My Tuesday Thrift Finds!

I needed to get out of the house again, so off to Goodwill I went. This time it was the one in the Rosedale area. It's a much bigger store and they have a LOT more items to peruse.

Here's what I scored today:

Last year the hubby found a GREAT VCR at Goodwill for $5.95. And every so often he comes home with a VHS for the kiddos (and once he found a vintage 1985 "Vampire Hunter D" VHS---we were both stoked about that one!). Today I found these two:

These little cuties will be hung outside the front door:

More bottoms for my little girl.

After Halloween is over, I will have no wreath for the Fall. I saw this and can tell it HAS POTENTIAL, though right now he looks kinda shabby.

I may or may not keep the mirror for this...I really only bought it because I loved the frame. I will probably spray paint it black, or find an awesome peacock blue color.

Saw somewhere crafty that used S&P shakers for their glitter, so I've been keeping my eyes peeled for some. Found a whole set! SCORE!

All in all, not too bad. Kind of having Deja Vu though, because wasn't this my checkout total last week?

Cheesy Chicken Potatoes

Twas the day before payday and the cupboards were bare, my hubby’s tummy was rumbling around in despair. But alas! We had chicken, potatoes and cheese; I thought to myself, “What in the world can I make out of these?”

Ok, horrible rhyming skills, I know, I know! But seriously, this was us 6 years ago; we had no money and little left in the fridge for a meal. I had those three things plus some red onion, so I quickly went to work, and it has since become a favorite in our house. 

Here's what you need:

6 small-medium red potatoes

1/4 of a red onion

2 chicken breasts

butter

salt

pepper

lemon pepper

garlic powder

mild cheddar cheese

extra virgin olive oil (or as Rachel Ray would say, "grab some E.V.O.O.")

First step is to cut up the chicken breasts into bite size pieces, then cook them in a pan with butter, salt, and pepper; stir frequently. Don't cook the chicken all the way, just until it all turns white...It will be going in the oven so you don't want the chicken to be too dry. Preheat your oven to 350*.

While the chicken is cooking, wash and chop up your potatoes.

Then, chop the onion into tiny pieces (or if you just want them for flavor, leave them in bigger chunks and pick out later).

Add the onions and chopped potatoes into a glass baking dish. Mine is 9x13. Drizzle on some olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon pepper, and the garlic powder. Toss that around for a second.

Drain the cooked chicken and toss that in with the potatoes and onions.

Cover with foil and pop in the oven (center rack) for 45 minutes. Now get to grating some cheese! How much you grate really depends on how much you love cheesy goodness! We love cheese, so I usually grate about 1 1/2 cups to go on this. 

After 35 minutes, take the foil off and sprinkle the cheese on top. Place it back in the oven for the remaining 10 minutes (uncovered). 

Once it's done, take it out of the oven and let it cool off for about 10-15 minutes. Then serve :) We didn't have anything to go along with this meal back then, but now I like to serve it with sauteed green beans. YUM!

So there you have it! The meal when there was none to be had. 

Enjoy!

My Tuesday Thrift Finds!

Since it has started to get a little bit chilly, I went through the kids' clothes taking out stuff that was too small and taking inventory on how much Winter-y type clothing they had. M#1 has tons of clothes.....M#2 on the other hand, does not. My poor baby girl :(

This morning we set out to Goodwill down the street. The hubs usually goes in there everyday after work just to see if they had gotten anything new and super in. That man has found some pretty amazing things in there...including clothes for me! He has a great sense of style, seriously.

Here are a couple finds he picked up:

 

 

He's pretty awesome!

Ok, enough bragging about my fashionable husband....here's what I scored today:

 

Alright, so the lace wasn't exactly on my shopping list, but it is something that I have told myself to keep a look out for. This baggie had lots of lace scraps and trims....and I have the perfect idea for using some of it! *hint, hint, I'll post that project when its finished :)*

I got out of there in 15 minutes and my damage:

 Not bad! However I think I still need to get more pants for Monkey#2. 

What have been some of your favorite thrifty finds?

Updating Blog

The page is a mess right now, so please forgive me! I'm trying to find a new template I like (namely the yellow you can see)....However my old background is showing through and NOT the cuter background that was supposed to come with this new yellow template. So please bare with me as i try to figure out what the heck is going on and if it's all user-malfunction (which is highly possible!). Hope you're all having a wonderful week!

Wreath Madness!

Soooo many bloggers are sharing their amazing wreath projects right now, so I thought I would try to make one. I love the look of the yarn wrapped ones, so that was the style I chose to replicate.

