I just supervised.

So… here is a little taste of how mine came together:

I do have a couple words written on mine with puff paint, but I am saving those for a later date. You will have to stay tuned to see what those say. It was fun writing on them in cursive with cursive handwriting and puff paint.  That is something to try also.

The kids did awesome too!!

…and I had so much fun hanging out with them.

I love spending time with my kids being creative.

I hope this sparks a few ideas, and makes you want to dive into the egg dying process with your kids this year.  It really was so much fun. 

I am so glad I joined in this year!!

 

Designing on a Budget

As we have been building our new house, I have been thinking a lot about the best way to get the designer look on a budget.  What areas should I spend money and what areas should I be brave and bold in, and what areas should I play it safe in?  There are so many times that I have bought something for my house, and then thought weeks later, “well that was a mistake.”  I am hoping to avoid that as much as I can.  How can we do that?  What are some budget friendly tricks that I have learned in all the many decorating mistakes that I have made that might help me in the journey of putting the new house together?

I thought it might be good to write a few ideas down.  For myself, and I thought you might benefit from them too!

I think when decorating any space it is good to start with a budget. 

It is so important to be realistic about the budget as well.

Do you need new furniture in the space?  If so, the budget will need to be higher? 

I like to start by making a list of what I need for the space with a rough estimate of how much it will cost for each item.

Where should you spend your money?

I think it’s good to put your money into your furniture.  It’s like a good pair of jeans.  You will wear them every day.  With that being said.  Don’t buy furniture that will date itself in 2 years.  Buy neutral furniture and spice it up with fun pillows. 

We had this gray couch for over 8 years and it has seen it’s share of colors, and patterns.

(Ok Y’all this is like Circa 2008.  When we first bought this couch and I thought the chair we bought to go with it was awesome.  You know when RED was awesome!!)  This was the very first home we owned in Arkansas in a place where it is cool to say Y’all!!

Then as then months went along it was easy to switch out the pillows and add a new color, because my couch was neutral!!

Then I changed that paint on that red wall in the back, and went a completely different way with the pillows and decorations, but I kept the couch.

….and then we moved, but the couch came with us:

This was our rental house in Pennsylvania. Then we moved to our current house in Utah, and once again we brought the couch:

and that’s changed too:

See what you can do with a neutral couch?

Spend your money on good furniture, that has a nice finish, that will last through your children, and can stand the trends!!

It has been so nice to just be able to change the pillows, or the room decor, but never have to worry about making room in the budget for a big piece like a couch.  This couch has been through 3 homes and several different styles; all of which worked.

We did just get this fun new furniture set for our new home.  Navy is the new neutral so I was so excited to find this with the brass nail heads.  It will fit our coastal home style very well.  Which brings me to my next point. 

What is the feel you are going for?

If I wanted a very modern feeling home, this is not the furniture to buy.  Buy pieces that fit the feeling you are going for.  You want modern, you want clean lines.  Do a little research about the style you want, and go with a list of specific elements that you need to fit that specific design. Then you will never have that buyers remorse that I mentioned earlier.

I love coastal, so I know that I am looking for pieces that have the driftwood feel, brass, navy, stripes, beach glass blues, pebbles, chipped wood and paint, glass, or lanterns.  Anything that would remind me of the ocean.  This mirror reminded me of that coastal feel.  I loved that driftwood feeling that it gave me:

What if you need new furniture but it’s not in the budget? 

Well say this couch was older and I wanted new but couldn’t afford it?  I could use my budget for new pillows and fun new throws to just freshen it up.  Our home is coastal so I picked up this fun coastal throw. 

A throw and new pillows can really enhance a couch that you may not love.  I have been doing that for the last few years actually.

Making inexpensive changes like this can enhance things that bother you.  You could also invest in slip covers.

Another great idea is to paint furniture when you can’t buy new!

We recently had our kitchen table repainted and also this buffet.

Before:

After:

 

You can hire people to paint for you.  Which I did in this case because of my neck, but I have always painted furniture myself in the past. 

Here is my favorite paint recipe:

mix 4 T. of plaster of paris with 1/4 C. of Hot Hot Hot water until the plaster is dissolved

then add:

An 8 oz. paint sample from home depot(color of your choice)

then paint by hand with a nice brush

no sanding needed!!

I painted a FREE piano that I got so that it matched our home.  It was also pretty ugly and beaten up, but now I love it.

