Erasable Menu DIY

So I have begun to share my weekly menus with you all...

1. to keep myself accountable to do it and

2. to inspire you all to do the same!

It really does save so much work and stress!!

And if you have kids, let them pick a meal one night and write it in..it will be fun for them to be involved and have them help cook too or take a load off and them cook it all (if they are old enough).

So here is my version of the erasable weekly menu, inspired by the lovely Pinterest.

Supplies

1. A large frame, with glass

2. Scissors

3. Tape

4. Markers or pens

5. A large white poster board (not pictured)

6. fun stencils!

I tried tons of different things like putting mismatched craft paper, or cut up Trader Joe bags behind my glass in the frame, and just didn't end up liking any of it. So I went to Target and bought one of those like science fair poster board and cut it to the right size. A nice clean, white slate.

I measure the white poster board to the same length and width as the back panel of the frame, cut it out and taped it to the back. I then added some food themed stencils to my white paper 

Then out of craft paper I made day of the week circles, and taped them onto the white poster board (now attached to the inside panel of the frame)

I wrote 'MENU' in large letters on the white poster board, and then assembled the frame and secured the glass on top.

Crappy close-up. : )

I bought a dry erase pen from Target and can now write the menu next to the day of the week circles, and can record on top the week I am cooking for...then erase it all at the end of the week and start over!

It's super easy, and it has made my hectic school filled life soo much better! : )

DIY vintage inspired painted tray

I am so excited to share this DIY with you!

 It was super-duper fun to make and I am giving it as a Christmas present.

Supplies

1. Wooden candle or breakfast tray

2. stencils

3. paint + paintbrush

This is how the tray started out...so cheesy! Haha I got it for $3 in the bargain bin at our local Christian bookstore

Give it a nice base coat. I used white + a couple dots of "cocoa"

Don't do this unless you want paint in your coffee..whoops.

Wait until the paint dries completely!! I know I get impatient too, but watch something on netflix while it dries...it helps. Or start another project in the meantime...I mean I don't do that Greg...you know I only do one project at once and ALWAYS clean up after myself. *wink*

{I used the Martha Stewart Stencils again - find them here}

My finished stencil. Vintage inspired flowers.

I like the yellow dots I added. No I didn't free hand them...I free hand nothing, they were also a stencil

*shame*

I want to keep it. I love it. But alas one lucky lady in my life will be receiving it for Christmas.

I am not in a very giving spirit today. I went to the GAP and bought some stuff (thank daddio!) and the cashier asked me "will you be needing a gift receipt today?"

Sheepishly I answer..."oh, yeah no...these are for me"

Only TWO more days til Christmas...I can hardly contain my excitment!!

Before & After

{Before & After}

This was my least favorite space in our home. It is an awkward utility room that connects the kitchen, our bedroom, and the main bathroom. Kind of like a mini-hallway.

We have like zero storage in our house, so I try to fill every corner and wall with a cute shelving unit, dresser, bookshelf or filing cabinet. 

This is all we could find for this room. An ugly table with grey padding around the legs for the previous owners, apparently clumsy, children. It was useful for holding this on it, but I hated it!

I cursed its existence every time I walked into our bedroom.

So about 3 weeks ago I started looking for a better piece to go there with more storage and a mid-century modern look to it.

Now I love our little space! It holds all of our linens, trash bags, Greg's tools and car washing stuff, plastic and paper bags for lunches, all our tupperware, and our knick knacks (matches, push pins, clothes pins, etc) that were just taking up space in a drawer in the kitchen.

The boxes on top came from the $1 bin at target and they organize the little "junk drawer" type things that would get lost in the big drawer space.

I love walking in here so much more now! Now to find a cuter basket to go on top...

DIY Stag Canvas

So you may have seen this over on one of my besties blog Ballpoint + Pen this DIY, but I loved it so much I had to make one of my own!

{DIY Stag Canvas Art}

I love my little stag!

First of all you can find the template HERE.

Supplies

1. Blank canvas

2. Scrapook paper

3. Stag Template

4. Scissors

5. Paint/Paintbrush

6.Adhesive 

Glue scrapbook paper to canvas. I was lucky and the scrapbook paper was exactly the same size as the canvas. Lucky me! 

There are many ways to transfer the image to the canvas. I chose to cut it out, stencil, and paint because I like mixing medias and textures and not just using all flat paper.

Trace the image onto your canvas.

Paint the  traced image, hang up, and enjoy!

It is now hanging in our bedroom...I am so in love with it!

So simple, you could always add words as well.

In other news...look what Greg and I snapped for Friggity-Free from our church last Sunday.

Swoon.

Dresser: Before and After

Greg came into this marriage with very little in the way of furniture. Me of course being the crazy wife I am re-painted the only piece of furniture he brought.

Men never win do they?

Here is the old dresser...I forgot to take a picture of it with drawers IN. By the time I remembered they were already painted and sitting out in the sun to dry. Oops!

This dresser is actually in really great shape, and was used by Greg's mom 26 years ago when Greg was just a baby (see diaper changing bumper on top of dresser) so it is a quality vintage piece.

The problem is it had outdated drawer pulls, and Child Greg had put stickers all over it with ghosts on them that said "boo!"

While cute, not suitable for our new newlywed bedroom. There is nothing sexy about ghost stickers.

Anyway my parents had a 1/2 gallon of paint left over from painting their living room in a gorgeous shade of eggshell/off-white and I bought a couple packs of $5.99 drawer pulls at Target.

Here she is now! And for a measly $12 I brought her into the 21st century without compromising any of the original design or vintage quality.

