Eating Clean 12 Days of Christmas - Signs

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I made my dad and my mother-in-law each a sign with a cute phrase. You can buy them on Etsy and other places, but to save some money I made my own. I was inspired by Just Imagine.

They took inexpensive wood plaques from a craft store, painted them fun colors and mod podged a picture on it. I did basically the same thing I did with my subway art. I found precut decorative wood plaques at Michaels and painted them black. Then I took the phase I wanted to use and in Publisher created a document with a black background and white letters in a fun font. I printed it out on plain old copy paper, cut it to match the size and shape of the plaque and mod podged in onto the plaque. I added two more layers of mod podge on top to seal the deal. Add a frame hanger on the back and that's it!

Eating Clean 12 Days of Christmas -- Body Butter

Along with lip balm and body scrub, I also made some homemade body butter. Seriously, this was ridiculously easy. You take coconut oil, add it to your mixer, and just let it whip into a luscious, creamy mixture. Add in several drops of essential oils if you want a scent other than coconut and put into jars. Really, that's it! 

You only have to use a little on your body to go a long way too. I used too much and it ended up feeling too greasy. 




What I spent:
Coconut Oil -- $6.97
Essential Oil -- $3.99 (I only used about 1/3 so $1.33)
Jars -- $7.00 

Total cost -- $15.30 or $1.53 per jar

Eating Clean 12 Days of Christmas -- Sugar Body Scrub

Like I've mentioned before, I want to start exploring all-natural body products, so along with the lip balm, I made homemade sugar body scrub. The scrub was super easy...if you can stir two ingredients together you can make sugar scrub :) Not only does the scrub work just as well as expensive store-bought brands, it was significantly less expensive. Here's what I spent...

Kroger brand Turbinado sugar $3.50
Kroger brand baby oil $1.99
Essential oil $4 (but I only used 1/3 of the bottle so $1.33 worth approx.)
Jars $6

Total spent...$12.82 which made 6 jars, so $2.13/jar 
I could have probably made them even cheaper, but I went with the nicer glass jars since I was giving them as gifts. 

Here's the recipe I adapted from Martha Stewart
Homemade Body Scrub
Body oil (I used baby oil, but you could use any kind of oil you want)
Epsom salt, sea salt, or organic cane sugar (I wanted a sugar scrub, so I used turbinado sugar)
12 oz. jar with cap
Lemon zest or 9-10 drops of your favorite flavor of essential oil

Combine 1 cup of body oil with 2 cups of Epsom or sea salts or organic cane sugar (depending on how fine a grain you like). Add lemon zest or essential oils for color and fragrance. Package in jars.

Clean Eating 12 Days of Christmas - Whiskey/Bourbon Bottle Soap Dispenser

Remember my earlier post about how hard it is to find gifts for the men in our families? This is another solution to that dilemma :) My father-in-law LOVES bourbon but has pretty much everything bourbon related already (at least everything we can afford ;). 

I saw on Etsy a bourbon bottle soap dispenser that I thought he would love and actually use. However, I didn't want to spend $40 on it, so I made my own. It was super easy...I took an empty bourbon bottle (I used one of his Maker's Mark ones he actually filled and sealed), washed it out good and filled with soap. For the dispenser part, go to the dollar store and find a $1 soap dispenser that's as tall or as nearly as tall as the bottle so that the straw reaches to the bottom of the bourbon bottle. Screw the dispenser and straw part onto the bourbon bottle and voila! Instant kitschy, fun and unique soap dispenser! I'm also going green and saving green by recycling and old bottle and only spending $1 on the dispenser.

Eating Clean 12 Days of Christmas -- Etched Glasses

The men in our family are extremely hard to buy for when it comes to Christmas, birthday or any types of gifts. If they want something, they typically just get it for themselves. One thing I can always count on them liking is bourbon or beer, but really you can only only buy so much bourbon and beer every year (I'm sure the men are disagreeing with me now!). 

