Babies "showered" with love

When I found out my beautiful friend Valerie was pregnant with multiples I knew I had to throw her an amazing baby shower. I had an absolute blast planning and hosting this party and I can't think of a more deserving family of such a special gift.

Since Val is expecting both boys and girls, I wanted the theme to be appropriate for both sexes. In the end, I decided to embrace the "shower" theme, and filled my home with lots of rain drops! Let's start with the invitation, shall we?

I created the invitations (for free!) using picmonkey.com. You'll note for the purposes of this post that I removed the text that had my phone number and address on it, just because I figured it was smarter than spreading all my personal information across the internet :)

 

The favors were bars of soap next to sign that said "From Val's shower to yours..." Cute, right? 

The party took place in the main living space of our home. The living room and dining room were both decked out with flowers, candles, a raindrop photo booth, custom made artwork, and a sweet "celebrate" banner made of pink and blue onesies. The bar was stocked with delicious mimosas (and I was sure to have a "virgin" version for the mom-to-be!). Here is the custom made artwork (again, I used picmonkey.com for all of these) up close:

And here is a close up of the photo booth:

Sorry the photo is blurry, it was super cute in person!

We also played lots of fun games...

And I created sweet prize boxes for the winners of all the games...

Inside the prize boxes were candles, hand soap and sanitizer from Bath & Body Works.

In the kitchen there was food and drinks for everybody to enjoy... 

I forgot to take a picture of the tea until the morning after the party, which is why it doesn't looks so fresh, haha! But I wanted to share with you the labels anyway :)

We had a great turn out, and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves! 

Valerie - I love you girl! I am so so SO glad you are my friend, I don't know what I'd do with out you. You  are a beautiful friend, woman and mother! I can't wait for all the adventures to come with your beautiful babies!!

 

-Jesse

The half bathroom gets an overhaul (again)

Do you remember a few months ago when we had "finished" updating our half bathroom? It looked like this:

I'd painted the cabinet a nice grey color, swapped out the light fixture, painted an accent wall blue, framed the mirror, installed a toilet paper holder and generally decorated with some pretty items. 

Well, we had a little leak in our attic which led to this:

Which meant that our "finished" half bathroom needed to be refinished.  So we ripped down the dry wall and exposed our glorious galvanized pipes (ugh). 

Suffering through a leak was almost worth it because now we have at least one room in our house without popcorn ceilings. It may be the smallest room in the entire place, but you gotta start somewhere. 

New drywall was hung...

And then all the walls had to be painted. The walls also had to be painted because when you install a new ceiling, the top parts of the walls get covered in the dry wall mud. I used left over blue paint from our master bedroom because I didn't want to spend money. 

 

Our new ceiling is clean and white and popcorn-free! Love it! I really love the blue on the walls too. This color is called Quiet Moments by Benjamin Moore and its a winner if you are looking for a soft and soothing blue for your home. 

Honestly, seeing the difference a fresh coat of paint made in this room, I am appalled that I ever considered the way it looked before to be acceptable. 

 See what I mean? So much better now. 

  

 

Now all I've got to do is replace the sink/counter top in this room and I think I will officially be finished with it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Jesse

Picture Frame Upgrade

I finally got around to a simply little project, and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  Do you guys remember this picture frame?

 

My sister found this when she was cleaning out her office and told me she was going to throw it away. I decided to keep it. I liked it for two reasons; it's big, which makes a visual statement, and it was free! 

Not only was it pretty ugly (that gold border- UGH!) but it was also damaged:

So I figured I'd give it a little face lift using supplies I already had on hand so I wouldn't have to spend any money. Here's the finished product:

After a good sanding and fresh coat of paint, it looks new! I used some left over fabric from another project to fill the glass with a fun pop of color.  It makes me so happy to bring life to my home without spending a dime! It's a simple little project, that I may try to customize a bit more later, but for now, its a quick and easy improvement.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jesse

Fabric Fun

Way back in May, I mentioned our guest bedroom in this post, and said that I'd share it with you once it was finished. Well, it's still not finished. BUT, I did make some progress in there over this past weekend, with a little help from my lovely mom. I thought you might enjoy a little hint of what's to come....

