What Slugs?

We get slugs around our house like nobodies business.  It's gross... and they love to destroy my plants.  So now I'm doing this little trick to brutally kill them all.

I'm crushing all of my used egg shells and spreading it around the edge of my plants.

That's right slugs... just try to get my flowers now.

I dare you.

Drag your slimy little bodies over those sharp egg shells

I double doggie dare you.

Also, as an added bonus, the egg shells are biodegradable and will compost into the soil making it nice and healthy. :)

Win Win for me, lose for the snails.

New Knob and Easter Wreath

I went to Michael's today to hit up the after Easter clearance section, and am I glad I did!  I found a few cute things that were a fraction of the price. :)  I bought a couple of things to add to my wreath to make it Easter-y for next year.

It's so cute!!!

AND it only cost like a dollar :) Bonus!

So our front door knob has been 'broken' for about 3 years.  We can't lock it because if we do, we won't be able to get into our house.  So tonight we bought a new one.

Before...

 after!

 I love that it is brushed nickel instead of that brass color :)

Okay, also I have a funny story.

So a couple of weeks ago Jared was being a good husband and vacuuming the house for me when all of the sudden I heard this super weird noise and then the vacuum shuts off.  I ran to the back room to find this.

 He sucked up an entire roll of curling ribbon!  and it was all perfectly around the entire vacuum roller thingy.

 It was pretty brutal

And now he owes me some pink ribbon.

Last minute V-day idea

For Valentines every year Jared and I always stay at home.  I cook him a fancy dinner and we just spend time with eachother.  We don't ever go out and spend a bunch of money either.  I think it's silly to spend a bunch of money on a made up holiday.  Don't get me wrong, I think v-day is fun, I just don't think it's necessary to go all out like some people do. 

Anyway, this year I made Jared some little 'lottery tickets' for his present.  I forgot to take pictures while I made them but they are really easy.  All you need is some cardstock, a white crayon, a little paint brush, and some acrylic paint.

Print or write on the cardstock.  You can write things like "Get out of a dirty job", "You're dirty! Let's take a bath", or "Let's get dirty on a trip to ..." just something cute that you can incorporate the word 'dirty' into.  Then use white crayon to color over the text that you will be painting over.  (This allows the paint to be scratched off easily).

Use a circle stencil (I made mine out of cardstock) to paint over the text.  I put on 2 coats of paint and then touched up where needed after it had dried.

To spruce it up a bit I glued some cute craft paper onto the back and tied them together with a ribbon.



I think any guy would love these... or girl :)

Placemat Pillow

A couple of years ago I saw this idea on a blog and I've been wanting to try it ever since.  If you get a lined placemat you can make it into a pillow super easy and it's very inexpensive.  I found this placemat at Target and thought it would make a really pretty pillow.

It's lined AND it was on clearance.  Bonus!

I got some soft batting to stuff into the placemat

Ripped a seam that was just big enough to stuff the batting into

I filled it to the fluffiness that I wanted and sewed it back up.

I don't have a sewing machine so I had to do it by hand.

And now I've got some super easy, cute and inexpensive pillows for my couch that I can brag about. :)  It probably cost me about 5 bucks each to make these pillows, which, if you've ever been decorative pillow shopping, is less than half of what they would charge you in the stores.

Front Door Wreath

I FINALLY figured out what I want my front door to look like.  So this weekend I made the decoration for it.  I bought a wreath at Michaels for 4 bucks, made a templete for the letter B and Jared cut it out of wood for me because he won't let me near the saw is so thoughtful.

I sanded it down and then spray painted a few coats of flat black onto this little beauty.  Tied a ribbon around it and onto the wreath and DONE.  It only took a few hours and that was mostly just the time it took for the paint to dry.  This was super easy and now I've got a really cute front door! :)

Conversation Blocks

So there is this blog that I follow called

Brown Paper Packages,

and this girl has the cutest craft ideas EVER.  I had to steal her idea for Conversation Blocks and make my own for V-day. 

I started with 3 4x4 pieces of wood that my sweet husband cut for me.  I sanded them down and rounded the edges a bit to make them look like this. 

This is the first time I've ever used a sander and I don't think I did half bad!

Then I spray painted all of the blocks RED

When the paint dried, I put on another coat just for good measure.

I wanted to have a RED block, a PINK block, and a WHITE block because I think Kierste's looked so freakin' cute the way they were.  I just bought Rustoleum's spray paint from Home Depot.

I painted one pink and one white

The one that I wanted to be red I sanded down a bit, and then sprayed white paint on a paper towel and rubbed it all over the block.

When all the blocks were dry I sanded them all down a bit.  I used 220 grit sandpaper so that it didn't take off as much at a time.  The White and Pink block I sanded until some RED showed through and they had a nice aged look to them.

The Red block I sanded off most of the white that I had rubbed on.

Then I applied the vinyl letters and voilà!

This is the finished product!



Not too shabby for one of my first craft projects if I do say so myself.

Thanks for the inspiration

Brown Paper Packages!!

On my to do list

I found this cute idea for name blocks HERE.  I so want to make these for me!  What a cute idea!