Thankfully, I came across a method for etching your own glasses and I thought it would be awesome to etch a bourbon decanter and glasses for my husband's brother. He's getting married this summer, so I thought these would be a great addition to their new home. I liked how they came out so much that we did some for another friend and some for ourselves. 

The process is pretty straightforward. Buy etching cream from a craft store. Decide what type of letter or design you want etched. For my T's, I got a scrapbook letter T that was the size and font I liked. Instead of putting the T on the glass, I cut out the outline of the T (the part you would normally throw away) and applied to the glasses. Etch over the sticker, let dry and remove the sticker. Easy peasy! You could also tape off whatever letter or design you want if you're more artistically-inclined.

You can find the full instructions on etching glasses Thistlewood Farms, who I got the idea from. I originally wanted to do the circle with the letter inside they do, but found it much too time-consuming for my purposes. I couldn't find the right type of circle stickers and didn't want to tape off a circle on the glass.

Eating Clean 12 Days of Christmas -- Lip Balm

I love chapstick and since I want to explore more all-natural and clean beauty products, I thought I'd start with my own lip balm. Plus, I wanted to use these as cute little Christmas gifts for my girlfriends. I did a lot of research and the process of making your own lip balm is super easy.

I found it hard to track down all the ingredients in one place though. Thankfully, I found several online retailers that make it easy buy selling kits. The kit I bought (here) had everything I needed and so when I went to make them, it took me less than 10 minutes. You get to choose your flavor and they include the lip balm base (a mixture of beeswax and other oils) and the pots or tubes. You melt the base, add in the flavor and put in your pots or tubes. Let harden and add cute labels if you want. That's it!! 

How easy is that? And it's clean clean clean!!

Some More Fall Crafts Courtesy of Pinterest

While everyone else has seemed to move onto Christmas, I'm still enjoying Fall and decided to try some autumn-themed decorations I had seen on Pinterest.

The first was a pumpkin made out of mason jar or canning jar rings. I had about a dozen left over from canning this summer, so had to buy another box. You can find them for around $3 for a dozen at Wal-Mart, a dollar store, Kroger, etc. 

Lay all the rings out on a piece of cardboard or paper and spray paint with inexpensive orange spray paint (avoid the day-glo orange though!). Flip them over after they dry and paint the other side. Let dry completely, then put them all on a string (all facing the same direction) and tie the string in a knot, arranging the rings into a circle/pumpkin shape. You'll have to tie a pretty tight knot for it to keep its shape. You can do any number of things for the stem and leaf....I opted to use rolled up burlap and a green ribbon. I've also seen them done with a stick and green felt, string, etc.

Since I had the orange spray paint out already, my second project was another pumpkin, this time made from wine corks. Pull out 25 wine corks, spray paint orange (one side at a time) and glue together in a pumpkin shape using hot glue. Start with four, then five, then six, then five, then four. Again, for the stem and leaf you could do about anything, I used burlap and ribbon.

Repurposing Old Windows, Part Deux

Found another huge window that I wasn't sure what I would use it for since it was so big, but it was only $5 so I couldn't resist. After bringing it home and having it sit in my garage for several weeks, I decided I would use to dress up my fireplace mantel. Previously, I just had the star hanging up on the wall, but I think adding the star behind it gives the mantel more dimension and interest. Plus, I think it looks rustic and Americana and super cute :) When hanging old windows, especially large ones, be sure to use drywall anchors and heavy duty picture frame hooks.

Inexpensive Subway Art

I've always been a little afraid of wall art for my home. Aside from family pictures, I never know what to hang up on the walls. Plus, seems like most wall hangings, especially the ones I love, are expensive. Thank you Pinterest, once again, for showing me the light and giving me ideas for some money saving DIY wall art. The first wall art I tackled was the phonetic alphabet for G's room. His room is all aviation and airplanes and so when I saw the Pinterest one (on the left) I knew I wanted something similar. The secret to making this DIY subway art affordable is using Staples' option for engineering prints. At $1.99 for a 2x3 print, it's a steal. Mind you, the engineering prints only come in black and white, but that's perfect for the subway art look. 

