My kitchen renovation plans - now that Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations is officially in Canada!

All of you living in the US have been so lucky that you have had access to the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation product for months. Whereas us (way up here) in Canada have had to sit back watching your amazing kitchen and bath cabinet transformations with jealousy.

Ever since seeing this product, I have been so anxious to paint our kitchen.  I am even more excited now that is here! I am overjoyed to share that I was at Lowe's this past weekend and they have it! I immediately made my husband pull out his Blackberry to take some images so I could share with all you fellow Canadians the joy I felt when I found it.

I was standing in the Lowe's aisle and almost let our a scream of joy when I saw it. You have to agree the idea of turning my kitchen (below) .

 Into this is very exciting.

Do you see the similarities??No this isn't my kitchen!!! I actually found a home that has the same layout as ours for sale on the internet!!! They have the same ceramic tile floor, same layout, stainless appliances (like we do now) and they painted their kitchen cabinets the same color I want to. I could almost say this is a before and after photo...but sadly it is not. Well not yet at least. Isn't it gorgeous? Isn't it absolutely exciting and wouldn't it make any DIY jump up and down with excitement.

Now it isn't hard to visualize my kitchen in the Linen color (the arrow on the top). I initially debated the 3 colors with the arrows (Rustoleum Kona, Winterfog, and Linen) but after seeing those photos, I really do love the Linen but without the glaze. I plan to do the island in a dark color to contrast the light outer cabinets; perhaps Kona or just Black.

Here are the images from Lowe's. The colors on the actual display look different from what you see online so be prepared to go to the store to grab a brochure and bring it home to see how the colors look in your house before deciding.

 

 

This will be a Fall/Winter project after the kids are back at school. I can still dream , start planning and keep staring at our future kitchen photo until then.

What do you think of my before and hopefully future after? Do you think this color will work well with the light flooring? Any thoughts or suggestions?

Have a wonderful weekend.
Stephanie

Monogrammed Candle - PB knock off

Pottery Barn has a beautiful white jar candle with a monogrammed silver metal top. It is simple, classy and (in my opinion) overpriced at $25. I might add for those of us in Canada, it is $32 for some reason. Its description proudly states the letters are hand painted, but isn't everything we do in the blogging world hand made?  I will admit my knock off would not win in a face to face match up, but I think mine isn't to shabby by itself.

Source Pottery Barn

I used Glade "Fragrance Collection" candles that I had kicking around for ages. Just to add to how frugal this is, I will admit I got the candles for free a while back with coupons :) .

I was shocked because the label peeled off like it was meant to be gone. Why did I leave that on for so long?

Using my handy dandy Cricut (you can also use letters from the Dollar Store) I cut out vinyl letters (you can use contact paper too). I cut a 'K' for me and a 'W' as a gift. I personally like the font of the W better so the K might be done again.

I stuck the vinyl letters on the metalish lid and that was it. Craft done. It took me longer to take the after pictures than it did for the entire craft. Pathetic :)

I think this is going to be added to my 'to make people for Christmas' list on Pinterest.

Grand total $0.

What do you think?

Stephanie
Linking to some great parties including: Story of A2Z

Super Hero Birthday Loot bag - on a budget

My son's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and he really wanted to have a Super Hero party. I fully intended to host the party at our home but my husband kindly reminded me that a party in our house would consist of 10 kindergarten boys running around for 3 hours. I have a hard enough time keeping the house clean with 1 boy...what happens when you have 10 in the house? So, I quickly rented a local play gym for a couple of hours and I could not be happier with how it turned out.

Well, since I spent on renting a place for the party, I wanted to save a little on the loot bags. I am not sure if every parent gives these, but around here the kids almost expect a small gift bag when they leave. I see it as a thank you for coming but my son sees it as free candy.

So here is what I created for my son's loot bags.

I decided to save a couple of dollars and created my own loot bag out of paper lunch bags. For those of you who have not printed on lunch bags before, it is extremely easy. I created a Word file that was the same size of the lunch bag (approx. 5 1/4 inches by 10 3/4 inches) saying "Thank you for coming to my party. Have a SUPER Summer."  and inserted a Superman logo I found on the internet.

I taped the bottom flap of the bag completely closed. It is important to tape the entire way across otherwise the bag WILL get jammed in your printer. I speak from experience.

I then taped about 3 inches of the top opening closed. This was just enough to keep the bag closed while it went through the printer.

Load the bag into the printer the same way you would paper, making sure the correct side is up.

