Cartwheels and Pearls

Life is expensive in general but the holidays are especially so. For a person like me who loves to give, it's hard to have to limit myself. Here are a few ideas I've developed over the years to make the holidays a little easier on my wallet.

1. Do most of your holiday entertaining at Starbucks (or another coffee shop) and just buy a simple cup of coffee/tea. 
Meeting someone for lunch means spending anywhere from $10-$15 easily. Having someone over at your house means usually providing an entire meal, drinks, and dessert for your guests as well as a gift. Keep it simple. A cup of coffee is around $2.

2. Go Thrift Shopping
Make an outing to Salvation Army with some friends to search for some crazy Christmas sweaters. Funny sweaters make great gag gifts and you may even find some pieces to upcycle into some gifts! I love to search for paintings (to paint over) and frames (to paint and add my own photos to) for an easy project that makes a thoughtful gift!

        Apparently the latest thing is that many stores are closing on Thanksgiving day so their employees can spend time with their loved ones as well as to encourage customers to do the same. My company is not one of these.

       In a world full of technology, where everything moves a mile a minute, sometimes it's hard to slow down and realize the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, though an American holiday with no religious connection, is still an amazing opportunity to simply give thanks. I encourage you all to put your phone down for a few minutes and to love on all those around you. Tell them why you love them!

        So I thought I'd take a moment to set my mounds of homework aside and share what I'm grateful for!

I'm grateful for my family who is delaying Thanksgiving dinner several hours so I can join them once I get off of work

I'm grateful for my dogs for always making me laugh over FaceTime... even when my sister accuses of me of only calling her so I can see them

I'm grateful for an AMAZING big who literally cried because she missed my initiation ceremony



I'm grateful for coffee for always helping me get through Mondays... and Fridays... and every day in between.

What are you thankful for this year?

I know you've been waiting with baited breath for me to post again. I've definitely enjoyed my unplanned hiatus.
So now here is my Spring "mantle."
 I completed it basically as soon as St. Patrick's Day passed. I'm so done with all this cold. THANKFULLY though, we've finally reached warm ish weather! Before school everyday, I have to heat up my car and walk in with my winter coat on. After school, everyone can be seen in short sleeves even though it's only 45.
Anyways, here is my mantle.

 Yes those are chewed up eos egg chapsticks. My mom decided that they would go perfectly fine with my color scheme and be out of the dog's reach.



 Yes that is a candle holder sans candle. Shhh. Here's the Hello Spring Printable.
Apparently we own quite a few Easter themed books? My mom put these on display here after I finished the top.

And so here is the whole thing. I opted for no garland out of pure laziness. I was going to make one out of easter eggs but that obviously did not happen...

Okay I'm officially calling my wood burning stove a "Mantle." And it's the forever home of all decorations for minor holidays and festivities. I will exclude Christmas from that because the Christmas decorations go on the piano. You can find out about that here or even see my Valentine's Day "Mantle"

Anyways, since St. Patrick's Day is in almost  a month, I decided I'd get festive in advance!

I made this rock a couple years ago along with the pot of gold and the little banner but basically I just went outside, found a rock, spray painted it gold, and wrote the word "lucky" on it. Mind you, 2 years ago we did not have 2+ feet of snow covering everything.

For this little pot of "gold," I found more small rocks and spray painted them gold but there's really only like 10 rocks in the bucket which was just an old plastic flower pot. I stuffed newspaper into the pot and then put a layer of rocks on top. And then of course I just added a few clovers for good luck.

Here's the link to the Lucky Subway Art. I just printed it out and of course my printer only prints in red and yellow (except when I print things in red and yellow of course!). So I colored things in with sparpies and just called it a day.

I do have black ink though! And so I printed out this Lucky Definition and colored in the shamrocks.

For the bunting, I just cut out triangles from green and white paper, stuck some shamrocks on it of course, and hung it up. This was another of the decorations that I had made a few years ago and I'm pretty sure there had been 4 little flags instead of 3...? So I just rearranged them on the string and taped it up.
And of course down below you can see MORE shamrocks that I just taped up to the glass. They have sticky backs but I figured taping them would be a little less permanent! You can find all of these shamrocks at Jo Ann's for only a few dollars.

May the luck of the Irish be with you all!

I only say "mantle" because our wood burning stove is not home to a real mantle. BUT if I did have a mantle, this is how I would decorate it! I had to leave so I just gave up on putting a lot of things on here and just settled for three framed printables, a garland, and a few spare hearts. We don't use our wood burning stove at all don't be alarmed of any fire concerns!







Have a lovely week everyone! And happy (EARLY) Valentine's Day!

DIY in this case stands for Decorate It Yourself! We don't have a mantle but we do have a piano and the top of it is almost like a mantle. The concept is similar so bear with me and I'll share with you how I decorated my not mantle for Christmas this year!

 With the "Baby it's cold outside" and "Glory to the newborn king" printables, my printer printed them out in a very light yellow so I just drew over them with a gold sharpie. I just put everything in some random frames I had laying around the house and then threw in a few random little objects and called it a day!

This year I got lazy and pulled out last year's St. Patty's day decorations. Here they are:






You can find the directions (along with some crappy photos!) here:

Pennent

Pot of Gold

So loving my "new" camera and all the great pictures I can take now!

I'd like to wish each and every one of my amazing followers a merry christmas and heck, even a happy new year! Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I embark on a journey. or a roadtrip. You can call it either one. I've bee SUCH a bad blogger lately. I've been super busy lately but how about a few pictures? I found a Canon EOS Rebel T3 underneath the Christmas tree. I guess Santa really knew what I wanted. Or maybe it's a coincedence that there's $250 missing from my bank account. And the same amount from Mom and Dad's. Hmmm. Nawww. Anyway, I found it on sale at Target on Black Friday for around $500 including a case for free which is normally at least $40. And now for some photos to make things exciting:


Now it's time for church. You know, the lovely candle light services where all we do is sing amazing christmas songs and I always cry. Hopefully we don't have a repeat of last year where I almost lit a girl's hair on fire. Whoops! When we get back, I'll be sure to share some of my recent creations which does include food. That's something I don't want to talk about right now. Imagine a table FULL of cookies. Then a homemade (authentic!) Mexican buffet. Then imagine that table of cookies again. That's how I feel. Be sure to throw in a cup of coffee, a coke, and a bottle of water. I'll probably have to pee about 10 million times during church. GREAT.
Anyway,
Merry Christmas!