For the airplane and phonetic alphabet, I found a black outline of an old looking airplane on Google, copy and pasted it into Publisher and then added the words in white on top of it. Whatever design or wording you do, make the background black and the wording white. Save as a JPG file, upload to Staples and order an engineering print. I then cut out the airplane (because the background of it was white, I wanted grey) and used double-sided tape to adhere to a piece of grey poster board. The frame was $5.99 from Goodwill (I sanded down the ugly brown and spray painted black). Cut the poster board to size to fit the frame, add to the frame and there you have it. Instant subway art for under $10. 

The second piece is subway art using lyrics to one of my favorite Mumford and Sons' songs, "After the Storm." I did the basically the same thing; in Publisher, I created a document with a black background and overlaid it with the words in white. I played with the fonts, changing them up line by line to give it that full subway art look. I saved it as a JPEG, uploaded to Staples and ordered as an engineering print. I then took a piece of plywood, cut to the size of the print (in my case 2x3) and painted the edges of the plywood black. I then used mod podge to adhere the print to the wood and also added two layers of modge podge on top of the print. I took a fine sand paper and very lightly sanded over the whole thing to give it a rustic, vintage look. With the print, mod podge and plywood, this one cost under $10 as well.

You can find full directions on DIY subway art at I Am Momma Hear Me Roar.

Transforming Old Windows

I love love love the look of old windows reused for other purposes. I had found a cheap window at a junk sale for $15. I wanted to add one of our wedding pics behind it and use it as artwork for the wall behind our bed in our bedroom. 

For the photo, I measured the inside of the window and then uploaded and ordered a custom size large print. I think mine ended up being almost 16x20 and I found that at that time, Walgreens had the best prices on large custom prints (the 16x20 was around $5 with coupons). Do a quick Google search before you order to find any coupon codes or photo deals. 

Just take the photo and secure to the back of the window frame. Add frame hangers so you can hang up on the wall. Voila! Old window into new artwork!

Have a Seat - Updating Two Chairs

The hubs and I recently took on two different DIY chair projects.

I had found an old antique bankers chair at a garage sale for $10. We sanded it down and repainted it a glossy black to give it an updated, Pottery Barn look. We're planning on reselling it and hopefully making a pretty hefty profit. Pottery Barn sells theirs for over $200, so we're hoping just to get $100 and make a $90 profit. Not bad for a couple hours' work!

For the second project, I had been wanting an armchair for our bedroom. My mom found me a cheap, old and ugly chair that had great bones, and we repainted and reupholstered it in a much better color and pattern :) We ended up doing the chair for about $50...$35 for the chair, $10 for the fabric and $5 for the paint.

Thanksgiving Decor

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE Fall?? Another Pinterest inspired project and some more money saved! 

I love the look of the bunting-type banners, but they are pretty expensive if you buy them in Etsy. Instead, I made my own and it was super easy and super cheap. In Publisher (you could use Word too) pick a font you love, type out whatever words you want in about 200-250 size and print on colored paper. Cut around the letters in a triangle shape, paste on another colored sheet and cut around another larger triangle. Attach to a line of twine with wooden clothespins.

More Pinterest Projects

I love Fall...love love love love it! I love decorating for Fall more than I love decorating for Christmas. The cooling temps, cozy sweaters, my favorite blue jeans, football (Go Ohio! Go Bengals!), pumpkin patches, hay rides, corn mazes...I just love all of it. 

My Fall wreath was looking a little tired and old, so I perused Pinterest looking for something else I could do. I came across a lot of burlap (I also love me some burlap!) and felt rosettes. I decided to come up with my own version. I think it turned out pretty stinkin' cute! I love the subtle Fall colors, the rusticness of the burlap and twigs and sweetness of the rosettes. You can find the tutorial on the rosettes here and how to make a burlap bow here.

The door from the garage into the house enters into my office. I was super sick of how disgusting the white door got from us going in and out all the time, so I decided to paint the door with chalkboard paint. Now the kids can draw all over it and it's also a metal door, so they can hang pictures and artwork up on it too. No more nasty fingerprints and black marks!!