It will also be helpful when we have a little Hortling of our own and we need somewhere to change them. : ) And the can put their own stickers all over it and the cycle continues.

A Mini house tour

So finally after a month of being married and Greg moving in we have finally started to make everything feel like OUR home and not just my home. I know that was something that was hard for Greg when he moved in after the wedding, the feeling like he was just spending the night at my house, cause I have lived in this house for a year with one of my sister's and my best friend.

So we decided to spend our labor day doing just that...laboring over cleaning the house and making the house feel like home. I wanted to share some pictures with you of some of my particular favorite spots in the house.

Living room. Don't mind the glare coming off the wall...my camera is out of commission and the only lens I have is a zoom lens which gives me pictures of about 1/3 of my living room even with my back against the back wall. iphonography will have to do until I get a new lens!

The perfect marriage of industry and crafting. Old WWII canisters from Greg's dad and my vintage egg basket filled with yarn.

My Anthropologie inspired TV stand display. The white vintage owls were a gift from my great-grandmother before she passed away. She was an owl FREAK. She had an entire hutch full of them, I snagged a couple amazing vintage pieces before it because trash. 

Again sorry for the crappy iphone shot...but I love this shelf in our house! We both don't like clutter, but we also have a tiny house and a lot of stuff...so this gives us an opportunity to display it nicely without it looking kitchy and cluttered. Thank you IKEA.

Here is another one of my favorite pieces in the house. Again we have a tiny house with no storage, so we decided to invest in some glass containers to keep rice, beans, flour, etc in and have it look nice enough to sit out on a shelf and not have to be hidden in a cupboard...which would not be a possibility with our limited space. We also had huge bags of spices from when I went to Morocco that we needed to do something with so we went to our local spice shop and loaded up on some cheap glass containers. 

You are probably noticing a theme here...tons of open storage. That is just the way it is around these parts! It is a bit intimidating because it forces up to be cleaner. We can't just shove stuff in drawers or cupboards! 

Here is a terrible picture of our dinning room. The table and chairs were $130 from IKEA. Booyah.

Greg & Savannah. We are currently working on a His & Hers hobby room. The biggest room in our house is a converted garage turned into our dinning room/hobby room. One half is a table and chairs seen above and one half is a crafting/design workshop. Will post pictures soon. 

Last but not least our guestroom/office. The quilt was made by my great-grandmother in the 60's. It is a hand embroidery quilt featuring a square for each of the states along with state flower, bird, capital and year it became a state. I cannot imagine how long it must of taken, but it is one of my "grab if there was a fire" treasures. We have a lot of "slash" rooms in our house because have I mentioned our house is tiny? : ) But on a serious note we are beyond blessed to be living in this amazing house  as poor newlyweds and we love every little square inch of it!

And the office portion of the quest room. Still a work in progress, but I am working on making a big calendar to be hung on the clipboard so I can keep all of our appointments/weddings/babyshowers/birthday parties/etc straight! I am loving Emily's idea of color coding the members of her family and her free calendar template download is fab! Since there are only currently 2 people living in the house and Greg is pretty easy to keep track of so I am not sure I am in a place in my life where color coding is necessary...but it is just so fun!

No pictures of our bedroom yet I'm sorry. It is super boring right now. Grey walls, white bed spread with grey pillows. I pretty much took all the wall art out of every room to be hung in the living room for the wall collage so our room is extra boring right now. It is a work in progress and pictures will be up soon when it is completed! I love a good productive weekend!

What did y'all do for Labor Day? I hope you didn't clean like we did!

Love, Sav

Hello, my name is Savannah...

I don't know if we have met before, but my name is Savannah. Oh wait we HAVE met? It is has just been FOREVER since I posted anything? Hmm...

Sorry folks.

Pictures of new livingroom and new projects coming soon.

Here is a little peak at what I have been up to lately...

Breakfast at Midnight

w/ homemade vanilla sugar...DIY coming soon!

we fed like 30 people!

pancake batter.

Wedding Stuff

Invitations are finally...finally done! It was a labor of love stamping, typewriter typing, designing (Greg), cutting, gluing, twine-ing, stuffing, stamping. But they are in the mail.

I am attempting to copy a cute set of bird cake toppers I saw online using felt, tulle, and vintage sewing patterns. Haha...we'll see.

At our church was have to make a board to give info about my church bridal shower and wedding date.

This is what I came up with. A little Hodge Podge, but I like it!

Our first home...in progress

New living room! More house pics coming this weekend! Greg will move in August after the wedding and I don't care how 1950's housewife it sounds...I am preparing the house for my husband! : )

Yum!

Cheesecake frozen yogurt with slivered almonds, chocolate sauce and cheesecake chunks. Yum!

Have a wonderful week. I will blog more I promise. I have been pulled in a million different directions lately!

DIY magazine holder

So the other day I was emailed by a friend who said her husband loves to read in the bathroom, but she is tired of the magazine mess around the toilet! : ) So here is a simple and CHEAP solution. Just tuck these bad boys next to the toilet for all those On-The-John readers in your life! They can also be made for a home office, living room, or desk!

Supplies

1. Large cereal box 
2. Contact paper or craft/scrapbook paper
3. Mod Podge
4. Paint Brush (one you don't LOVE, mod podge is hard to get off paint brushes)
5. Scissors
6. Pen

 Draw a curved line in your box and cut box on both sides

Cut craft paper or contact paper to fit box. Mod Podge craft/scrapbook paper or stick contact paper to box

Cut a small strip for the back and small strip for the front and stick or mod podge those on as well

Enjoy your new handmade magazine holder. Make matching ones, or mix and match colors. Have fun with it!

Tell me about your favorite DIY project you have done!