Fancy Dry Erase Board with Scrapbook Paper and Packing Tape

I got these dry erase boards at Menard's last week. After rebate I think they were about $1 each. These dry erase boards are on sale EVERYWHERE right now thanks to all the back-to-school sales!

As they were sitting on my floor, next to my scrapbook paper and my packing tape, I had an idea. While my hubby made dinner I made this!

I cut out thin strips of paper that I thought would cover the blue - about an inch or two and then slid the paper in between the whiteboard and  folded it over. I then taped it to make it stay in place, and later taped over it completely for durability.

 

 

For the magnets, I cut out a circle from the scrapbook paper and taped over top of it. I then taped it to the magnet and cut small strips in toward the magnet. I then folded these strips down to the magnet so that I could tape it all down without getting funny tape creases. Hope that makes sense - I tried to explain it in the picture as well!

And here it is again! I was planning on bringing this to my classroom...but I think it might be too cute for that. I just might have to find a spot for this in our new house!!

I love it even more than I thought I would! Have you hit up the back-to-school sales yet? Anything that you are going to "fancy" up before using? :)

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Moving in a Week and Already Painting our New House {ONLINE}

I have been pretty busy this last week getting ready to MOVE! We close on Monday, August 6 (and I can't wait!) We can move in right after we close, so we are planning on getting in around noon on Monday. In a week! AHHH! :)

So, I've been trying to work out a plan. We {think} we want to paint before we move in all our furniture so we are thinking of first painting the trim and doors white (all of the house) and then painting the walls (on the main level and our bedroom) on Tuesday and then moving furniture in on Wednesday. It might be too ambitious, we'll see!

I think I decided on a color for the trim/doors. Swiss Coffee by Behr, it's an off-white color. I've heard that trim should be done semi-gloss. Mainly because it holds up well and is easier to clean, right? Otherwise I would do a satin color because it isn't as glossy. Let me know if you have any advice on this!

The walls are a hard decision! I've been using the current owner's pictures of the house to "paint" the walls online. Did you know you could do that?! Well you can, for free, thanks to Sherwin-Williams Color Visualizer! I don't have a good picture of the bedroom, so I'm just working on the main floor. Here are some I'm come up with. This is by no means what I am going to do, just playing around right now to see some possible color options!

Dining Room "Now and Maybe"

Kitchen "Now and Maybe"

(The trim on the bottom will be painted white. Also, I will want to paint the cabinets white sometime - they will hopefully look better than the picture, but that will be a big project so it's not going to be done right away.)

Living Room "Now and Maybe"

(I would paint that little ledge guy too...for some reason it wouldn't work to "paint" it online!)

Obviously, I would not paint all the rooms like this, because the colors would run into each other. Any ideas on how to paint, what colors where? Feel free to recommend ANYTHING or share any tips on moving in to a new place! I'm so excited to have a HOUSE!!!!

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Engagement Ring Sugar Cookies

I have a new great respect for decorative sugar cookies. They are difficult to make! :) I made these engagement ring cookies for my sister-in-law, Lindsey's engagement party. (Remember the engagement cake I made for her?)

They are not perfect, but I'm still proud of them!

I used this sugar cookie recipe on Tasty Kitchen from I Am Baker (made 36 cookies, even with me snacking on the dough!)

And I got some help on royal frosting from Cake Journal. Argh. First off - a little black goes a long way. Piping and flooding was hard! I started out that way for the band part and then just started spreading it on the cookie. HA! But I did pipe {most} of the designs on the "diamond".

Also, I had bought fancy "shimmer" for the ring, but it didn't really sparkle...so I improvised. What did I use instead? SUGAR! Duh - don't know why I didn't think of that first! Sugar is super sparkly and way cheaper than buying a bottle of edible sparkles!

I {think} everyone liked them and I know they tasted good! :)

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My Couponing "Adventures" this Week

I've been loving Meijer for getting sweet deals lately! I've clipped a few coupons off mperks to use, but other than that I didn't bring in any paper coupons and worked mainly off the CATs (catalina coupons that print when you check out.) Here's my day 1 trip to Meijer. 

