Cartwheels and Pearls

Every girl's dream is probably to have a dorm room that doesn't look or feel like a dorm room. I can safely say that I feel like I've achieved that. With ample storage and enough floor space to spread a yoga mat, I feel super comfortable in my dorm room! Here's the grand tour of it
I bought these cardboard letters from Jo Ann's and painted them and hung them on our door and our quad mate's door with command strips. You can find more info about the painted rock here. We actually use the rock to keep our door to our quad hallway open during the day and we love it!

We (I) crawled on top of the closets to hang up the Michigan flag. It was worth the hassle :) I got those two blue and pink boxes at Home Goods on sale and I love them! One holds all my snacks, the other holds my tea and coffee and another one under my bed holds my feminine hygiene products.
Here's my roommate's set up at her desk. We both agreed that our desks are for looking cute and charging our laptop at (maybe a little bit of online shopping?)... the real studying will occur in the library.



Here's my desk area... This picture was photobombed by our fan... boy do I love that fan.


Here is the top of my desk area... not pictured: my fish who did not survive the move :(

Here is my bed! Having a half lofted bed is great but it's impossible to make it well because I can barely reach it without my little ottoman pictured below.
 I moved my bed a bit so I could have some more space on top of my dresser... It's perfect for my hair and makeup stuff! My roommate also gifted me with these awesome navy and aqua jars she painted... How cute (and handy!) are they?!? I love them!

Here is a better view of my bed and all the storage I have underneath it! My ottoman even doubles as storage for my towels and sheets!

I used washi tape and sticky tack to hang up some pictures and this oh the places you'll go print
 The pillow cases I made myself along with the garland and the two canvases. The third canvas I made that sits on the top of my desk was SUPPOSED to hang on the left of the M canvas but after fighting with command hooks for about 15 minutes, I gave up and the space will remain blank until further notice...

And that's my dorm room! Let me know if you have any questions about anything and I apologize for my lovely iPhone photography and poor lighting (yay for rainy, grey days!)

As Facebook is filling up with Prom pictures and graduation pictures, chances are you're getting invited to way more graduation parties than you have time for... or money for. Because yes, it's customary to give a large monetary gift when you attend a grad party. But your gift of money will probably get lost in the sea of all the other money. Here's a new idea!
Get them something cute and small they'll actually use- plus it'll be memorable!

I went to Target and got mini bottles of Tide for $3 and then got various laundry bags (they didn't have enough of one :( ) for around $5.50. Then I got the little bags for the coins at Jo Ann's for $5 for 10 bags. I also got the ribbon and scrapbook paper there as well on previous occasions. I tied everything up and I plan on either putting them into gift bags or wrapping them in cellophane wrap.

Here's the link to the tags I made: College Checklist Gift Tags. FYI the check mark is hand drawn. I signed the bag of the tags with a little personal note as well.

I attached around $2 in quarters on the front there but obviously more could be attached. I didn't want to put a super large amount just in case some of the graduates were going to schools where they used Student cards inside of coins for the laundry machines!

 It was super easy to just whip up a bunch of these so I can grab them and go.

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...

St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays... I can't help it! My family is big Notre Dame fans and so I love all things Irish. This holiday is just a perfect mix of that! Click on the link below each picture to go to the site of where you can find them. I just included a small preview of each printable so it's a lot better to go to the original site.

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!

We've been slowly working away at making our house beautiful again... I mean hey, we've only lived here 17 years! I'm not even 17... anyways, the next total redo room on our list is the craft room. I mean I cleaned it up and you can find a lot of photos about that here.

But it honestly doesn't quite look this pretty anymore.

 I mean there's a giant roll of batting that for some reason is being lain across my sewing table. The fabric stacks are really getting jumbled. And the long table to the left that I selectively cut out of this picture is still a giant mess. I have about 5 empty feed sacks laying there waiting to be bag-afied.

I want a permanent solution! We're planning on painting the room and offically cleaning the stuff that wasn't cleaned up before.