Projekt

My niece came over the other day--it had probably been about 6 weeks since she was last here--and she said something about how it looked like I had completely redecorated. I haven't, really, but I have been "sprucing" and finishing up some stuff in my to-do pile. My favorite part of finishing in-process projects is getting the feeling of having new stuff without the spending-money part.

Here are some projects from last week:

These were fun to make; just dip yarn in glue and wrap around a balloon. In process, I thought they weren't very cool, but once you pop the balloon, they're pretty cute. Almost free--I paid $.39 for the balloons on clearance.The "Home" plaque, copied from here. Used old barn wood; FREE! I also repainted the lamp. It is now on it's 4th or 5th color. Not bad for a Kmart clearance lamp, eh? FREE!

Updated my front door wreath. I love the clip on flowers from Michaels; they're a dollar and I can just change them out from season to season. Totally solves my I-can-never-quite-keep-up-with-the-seasons front door problems. Not free, but cheap.FINALLY decorated this ladder. It has just been leaning there naked for years. The dried....stuff...in it came from the field behind my house--Another FREE project!I angled the picture this way to include a shot of the flower bed. When we moved into the house, this area was "grass" (as we began to dig out the "grass" we found that there was very little grass or dirt there, but a whole lot of garbage. Ewwwww for finding other people's broken glass, pop cans, retainers and a million candy wrappers lodged in the layers of your yard).
We dug out the grass, put bricks around and filled in with dirt. We've been slowly filling it in over the years with plants people are getting rid of, plants on clearance and cuttings from neighbors. Economical, yes, but it leads to the area not looking too finished as we go. We finally got around to putting down bark this weekend and I can't believe the difference it made. Even though the flowers are still sparse, it looks so much nicer; wish I had done it at the beginning of the summer!

Years ago I found an ad in a magazine for diet bracelets. The idea was that you wore colored bracelets that stood for different things on one arm, and as you ate that food throughout the day, you moved a bracelet to the other arm. I went on their website, but the company no longer existed. Seemed simple enough to make, so I came up with a slightly simplified version.
The blue ones are for servings of water, the green ones for fruits/veggies. The black one indicates that it is a "no sugar" day, and the red one is for exercise. Now to make myself get started...

Last but not least...Sage has needed a new dress for awhile now, but I've not been able to find one in her size that I liked. Enter my sister's DI pile... She had this dress that she was getting rid of.I took it, cut off the top, sewed ribbons on for straps and voila! New dress for Sage in under half an hour. She LOVES it, and as she grows we can remove the straps and she can wear it as a skirt. Now I'm going to see if I can hem the bottom of the top portion and have her wear it as a shirt. FREE!!I've got some fun stuff planned for this next week, too. See you soon!