 

As you can see I spent $6.42 and got $13 in coupons back! I did not expected to get that many, but I got $4 for the paper products, $3 for the salty snacks, and randomly got a $2/produce, $2/carbonated purchase, $2/bakery. 

Of course I had to use those coupons so I went back today and here's what I got. 

 

I used $13 in CATs and only spent $1.33! Well, that was fun :) And they were running a buy 10 and get the 11th free - and pretty much everything was a part of that except for the paper products, so that helped too. From this transaction I got back $2 for paper products, $3 for salty snacks, and randomly got $2 on cheese, $2 on meat, and $2 on frozen food. Total I got $11 back in coupons. (I also got a $20 off coupon when you transfer a prescription...might end up doing that too for a free $20!)

So, totaling up both of these trips to Meijer I spent $7.75 and still have $11 in coupons to use there! 

Compared to Meijer, my Jewel trip doesn't look as exciting, but I did a lot of catalina deals there as well, as well as paper coupons I clipped/printed. Here's what I got. 

 

My total before coupons was $31.51. I used a $3/30 coupon and $3/10 cereal purchase I received in the mail. I also used coupons for the OJ, Life cereal, granola bars, vinegar, and cheese. I paid $19.51 after coupons and got back $10.50 in CATs, for a net cost of $9.51. Not bad, but not as good as Meijer!

And an online deal - I made a free card (with free shipping too!) that I'm going to hold onto until it's time to give it to a certain someone! :) I like these cards because you can personalize them with photos.You can get one too through Sunday 7/22 - Use code: CAJ2719 at Cardstore.com!

So maybe this motivated you to try couponing out?! It can be fun I promise and it's just so fun to save! Let me know if I can help at all!

 I would recommend organizing your coupons by inserts, like shown here.

And these are sites I am constantly checking like to use when looking for deals and planning my shopping trips! :)

• Mashupmom - great for Chicagoland grocery stores, especially Jewel and Dominicks
• TheShoppersApprentice - good especially for Meijer
• RainingHotCoupons and OneFrugalChick - online deals and drugstores 

Do you have any couponing tips or other favorite sites? I would love to hear about them!

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Easy as Pi(e) ~ Glass Etched Pie Plate

I think teaching Geometry this summer is really bringing out the dork in me. I just can't help it. Today we were learning all about finding the area and circumference of circles and of course PI!

And then I came home and saw my pie plate...30 minutes later I had this.

My husband totally thinks I am a dork. I don't think he liked it very much...but what do you think? Is it cute? Clever? Or should I drop it off at Goodwill? haha

I used my Cricut Alphalicious cartridge for the words "easy as". Then I used the Jasmine cartridge for the Pi symbol - see the picture for how it came together.

Vinyl (aka contact paper) is ready to go - time to get out the Armor Etch and lather that stuff on. I love this part - so easy but yet SO productive.

About one song of Lady Antebellum on my Pandora station later and it's already time to get the Armor Etch off. I used my foam brush and put it back into the jar! Yup, I just learned that you can use this stuff over and over again.

Run it under warm water, peel it off, and...

Here it is! Time to make a pie so I can use this beautiful, dorky dish?

It's as easy as pi!? :) 

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1st Birthday Gifts for Twins

My cousin's twins just turned ONE! :) I had the hardest time deciding what to get them and am really happy with what I came up with so I just had to share.

(And yes - I did tape their cards to the bags...that way I didn't have to decorate the bags too!)

Pink for the girl and blue for the boy. How stereotypical :)

A hippo and a dolphin. And yes, the dolphin is my favorite even though it isn't pink! BUT these are not just stuffed animals, they are "pee-wee" pillow pets! So you can velcro them up to make the animal, or un-velcro them to make it into a pillow. So. cute. I hope they like them!