TaDa. Very simple.

I then filled the bag with some items from Walmart and the Dollar Store. Here is what we put in: bubble wand $1, sidewalk chalk $0.50 (bought a big tub and broke it up into 4 per bag), Pop Rock candies/super hero jellies $0.25, Finger lasers $1, Airplanes $0.25. Since I had the lunch bags on hand, thus far the grand total per loot bag was $3.

I then thought I wanted to make something for each of the kids. I have a great program for my Cricut that welds letters together so I decided to create a room sign for each of the boy's bedroom doors with a Super Hero theme.

I purchased the 7x9 inch canvas boards at the Dollar Store (2 for $1) and spray painted them black and navy blue.

I cut out each of the boys names on the Cricut in yellow card stock.

I then cut out the Superman (in red) and Batman (in yellow) logos. I got these images from a Dingbat on a free site. The program I have can cut these on my Cricut. For the Superman logo, I also cut out the shadow version of the logo in yellow. Using double sided glue, I secured the 2 pieces together.

With Modge Podge, I secured the names and logos onto the spray painted boards. I hot glued a little ribbon on the back to use as a hanger.

In total, all I bought for this project were the canvas boards for $0.50. I had all the other materials on hand.

So for a grand total of $3.50 per child, I created, what I think are pretty good loot bags. All the kids walked away extremely happy. I like the fact they have something to keep and hang in their rooms.

 

What have you done for loot bags? Do you have any secret ways of saving money on these things?

What do you think?

Stephanie
Linking to some great parties including: Story of A2Z

Natural Weed killer (made with basic items in your kitchen)

I have to warn you, for the next month and a half my posts will be of a frugal nature. This doesn't mean I won't post items that will be of use to you...it just means I won't be spending very much money on them.  We are planning a big family trip (to San Francisco!!! I am so excited. If anyone has any tips or things to do there with kids..please share) and I feel I need to slow down on my crafts/projects until we come back. So another month of Frugality for me.

Ever since moving into this house, I have struggled to keep our front walk weed free. As you know, we have 2 young kids (that seem to cringe at the site of shoes thus are always walking around without them) and a little dog, so I personally do not like to use Round up or other harsh weed killers on our property. To add to that, the city where we live has banned the majority of pesticides.

I got this frugal, yet extremely effective, way of killing weeds from my neighbor. He was out spraying his weeds a couple of weeks ago and I had to inquire what he was using because all I could smell was vinegar. I love that it is safe for my family and the environment. I also love the price!

I have googled this recipe and there are a million and one different variations so I thought I would share what I used and show you how well it worked.

Materials:

• spray bottle (I had a 34 ounce one I purchased at the $ store a while ago)
• Pickling vinegar (It works better than regular vinegar because the acetic acid % is higher)
• Salt (1/2 cup for m size bottle)
• Dish soap (a squeeze)

That is it!!

Method:

Fill a spray bottle almost full with Pickling vinegar. Since my spray bottle wasn't huge, I added only 1/2 cups of salt. If you spray bottle is big, add more salt. Squirt in a dash of dish soap into the bottle. Close the bottle tight and shake, shake, shake. You are done!!!

Go outside on a bright sunny day and spray those weeds. I found the sun sped up the process so try to pick a good day to do it. Remember though, this will also kill your grass and plants too. So don't get trigger happy like me and kill other things around the garden :)

Here are the before images:

Here are the images after 1 hour (see how the color is out of the plants and they are starting to wilt):

Here are the after/end result images (I just now use a wire brush to get the dried up weeds out of the cracks):

Just to show you how well it works, here is an image where there is a weed still alive and the rest killed. I would like to say I did this on purpose to show you all how well it works but I actually missed this weed :)

The grand total was $0 since I had all the materials on hand. What more could you ask for..costs nothing, not bad for the environment and it gets rid of pesky weeds.

Happy spraying.
Stephanie

Teacher's Gift - Wordle with students thoughts

When my kids are preparing to sing the old song "No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks" I struggle with what to give their teachers as year end gifts. I personally try to avoid traditional teacher's gifts like mugs or pens or even gift cards. I will admit I do use gift cards as my last resort because I know teachers spend so much of there own money to stock their classrooms and this gives them a little to spend on themselves.

This year my daughter had 2 new teachers so they both got my Name art. I think this will be an annual tradition for all her teachers. My son on the other hand, will always be two years behind her with the same teachers; therefore, I have to think of new and exciting things for them.

So for my son's teacher this year, I asked permission to talk to the kids in his class one morning while they were signing in. I asked each of them to give me three words or phrases to describe their teacher. Some struggled a little bit but with come guidance, they all were able to give me something . Some were really cute, like "I like her hair" but most said what they felt in their hearts (just like 4 and 5 year old kids do). 

Note: In case you were wondering what the blurry gap was in all of the images, I blurred out the name of our school. 

I typed every word the kids gave me (even the repeats) into a word file. I then went to the Wordle site and created a new Wordle. For those of you who don't know Wordle, it is a free program that creates word clouds.

A few tips when entering the words into Wordle. In order for there to be a space between two words, use the ~ symbol. So for "I like her hair" I had to enter "I~like~her~hair". If you enter a space, the words will appear separately.  Every time a word appears/is entered, the word get larger in the cloud. In other words, the larger the word, the more times it appears in your word file. So I entered the teacher's name the most, followed by the school name next.

I copy and pasted all the words the kids said into the 'create' page on the Wordle site and selected 'go'. Wordle creates a custom word cloud with a random design. The best part is, you can customize almost every aspect of design, including the background, fonts, directions the words appear, etc. The possibilities are endless.

One thing I do not like about Wordle (or perhaps I haven't figured it out) is you cannot save the image as a jpeg or giff. I had to print the file to PDF in order to save it.

I color printed the file on photo paper and framed it in an 8x10 frame.

I love that it is personal to the teacher and gives her an amazing perspective of what the children think about her.

I realize this is too late for you for this year, but perhaps it might be something to do next year. My kids teachers know I write this blog so I didn't want to ruin the surprise.

What do you think?

Stephanie
Linking to some great parties including: Story of A2Z

How to cut contact paper (to look like vinyl) with your Cricut

 Do you ever do a craft and you are not 100% happy with it. It look good at the time but not great. That is how I felt about the monogramming I put on our mailbox a while ago. At the time when I did the project, I was borrowing my mom's Cricut and had a limited selection of fonts. Well now that I have my own Cricut (insert an image of me smiling from ear to ear here) and the Sure Cuts A Lot software I have no limitations.
 I was on the My Vinyl Designer website and saw some absolutely beautiful monograms. You get 15 different images for under $5! Here is the monogram set that I loved and got:

If you have not been to the My Vinyl Designer website before, please venture over they have some truly amazing images. I am not being compensated to promote them, I just really do love their products.

For this project, I love the first monogram on the top left and decided that was what I wanted to do. I downloaded the image onto my computer, resized the monogram (with the a separate program) to be approximately 3inches square and set up my Cricut. I have white vinyl but have been curious whether or not contact paper/shelf liner would work the same. So I thought this was my opportunity to test it out. Not surprisingly, it worked great!

Here is how I substituted Cricut vinyl with Dollar store contact paper / shelf liner! 

The contact paper I purchased from the Dollar Store is called "Adhesive shelf and drawer liner" and comes in a roll that is approximately 40 inches by 18 inches. The Cricut vinyl is 12 inches by 48 inches. The contact paper is not nearly as thick as the Cricut vinyl but for $1 vs $10, I was willing to try.

I am sorry I don't have a picture of contact paper, I was so excited to try it out I ripped off the label before taking a photo. I am just like my kids...I can't wait to open things.

I trimmed the contact paper to be 12 x 12inches so it would fit into my Cricut. I placed the piece of contact paper onto the cutting mat, making sure it was secured and there were no bubbles between the paper and the mat.

Isn't the apple green pretty :)

I set the pressure to low/medium and the cutting blade to 3. My blade is new, so I am not sure if this will need to be changed if you blade is older. But for $1 you can play around without worrying about messing up.

 The contact paper cut great!There was no pulling or spots where it didn't cut.

 

When transferring the image, the only problem I had was the design I picked was a little too delicate. I don't have the transfer paper (I am too cheap but I do have a cheap trick for this too...stay tuned it will come soon) so I had to fiddle a little bit with the design when I was adhering it to the mailbox. One little piece of a loop tore off but and I didn't get it perfectly centered (just slightly off) but I am happy with it.

 

Here is the before if you didn't see it:

Isn't is so much nicer?

I am extremely excited to be able to cut contact paper as a substitute for the pricey vinyl with the Cricut. For those of you who have Silhouettes, I would assume this would work the same for you too...it is worth a try for $1.

I love that you can get contact paper in so many different colors and the price is fantastic too!

Has anyone else done this? Does anyone have any tips?

Stephanie