(This was a Christmas time)

When redecorating my sons room, I didn’t have it in my budget to buy a new bed for him.  We had a bed that my sister had given us.  I didn’t really love it so I just took out some metal pieces that were in it that I didn’t like, and then painted it gray; and now I love how it looks in his room.

Another neutral that I spend my money on is comforters!

I like to buy white and gray comforters.  Then I can just keep them for a really long time and just switch out pillows.  All the boys in my house have gray, the girls have white, and my master is white. 

Room colors can be switched around easily that way. 

In fact, I don’t have to buy any new bedding for the new house, but the kids will have new bedroom decorations.

 

That saves a lot of money!

The other place that I like to spend my money is on items that I see and love right away!

Something that I know right where I want to put it, and something that is unlike anything I have ever seen before.  Those statement pieces are worth snatching up, and usually are worth the money. I fell in love with this unique table.  Once again it was the fun wood, and I had never seen one like it before.  I have never regretted getting it:

One way that I love saving money is by finding ways to make things myself! 

For Example, I love this Brass Geometric Himmeli Wreath which sells for $185:

It’s one of those show stoppers right.  Like, the I gotta have this right now kinda things. Well, I learned how to make it myself.

You can buy the brass kit to make it for $65 dollars, or you can make it like I did out of cocktail straws for like $5; then spray paint it brass. This is mine:

(once again at Christmas time)

This is another example:

I really wanted a succulent planter from a store for $100.  I made mine for $30.  Read more about it here.

There are lots of ways to stay with in your budget by doing DIY.

As you budget for your space make sure you shop online for sales(amazon, and overstock are favs), and even hit your local TJ Maxx and Home Good Stores, they often have the best finds!  If you find something you love, but don’t think you can afford it:

1) Save for it.

2) Shop around and you will probably find something so similar for a much better price. 

3)Never Settle when it’s that one true love

What I mean by that?:

when it’s in the case of that one true love:  If you met your one true love, and then the average guy came along and you settled for him; you would always be thinking about your true love.  That will always be true about your furnishings.  So it’s almost always better to just buy it the first time because you will end up spending more money.  You will settle for something that you hate and go back to the thing you love.  If you can’t afford what you love, and can’t find anything similar enough at a cheaper price, it is worth it to wait and save. Because then you will have bought two things.   UNLESS!! and I mean UNLESS!! this means that your family will go hungry for the next three years while you save for this $10,000 couch you love.  You have to be reasonable about the item too.

The Details there should be room in the budget for the details:

I can usually find the last little tiny finishing details at those little shops.  The little things are the pieces that you don’t want to spend much money on.  They are the things that you will cycle through your house more, but they are the details.  The details are important too!  I don’t spend more than $20 on these items. Like $3-20.  Check your thrift stores, Target,  garage sales, and vintage markets.

I also hit my local thrift stores for old books, or old dishes for styling shelves.

Make sure you don’t forget to budget lighting in there!

Make room for lamps.  Lamps can get expensive.  I like to make sure that I buy matching lamps.  A set of two usually always looks better.  If you don’t have the money for lamps, you can always repurpose by spray painting ones you have?

If it’s time to replace your overhead lighting too, that is another great place to invest your money.  Those are the details that stay.  Trust me. 

I have had so much fun, and so many headaches picking out the lighting for our new house; but I know the difference it is going to make.  In fact, if you are doing a remodel on a space and need a new light, I encourage you not to go for the boring builder grade.  Save some money somewhere else, and put that money in your lighting.  Buy yourself a fun light!!! It doesn’t have to be through the roof expensive, but it will make all the difference in your space.

Wanna see the ones I am ordering today?

See: 

These are the sconces for our breakfast nook, and great room by our fireplace.  See they have brass and stripes; very coastal.  I found them here.

So to recap:

Be BOLD with your lighting!!! Save money for lamps. 

Buy neutral furniture and budget for that.

Buy neutral bedding.

Use pillows and throws to change the look of beds and couches as the years go on.  Don’t buy new bedding or new furniture as often.

Shop Sales!! Hit Thrift Stores

Don’t spend a lot of money on the little detail items.

Learn to DIY

Repurpose when you can

Stay true to your budget

Never Settle when you are in love with something, unless it means you’ll starve

If any of you are working on remodels of rooms of your own and need a little design help visit this great company who can help you design your dream space in about 10 days.  They come up with all the products with the links and sources you would need to buy them.  It looks like a pretty cook way to have someone help you with the design process if you are a little bit nervous about it yourself.  Check them out at: www.laurelandwolf.com

Laurel and Wolf and their great designers also have a few tips for mastering your Decor Budget: