Cuter Puppy Bed

Pin It So this is a follow-up to my previous post (don't know what I'm talking about? Click here). My husband chose the fabric for the first one, and I chose the fabric for the second doggy bed... this one is more living room worthy! It has cuter (but cheaper - Walmart clearance!) fabric and has more fluff to it. Again, my puppy is a Weimaraner, so she'll get BIG, you may want to adjust the number of pillows depending on how big your puppy is.

Cute Doggy Bed Project: $46.5
6 Pillows: $24 - Again, I used old ones (so they smell like us) and put the new ones on our bed!
1 Shower Curtain: $7
2 Yards Main Fabric (Burlap): $5
1 Yard Trim Fabric (Yellow): $2.50
Zipper: $8
Duck Tape, Thread, Sewing Machine: Already Had

The first step was to make the same type of removable, waterproof interior using the shower curtains and pillows, but this time with six pillows. Again, see my previous post.

Then, measure the height, length, and width to cut 4 strips of fabric out of the trim. Next, measure the length and width of the main fabric and cut two identical pieces.

Pretty sophisticated measuring huh? Ha!

Sew together the yellow trim pieces at the corners. Then sew on the tops, again its a pretty simple pattern that I just winged. Add the zipper between the trim and top fabric and you're done! None of the pictures I took really show the process - check out my previous post if you need more of an idea, its a similar pattern. Here are the finished pictures!

I'm sure she'll grow into it!

Big belly!

Sooo sweet! Check out this GIANT paws!

Apparently the husband likes the dog beds too?

Front Yard

Pin It First of all I'd like to say my mom is a superstar... amazing... incredible.

She has come up to visit us (3 hour trip both ways!) the last two weekends to help us with our house. And by help, I mean really help and tell us what to do - we've never done this after all! But fist she prepared us an awesome and adorable picnic lunch.

Back to the yard... Yesterday she weed-wacked everything like a pro. This morning I woke up to her doing our very dirty dishes (thanks mama!). Then today, she masterminded, and did more than a fair share of the labor for this amazing feat (plus the backyard... which is to come later).

Yep, she is amazing... and this doesn't even show it all! And my amazing husband is a pretty great hard worker too, I think he took about 100 yards to the recycling center to haul all the yard waste... oh yea and he carried all the granite landscape rock! But can you see that stone edging... all me baby! (Even if that is pretty much all I did!)

Here is what we did, mixed in with several trips to the recycling center and the store:
1) Trimmed bushes
2) Raked around bushes
3) Pruned (lopped) off the unwanted bushes
4) Laid PREEN 25 year fabric over the ground to prevent weeds
5) Stapled in the PREEN
6) Relocated rocks to create a natural edger
7) Transplanted and watered some flowers (not in the picture) into the PREEN
8) Put 43 bags of pink granite over PREEN

And tomorrow we will go buy more... because we still aren't done, but the store was sold out of our color of stone! Steps 1-2 were last weekend and the rest we did this weekend.
I've got a hardworking husband and mom... maybe it has something to do with them sharing the same birthday? I swear they're the same... more on that strangeness later, ha!

Pinterest Project - Door Hanger

Pin It Back again! Summer has flown by already - hopefully July slows down. One of the Pinterest projects for this summer was making a door hanger for our front door at our new house! Our front door is in our enclosed porch so we don't have worry about the elements on our pretty new hanger - so I got to be a little more free in our decor choices. Here is a link to the original idea (in case you'd rather just buy one!).

Total Project Cost: $25 (I was at my parents so I had to buy everything new)

• Letters: 3 @ $3 each
• Flowers: 2 for $5
• Pearls: $2
• Paint: 3 @ .60 each
• Brushes: $5

Here is my how-to:

First I laid out all of my supplies to decide how I wanted it to look. I thought about making it a typical monogram, but it was going to be hard to put it together, so I settled on this instead.

I painted the all of the letters grey, but not on the edges.

After it dried I used painter's tape and painted the opposite letter to create the striped effect. After this was finished I put the contrasting color on the edges.
I wanted to use a hot glue gun to put it all together, but all my mom couldn't find it so I settled for gorilla glue. Again I used painter's tape to hold all the pieces together while the glue dried.
Once that was dried I put on the embellishments with more gorilla glue.
Add some string to hang it by (again with gorilla glue - working with limited supplies!) and voila! You have it!

My mom already wants me to make her one for Christmas! Maybe I've started something! :) I'd love to find the big letters like the Pinterest inspiration had though for next time - but I do like the contrasting 3D vibe of mine. These are the primary colors I want to work with in our house. What do you think?
Happy crafting!

Juicy Details

Pin It Okay so here is all the house information I'm CERTAIN you've been dying to know about. The house is a 1920 Foursquare with some Craftsman features that badly needs to be landscaped. Here is the current outside.

I took a bajillion pictures that I hope will be the eventual "before" pictures. I had planned on giving a "home tour" here... but I've had enough house for the day. I'll leave you with one of the many little things about the house that makes me smile - the door handles. ALL the handles are like this, gorgeous and authentic. Until next time...

Yay for pretty things!

Big News!

Pin It No dad, we aren't having a baby! But we are doing something pretty exciting... buying a house! We've run the numbers about a 1000 times and have finally jumped into making an offer on a home! (We'll give more details further in the post.)

We got a great deal on a loan from the USDA (read: perfect for a couple living on 1 modest teacher income). This is great because we need a project to work on together... something other than choosing our next movie on Netflix. We are also pretty certain living in a house will be about the same cost as apartment living plus we'll hopefully recoup some of that money.

So here are the juicy details I know you've been waiting for. The house is currently listed at $25,100 less than the appraised value because it has been on the market a year and is an estate sale. Sweet, right? Well, we happen to be looking at the top of our budget even with that schnazzy discount, so we offered $16,900 less than the listing price. That is a full $42,000 under appraisal value. Yep, that's right, we low-balled 'em stayed comfortably in budget. We also wrote a "seller love letter" saying how much we loved the house and how we could imagine ourselves and our future children (that's right dad, but focus on future). Then we waited...

We waited a full and agonizing 2 hours. They countered us... at only $1,500 more than we asked. HOLY COW! We obviously accepted and locked in the deal at $40,500 less than the appraised value. That number is huge, especially in this community where real estate is relatively inexpensive already. And the real estate agent told us our love letter to the seller was very effective. Yep - I'm that good.

We still have a slew of inspections and loan things to go through, but right now we are riding high on the fact that we are going to be homeowners on July 6! We've been told that the mixture of excitement and terror is completely normal - we hope so!

Can you see the terror in our eyes? The terrifying dreams of houses falling apart and negative balances in checking accounts? The excitement of learning new skills together and building something lasting?

I'll give details on the house itself in a later post - for now... YAY!