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Loving the good ol' garage sale days of summer!

I love Fridays. No summer school. My husband's working so I feel like I can do whatever I want. So what do I do? Roll right out of bed and go find some garage sales of course! I missed the last two weekends being in Florida, so I had to make up for that time :)

 

There were free refreshers at Starbucks today from 12-3. I stopped by just about everyone I drove past! YUM

I got this cute little box that has hanging files inside for $1. It's originally from Target. I'll swap out my crate that I've been using for coupons and use this instead. It will look much cuter When I first bought this (like an entire 2 hours ago) I was thinking I'd re-cover it, not so sure on the shamrock thing out year long, but now I'm thinking maybe not. Thoughts?

This is my favorite purchase of the day. Both for $5. I'm planning on using these to make a beautiful shelf like the one over at I Am Momma Hear Me Roar. Looks simple enough! I'll have to show if how/if it works out.

I also got a Radio Flyer wagon for my sister-in-law who wants to use it at her wedding. Brand new for $20. And I got a couple Express shirts and two skirts. And I stopped my Michael's. I love that store - could walk around forever. I bought a pack of plain gift bags and was going to use a 40% off coupon on my phone, but then my phone died. However the cashier was super nice and gave it to me anyway! I love nice people :)

Oh, and did I tell you (no, I did not actually) that we are MOVING! Yup, so that shelf is a plan for our new house. Our own REAL house. It's quite exciting. We close on August 6th and have possesion on closing. (I'll take some pictures and share them with you then!) So that's exactly a week before school starts. At least I'll have some time to get the house somewhat unpacked / set up, but then I'm sure school will take up a lot of my time. Oh, and another great thing about our house - it's .6 miles from my school! So, I'll be walking to school, or at least trying it out. Look at me now, all going "green" and being healthy at the same time!

I'm actually heading off to go camping with a couple of friends for the night - like in a half hour, so I should probably start packing. Dang, it's been a long time since I'm been camping...and it's going to be hot - but hopefully fun too!

So, have you found any sweet garage sale finds lately? I love hearing about your good deals too!

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Back from Florida!

Hello again! I'm back from our Florida vacation! Seriously - I feel so spoiled...two vacations, Florida and California, in one summer. Dang, really, this isn't normal for me :)

But we picked a perfect time to go. We were enjoying the 80-90 degree weather in Florida, while everyone back home in Chicago was experience the crazy heat wave with temperatures in the 100's all week! And then we came back last night with temperatures in the 80s. Really - couldn't have done that if I tried!

 Kevin and I went with his family his parents (everyone else backed out on us after we bought out tickets)! We had a lot of fun though. We went on a cruise in Naples, shopped at the outlet mall and flea market, read some books, and laid out and swam both at the beach and our pool.

Kevin and I even spent the night at a resort just for fun using our Chase Freedom reward points. They even had their own island that they shuttled us out too- AND we saw dolphins on the way there. It was fun staying in a place so nice. I called down to guest request for some hair spray and a comb and they come right up to your door and just give you stuff! lol I was quite excited.

And then it was time to go home and start session two of summer school! Yup - that started today. I am teaching geometry and functional math. Today was crazy - I didn't even know what was going on, but I think we have it all figured out and ready to go!

Oh - and one of the best parts of coming home - getting packages in the mail!!!

 

I was so excited for my Julep box to come! Three different nail polish (one is patriotic) and a lip gloss to match! It always comes so cute and even with little FireBall candies this time! Check out my post here to see how you can get your first box for a penny. 

And then I got this beautiful frame! Love it. 

Random freebies too :)

And $28 flip flops that I got for only $1. I love deals :)

Yes - I realize this is a weird post, but I hope you enjoyed looking through my mailbox. HA! Oh, and I also got the good stuff, like our internet and electric bills. And three letters from State Farm telling me I'd save so much money if I just switch my insurance to them...funny thing is...I already have State Farm insurance.

Okay off to craft, um, I mean unpack...

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