Sesame Street Party

I just threw a Sesame Street Birthday Party for my 2 year old! He's getting so big. He had the time of his life. Unfortunately I didn't get the best pictures as usual. Here is the problem with planning parties I'm finding. Only I know what is going on so I have to do everything and I don't think about things like pictures when I'm doing a billion other things. No matter what, I never have enough done before hand.

So here are some pictures from the party. Hopefully I can explain enough without the pictures. This is the overview. I'll do a couple of more specific posts.

***Update- You can see games here.

Chest Freezer Inventory

We just bought ourselves a little beaut! We bought a deep freezer off on ones of those facebook yardsale sights. It only cost us $60 so we are thinking if this lasts us 5 years we will be very pleased. I originally wanted a stand up freezer, but for $60 I couldn't pass it up.

I have participated in a freezer meal swap the past few months so once a month I'm getting 12 freezer meals. That doesn't include normal freezer things, leftover I freeze and things to stock up on. So my little freezer over the fridge was not cutting it. I finally convinced the hubs that we needed one. The next day we looked around at freezers. Stand up freezers were $600 (that was the cheapest I found) and chest (which I didn't want at the time) was $175. We left discouraged and I thought we'd put this dream of mine on hold. The very next day someone posted it and I was very excited.

One of the reasons I didn't want to get a chest freezer was because they are terrible to organize. Now I'm not the queen of organization, but I can only take so much. So in hopes of not forgetting what we have in it I've created this freezer inventory spreadsheet. Wasted food = wasted money!




Because I'm still getting use to having an additional freezer it is pretty bare right now, but I imagine it feeling up pretty soon. Now to spend the week finding ways to organize the inside.

~CJ

New Year Goals: Organization

This is post #4 on my New Year Goals. If you are just joining the fun you can start here.

I'm embarrassed to say that our office/ craft space is a nightmare right now. it is out of control! This year is my year to get organized and stay that way. Hopefully in the next month or so I'll be posting a craft space reveal. Here is the little beauty that I bought that is getting me motivated!

Sorry for the poor picture, taken on my cell phone.

I bought this off of a local Facebook Yard sale site for $5! Does your city have one? It is so nice!  Before this picture was taken I had already removed 4 or 5 stickers. Let me let you in on a secret, when Goo Gone says let stand for a couple minutes they mean like 10+ minutes. At first it was not helping at all. Then I sprayed it and let it sit for like and hour and they came right off.

I am so excited to fill these drawers. Not just to teach my little bug to stay out of them. How is your craft space organized?

~CJ

Hair Bow Holder

Here is the before, I got the frame at Goodwill on their Dollar Thursdays so yep the frame cost me $1! The picture is horrible, but the frame was fine...

BEFORE

I tried to match the colors of the room. Hopefully I did ok. The first thing I did was spray painted the frame. I did about 3 coats. The spray paint cost $2-$3 I think.

Next I hot glued the ribbons on. I wanted to make it a little unique so I did the ribbons diagonal instead of Horizontal of verticle as I have always seen with these. It was hard to get them tight because I tried gluing to the inside of the frame instead of the back because in my mind it would look better against the wall. (It will make more sense in the next picture... hopefully) I tied a bow out of a piece of tulle and hot glued it to the bottom. It adds a nice touch I think.

AFTER

See the ends of the ribbon? They are on the lip where the backing of the frame would sit instead of just the back. Not sure how it would turn out just doing the back.

I then hammered on some saw tooth hooks so it could be hung up. These are like $.97 at Wal-Mart for a pack of 5.




Total cost= $5 tops The ribbons I already had and the flower clips I made awhile ago. Not a bad project!


~CJ

Homemade Mod Podge

I found this out and feel like it is my duty to share the word with everyone. I found this at Life in Rehab. I guess it should be common sense that mod podge is just glue and water, but I never would have had the guts to try it myself first.

All you need is water, school glue (like elmers) and a jar. Take equal parts water and glue, pour in a jar, and shake, shake, shake!

It works great! Costs like 50 cents. I made it for a favor for a craft day I hosted along with a foam paint brush. It was a nice touch.

I'm probably going to reference this post a lot since I have already done so much with it.

So go ahead, give it a try. Let us know what you created with your super cheap homemade mod podge!


~CJ

Color Sorting

HAPPY OCTOBER! (This means I can put up Halloween decorations now right?)

I hope you had a great weekend! Mine was fun. As usual my laid back Saturday turned out pretty busy.

My little bug is getting really good at matching things up. So I decided to make him a sorting tray. I picked up a serving tray last weekend from Goodwill for $.50 on half price day. I was going to paint each compartment, but using paper was much easier, faster, and this way I can switch them out for different colors.

 So far we have only sorted pop poms, but he loves it! He doesn't quite make it through all of the balls, but he gets enough to go through a few of each color! He loves Blue and that is the only color he says. Everything is BLUE!

I hope this gives you an idea to do with your little one. You don't even need a tray. just paper would work. I've done this with Egg cartons and plastic Easter eggs before too!

~CJ

Fun with Foam

The other day I bought some foam sheets from DollarTree. 

Photo courtesy of DollarTree.com

They come in a pack of 32 for $1. I was trying to think of something fun and outdoors to do with them. My little bug loves being outside, but it's hot in AZ so we thought we'd test these in water. Come to find out, they stick pretty good to windows when wet!

Just DIP IT

And STICK IT

He thought this was so much fun! I cut up the foam sheets into thirds, so we only used 5 sheets, but it still gave him 15 pieces to make art! These are reusable to. We've played with them 3 different times.

~CJ

Bridal Shower: Candy Buffet

I recently threw a Bridal Shower for my best friend who is getting Married in August. It turned out so nice! I decided I wanted to do a "Love is Sweet" themed shower. What is more perfect than doing a candy buffet???

 Luckily I had plenty of help with this otherwise it would have cost me an arm and a leg. Candy is expensive!!! We wanted it to be the colors of the shower which were yellow, brown, and purple. Instead of wasting money on just getting the right colors, we bought the normal bags of candies and just picked out the candies we wanted. The men were willing to help sort for a small fee... a handful of candy of course! It looked so pretty:) I love having the different jars. We also put boxes underneath to give different heights.

I had a couple of the jars on hand, plus borrowed from my mom. I bought about 5 jars from Goodwill for about $5 on half price day. 

 The candy we used was

Cow Tails (One of the Brides favorites [with the wrappers off])

M&Ms

Tootsie Rolls

Lemonheads

Whoppers

Skittles

Rootbeer Barrels

Reese's Pieces

Kisses (Regular, Dark Chocolate, and Camel)

The favor was for the guests to fill up a container and take it home with them. I bought them at DollarTree it was $1 for 12 boxes. I was going to wrap them with leftover paper from the invites, but decided not to since it's just going to be thrown away. Instead I stamped "thank you" on it with some flowers.

It was a hit and The Hubs is loving the leftovers:) Have you done a candy buffet? It's becoming my new favorite thing! I'd love to see yours to get ideas for my next party:)

~CJ

Date Jar

***Hello visitors! I'd love for you to look around, and I'd really love for you to stick around and follow me if you like what you see!

I've been wanting to create some type of date jar that is cute and we'll actually use. At the moment we have restaurants written on pieces of paper in a jar that we never use. Or we just come up with something on the spot, usually dinner and a movie.

With Father's Day coming up (this post is late) I decided to use this excuse to make one. So in addition to Chase getting gifts from Ryder, I also gave him a gift to show appreciation for him being a great Father! Plus I wanted a reason to make my date jar. Here it is:

I'm very excited about it and can't wait until we need a date idea (which is often)

Want to make your own? This is what you need to make on like mine.

-Popsicle Sticks ($1- DollarTree)

-Mason Jar ($.50- Goodwill)

-Red Paint (On Hand)

- Paint Brush (On Hand)

-Sharpie (On Hand)

-List of great dates! (Check online for great ideas or just be creative and come up with things you and your man will love)

-Paper for your color Key

-Establishments (I just did ribbon)

TOTAL COST= $1.50 

(if you needed to buy everything it'd be probably around $5)

Good Will finds 7/2

To me part of being crafty is being thrifty. I hope you agree. Every other Saturday Goodwill does half price days. Almost everything in the store is 50% off! I love it. I can't go everytime, but when I do I find some pretty fun stuff.

When I go to Goodwill I look everywhere because I never know what I will find. Here are some of my buys from this weekend. Pretty excited about some of them.

 Star Wars M7M dispenser- $2 (normal price $10)

I know this is totally nerdy, but we are like that. I originally got it thinking white elephant, but we might just keep this one:)

 Stampin Up punch- $2.50 (Normal Price around $18)

 Basket $1

I got this basket to hold the tons of felt I have picked up for the quiet book I am making. Can't wait to be able to share that. I am also hoping to get into sewing so this can hold fabric.

Baskets $.35 Each

The Hubs and I recently cleaned our office / my craft area. I bought these baskets hoping to be able to use them to corral different items.

Medela Pump & Save bags and Washable nursing pads $1.50 Each (normal price $15 and up)

I am done nursing for now and am not pregnant, but I could NOT pass these up. 

 Fitness ball $3 (normally $15)

Now I don't plan on using this for working out, but Ryder saw this and kept saying "ball, ball, ball." I've been looking for something for him to play with outside so this is our new backyard toy.

Pattern puzzles $1

I thought these would be perfect for our busy bag basket. Even though Ryder is too young for them. They are foam pieces with designs on them and then sheets of paper with patterns. The child is suppose to match the puzzles to the pattern. Sounds fun!

Did you have any luck thrift shopping this weekend?

~CJ

Hey World!

CJ is here and ready to share my craftiness with the world!

 Here will be my craft journal. I hope you enjoy my creations and can learn something here. I love to get ideas from others so I'm hoping I can help spark an idea in your world. To see some of my past crafts you can see them on the website ourdiydiaries. It is such a fun website so be sure to follow them. Thanks for reading and I hope you come back soon!


I would love for you to follow me! I'll return the favor! And grab a button if you so choose!

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