Thank You Gift Buckets

I went shopping today for the rest of my thank you gift. I think it turned out awesome!



I made it to Walmart where I found the buckets and silly straws. Then I went to dollar tree and found lots of fun things to fill it with. I found a beach ball, finger paints, bubbles, chalk, popsicles,  popcorn and bags to put it in, and sunglasses. I also added those sponge balls I made.  All together this cost only $15.

Here's another thing I've been working on. I am in a practicum right now and need a thank you for my cooperating teacher. We decided to get her a little something to do with her two sons over the summer.

I found these really cute sponge balls on Pinterest and I thought I'd try them out. They were SUPER EASY!!

I went to Dollar Tree and found a pack of 10 sponges.

Then I cut them in half once, and then again (four pieces per sponge).

Then I grouped 6 pieces together like this. 

And put a zip tie around them. 

Then pull it tight. You want it tight enough that the sponges will stay together but if you go too tight the sponges will break. 

Last I cut off the extras. 

This project was super easy! I made 6 sponge balls and even had one sponge left over. These will be fun this summer when it's hot! Not bad for $1!!! 

Chairs

I haven't been on here in way too long! To be honest  I forgot that I had it!

I thought I'd upload a couple projects that we have been working on lately.

First our chairs here is a few pictures of them in the making...

This is what they looked like before. 

After taking off the vinyl that was there before. We found this! Wish we would have known this before!! This would have looked much better!

But we went to Hobby Lobby before taking anything off and bought some very cute Chevron fabric.

Here are some pictures of what we've done so far! :) We've took off the old and covered our chairs with this new fabric.

Since we had extra, we cover a few 12 inch by 12 inch pieces of Styrofoam with the rest and it turned out pretty cute!

Vinyl Record Picture Frame

In a couple weeks I am going with my boyfriend to Colorado for Christmas with his family. Sounds fun right? Yes, but there is a small problem. I haven't mentioned this before but I am in college. As many of you know, college students don't have a lot of money. And so I need to be creative in my gift giving. I have to get presents, not only for him but for his parents, sister, and grandparents. For my next couple of posts I will share what I got each of them and how I did each of his families gifts for a very low price. 

I wanted to get them each something that I thought they would enjoy and something that I put some effort into to make unique to them. His grandparents LOVE records and I knew I wanted to make something with vinyl records for them for Christmas.                              

So my first stop was Goodwill where I found records for 99 cents! 

Next I had to come up with an idea and so I started searching the web where I found a website where you could buy picture frames made out of vinyl records. In an effort to save money, we decided to make our own. With some help from my boyfriend, we placed masking tape the size that we wanted and began cutting it with an exacto knife. This proved to be a lot harder than we thought. The record is very hard and doesn't cut easily so we tried several techniques to cut it. First we heated the knife and began cutting it. This worked okay but it was very hard to keep the knife hot enough long enough to do anything so we tried heating the record with a lighter and cut it while the vinyl was nice and moldable. This also worked but is very time consuming. The record is sometimes too flexible and stretches rather than cutting clean. This week we will be experimenting with different techinques to find the best way to cut it. (If you have an idea, feel free to comment!! :) We could use a little help!) 

This is the backside of our record. Although the cutting isn't the best and our last corner is still in tact, I have no doubt that with a little more cutting (and maybe a little better cutting strategy) we will have a wonderful vinyl record picture frame that they will love! 

Christmas with roommates

Me and my roommates had Christmas today. Christmas isn't for another 12 days so we didn't do anything too big. I didn't want to do anything huge but needed to get them something. So thanks to Pinterest, here's what I found.

Click Here for the Original Blog
I found nail polish, files, clippers and polish remover. I didn't have a jar so I found a few Christmas buckets and filled the bottom with wrapping paper. Lastly I added a tag that said for your mistletoes.

Just a simple gift and they loved it!

Beginnings

I'm new to this blogging thing but wanted to share some of the things I make and find on Pinterest.