Color! It makes me happy :) Stayed tuned for the finished product. Hopefully it'll be complete before the next 10 months or so...

Oh, btw, happy Monday!

Jesse

Money Saving

In case you didn't already know, this is me:

 

If you don't understand this reference, stop right now, go watch Home Alone, then come back and keep reading.

Alright, I'm not quite that bad, but money saving has been on my mind a lot lately. Saving money was my #1 new year's resolution this year, and so far I've done a pretty good job of sticking to it. So, I thought I'd share with you guys some of the things we've found to be helpful when it comes to saving money.

Saving on Food:

This is by far the hardest part for me, but it is also the change that is making the biggest difference in our finances. We used to eat out all the time. Every. single. day. I hated grocery shopping and I hated cooking. We'd go to the store only once or twice a month and drop anywhere from $200-$350. Then we'd throw away half the stuff we bought because it would go bad before we got around to eating it. Such a waste of money and perfectly good food. So, I knew I had to make some changes. 

I started meal planning, which looks like this:
Every Friday I find five recipes for the next week and I make a grocery list of everything I'll need. I try to find recipes that utilize ingredients that I already have at home. (This happens a lot with tortillas. I usually buy a 10 pack of tortillas because they are the cheapest, but after taco night, we've only used 4. So the following week I'll make enchiladas because I know I've already got the tortillas at home and I don't want them to go to waste). Then I scour my pantry and fridge, just to make sure I don't already have something on the list. Now I'm fully equipped with the most efficient list possible, it's off to the store I go. Once there, I keep an eye out for replacement ingredients that are cheaper. (Last week, the turkey was on sale for $2.99/lb. so I bought that for my spaghetti instead of ground beef like I had planned because it was $5.99/lb.) I also buy generic brand for pretty much everything. Honestly, you can't taste the difference if you prepare your meals properly. Except with noodles. Don't buy VALUE brand noodles from Kroger. They are tough. Like Ford tough. Anyway, with this plan, I've got enough for five dinners and the leftovers serve as lunches for both me and my hubby to take to work. Since January I've been averaging $65/week at the grocery store. This is so much cheaper than what we were spending before when you consider how much we spent at restaurants. 

Saving on Gas

I buy my gas from Kroger, because we can get discounts depending on how much we spend on groceries. Each time I fill up, I save anywhere from 3 cents/gallon to $1.00/gallon. If at all possible, share a shoppers card with your friends or family. Your rewards will stack up quicker this way. (I share a card with my mom and she grocery shops a lot more than I do, so the gas savings are worth it for me, and she never fills up there anyway!)

Saving on Electricity Bills

I'm going to start signing up for short term contracts (like 3 months) because you can get a much better rate that way. This is especially important during the summer! 

Saving on Travel

Use Groupon. We bought our hotel for our anniversary trip to California on Groupon and it was a great deal and a wonderful experience. (Read more about that here.) Also, if at all possible, travel in the off season. Again, our trip to California was in February, not exactly peak travel time for wine country. But it was significantly less expensive and still gorgeous! BONUS: There weren't crowds everywhere we went. Lastly, don't eat out for every meal while traveling. When we went on our honeymoon, we filled up the mini-fridge in our hotel room with lunchables! So much cheaper than going to a restaurant every day for lunch. 

Saving on Home Improvement

Basically my entire blog is about this. But you should definitely go read this post for more details.  

Cut back on "extras"

Everybody has splurges here and there, but consider if the value you are getting from these "extras" is really worth the cost. For example, we recently decided to cancel our gym memberships. We live in a wonderful area that is very conducive to walking, jogging and biking. Besides, I really enjoy exercising outdoors more than inside a gym anyway. We've also got several work out DVDs and hand weights at home, so there is no reason why we can't work out for free. This change alone will save us $140/month (we were paying for two memberships, and for a personal trainer which was great when I was training for my half marathon, but afterwards it wasn't really necessary).  


Am I forgetting anything? Do you have any tips to make life a little less expensive? 

Thanks,

Jesse