I wrapped a wreath I found at the Dollar Tree with some white yarn I had. And because I wanted it to represent my little family, I found a pair of super cute birdies (Dollar Tree again) and added those.

On a trip to Michael's I found a pair of baby birds in a nest (sold in a pack of two for $3.99). But they only had three colors to choose from most of which were so munched up and ugly...So I picked the best looking package (they were an ugly burnt orange color) and painted the baby birds to match the bigger birds.

I printed "Welcome to our Little Nest" on some scrapbook paper and hot glued twigs from our backyard to frame it. Then knotted some yarn around the top to hang in the middle of the wreath.

The red felt hearts were an afterthought for this project. After adding everything else on, I felt that it was lacking something, so I dug around in my craft room until I came across the ton of red felt I have stocked up.

Not bad for my very first wreath, eh?

 I see many more wreaths in the future, but for now this one will stay...at least until Halloween :)


Total cost of project: $6 (but technically $4 since I only used 1 out of 2 nests)
Project Level: Easy-Peasy

DIY Train Table

Monkey #1 is super into trains right now, but I just can't fork over the $100 for a train table that I know I could make for WAY less. I tried looking on Craigslist to see if someone had one I liked for free or super cheap, but they all had glass components. So I asked my friends on Facebook if anyone had an old coffee table (no glass) they no longer wanted. My friend Britt had the exact kind I was looking for! Hers was just sitting in their garage collecting dust and said I could come pick it up. Gosh I love that girl!

Here it is in all it's glory:

No glass, storage underneath! One leg needs to be fixed, but otherwise completely useful!

I went to Wal-Mart and picked up some green fabric that looked a little like foliage/flowers. I bought 2 yards, but only needed about 1 1/2. I started in one corner of the table and began hot gluing it down.

 I glued the underside of the lip, and used an old pencil to push the fabric into the glue.
After the whole table was covered and glued (cutting off the excess fabric), I took an X-Acto knife around and cut/tore off the uneven parts.

All covered:

Then I broke out my black acrylic paint. I know this is supposed to be his train table, but why not let it do double duty as a race track/road? So I painted a road around the sides.

 *Yes, I was doing this at about 6:30 in the morning so my coffee was ever present in this task.
Then I added the yellow painted lines for lanes.

I know, it looks a little messy, but I did go back and fix the smudgy areas.


Here it is all set up:

I couldn't wait to show it to him, so a little bit after he woke up I brought him outside (don't mind his messy hair, lol). But he wanted to play with his cars on it first.

Lightning McQueen takes off!

There was a convoy...

All the cars crashed into a pile and Lightning McQueen was the only who survived.

He loves playing on the table so much! And Monkey #2 just loves to dance on it.

Total cost of this project: $4.

Wedding Cake Topper!

When my husband and I got married, we decided to for-go the traditional wedding cake topper of the bride and groom and went with monograms instead.

The monograms were too pretty to just throw away, but because of the spikes on the ends of them, we really couldn't just display them any old way. So they were put in a box. For 5 years! And now that the hectic chaos of moving is over, I found them and decided now was the time to do something with them.

I started off by sawing the pokers off the tips of the letters

I had to take sandpaper to the edges because the saw left a bit of a ridge on the bottom

I Google searched the silhouette of a heart, printed out the one I liked and then cut it out to use as a stencil. I used Watercolor paper to glue everything down on because A.) It is really sturdy paper and B.) because it is the only paper I had that was long enough to fit inside my 11x14 frame!

I grabbed out my Box O' Buttons and used my entire arsenal of red buttons to make the heart! Seriously, I have maybe 2 red buttons left after this project.... I had to arrange them on the heart shape first to make sure I got the placement right, then used my glue gun to stick them to the paper.

I should have remembered how painful it was to use hot glue and buttons from this project. But I didn't. So I had hot glue burning my fingertips with each and every button I pushed down, seeping up through the holes. *wince*  And then glue buttons on top of the others to fill in any big white gaps.
You should probably remember to erase your pencil lines before gluing the buttons down (in sections) or else you'll have to peel them off and then re-glue them like I did!

I had to figure out exactly how I wanted the monograms to be placed and then hot glued those onto the paper as well.

After all that, I just stuck it in the frame and hung it on our bedroom wall.

I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out. Maybe some day I'll take it back out and write our wedding date on the bottom right corner, but for now it shall stay the way it is.

 *And the TV reflection you see in the frame...It's Ni-Hao Kai Lan tickling the sun awake*

Project Level: Easy-Peasy