I stumbled across a cool new blog yesterday and I'm pretty excited about it!  A Bowl Full of Lemons is hosting The 21 days to get organized challenge, and I'm joining in.  Now I'll be honest, I probably won't be able to do every challenge every day (school, work, life, etc will surely get in the way), but I'm going to try because I love to be organized.  My apartment hasn't gotten the TLC it needs for a long time, so I'm super pumped to get it whipped back into shape.  One of my New Year's Resolutions is to get rid of 365 things, and I'm sure this challenge will help.  If I've piqued your interest, be sure to head on over to A Bowl Full of Lemons and check it out.  Even if you don't want to take on the challenge, she's got a great blog!

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011

Hi bloggy friends!

Guess what!  I got a sewing machine for Christmas!  I'm super excited about it and should have lots of projects to share with you soon.  However, I haven't gotten to fire it up yet because I have spend my post-Christmas free time cleaning and organizing the apartment and finding room for all of our new Christmas goodies.  Plus I go back to work today and school next week, so it will be back to the grind for me.

For today, I'll leave you with some pictures of some of my homemade Christmas gifts.  If you have any questions about how I made any of them, just let me know!

Exercise Cards

I had a whole stack of exercise moves and routines that I had clipped out of magazines but they weren't really accessible.  And I had just gotten my Forever Young Cricut Cartridge and was dying to use it.  All I did was tape the exercise articles to one side of a note card and decorated the other with Forever Young cutouts.  Now they are much easier and more fun to use!

Fabric Flower

This was something I whipped up real quick a while back because I needed something to spice up my outfit for a wedding.  It's nothing fancy, but I've worn it a couple of times, as a necklace or broach, and I like it a lot.    I used this post for my instructions. 

Here's a picture of me wearing it (I'm in the middle in case you couldn't figure it out :) ).

Covered Box

I took this really heavy, nice cardboard box from work.  It is from the place that does some printing for us.  I covered it with some pretty scrapbook paper and now it is in our bedroom and I use it for extra storage.  Lucky for me, the box was already white, so it wasn't had to cover and I didn't have to paint it (I'm kind of an instant gratification person, and waiting for paint to dry takes a while).  It's great, especially since it was free!

Grocery Ad Holder

This is another super cheap, super easy project that helps keep us organized.  We try really hard to do our grocery shopping based on what is on sale that week.  The thing is that we get our ads in the mail on Wednesday or Thursday but we don't usually go grocery shopping until Sunday.  That means I have to try to keep track of the ads for a few days before we use them.  It was kind of a headache until I came up with this:

 All I did was take a manila envelope and cut the top off and decorate it with scrapbook paper (it matches my plastic bag holder).  Then I glued magnets on the back and now it lives on the refrigerator so I can always find the grocery ads when I need them.

Cleaning Schedule

I lucked out and am dating & living with a guy who knows how to clean.  He really does a good job, but the only problem is that he likes direction--he needs me to tell him what I want cleaned.  To help with this, and to make the cleaning job more manageable, we sat down and made a schedule of what needs to be cleaned and assigned them to the days of the week.  Then I typed it up, printed it on regular paper and put it in a frame behind glass.  This way we can cross things off as they get done.  I'll be honest, we don't always follow it, but its nice to at least have goals.

Wall of Frames

When we were packing up BF's room at his parents house to move him in with me, he had a bunch of random frames with certificates and stuff from high school in them.  He didn't really want to display them anymore, but being the frugal creature that I am, I couldn't get rid of the frames.  I decided to paint them and put them up in our office.  I also painted a bulletin board to match.

The frames didn't really match, so painting them all blue really tied them all together.  Some of them I just kept the glass in and am using them as dry erase boards.  Some of them I put metal sheeting and am using them as magnet boards.

Here you can see the bulletin board a little better.  My paint job wasn't stellar, so I stapled ribbon around the edge.   They are well used now.  In my next post, I'll share what I did with one of the dry erase ones to ensure the apartment gets cleaned.

All You Need Is Love

I made this sign with the BF in mind because he loves the Beatles.  All I did was take a Halloween sign from the Dollar Tree, painted it, cut the letters out with my Cricut and Modge Podged them on.  Super easy and super cheap!  It hangs right by the front door (I needed it to be big to cover some holes my old roommate left in the wall when she moved out and took her artwork with her).

I

Wedding Gift

I'm done with finals!  Yay!  This means I'm going to be finishing a lot of Christmas gifts this week, so be prepared for some projects!

My Roommate got married this past weekend.  I should probably explain that when I talk about my Roommate I am talking about my dear friend who I lived with my freshman year of college.  She will always be my Roommate.  Here is the gift I made for them.  I've seen a few plaques like this around Blog-land, so if it was originally your idea, let me know and I will give you credit.

I got this plaque at Hobby Lobby.  I was originally going to get an unfinished wood one, but this one ended up being the same price and I had to do less painting.  I kind of forgot to take pictures of the steps along the way, but I spay painted it blue and then did a coat of off white paint (I got one of those paint samples at the hardware store).  I used my Circut to cut the letters out of this:

It is craft paper that is sticky on one side.  I stuck the letters on then did a coat of clear sealer.  That didn't go so well and I ran out, so I did a couple of coats of Outdoor ModgePodge.  Here's how it ended up:

Christmas Cards

Just wanted to share our Christmas card with you

I ended up designing it myself in Photoshop.  I used a digital scrapbook kit from Summertime Designs and printed them at Costco because it was the only place I could find that didn't make me use one of their designs.  Luckily the parentals have a Costco membership.  The only downside was that the minimum order was 50 cards (only cost around $15 though) so we will probably have a bunch leftover. 

Graduation Shadow Boxes

Just a couple of shadow boxes to hold graduation memorabilia.  The smaller one is from Boyfriend's high school graduation--when we moved him into the apartment, I found all of this stuff and decided to display it in a shadow box I found at my parents house.  The other one is mine from college--it has my diploma cover (the diploma is framed and hangs above my desk), my medallions, a copy of the announcement, my tassle and my sorority honor cords. 

New Planner

I'm a planner.  I need a schedule and I need a calendar or nothing gets done.  I blame my father.  He buys the same appointment book every year.  Seriously, the same one.  I think a few years ago they redesigned it or stopped making it or something and there was a crisis, but the nice lady at Hall's from whom my father always orders his appointment book sorted it out.  Like my father, I have to have a planner and I carry it with me most of the time, but unlike my father, I am not attached to any one type.  In fact, I usually go though at least two a year.  The planner I had gotten at the beginning of the school year was getting a little messy, so when I saw this post at eighteen25, I got an idea.  I didn't need a Christmas planner, but I did need a all the time planner.  Here's what I did:

I covered the front of a composition book with scrapbook paper.  Before I glued it down, I hot glued a piece of ribbon all the way around to tie it shut.  I embellished the cover with my initials (cut from my Cricut) and a scrapbook die cut.

Then I covered the inside too.  I cut the top off of a big envelope and cover it with scrapook paper to make a pocket on the inside cover.

I covered the inside back cover and the back cover too.

I originally wanted to do the calendar pages like they did but it ended up being a headache, so I just did them in Word instead.  It made it easier for me to resize things like I wanted and I got to play with the fonts.

I did a month calendar and then weekly ones.  Each weekly page has a blank page opposite it for notes, lists, etc.  I love that it has lots and lots of room to write things down.  It is a little big, but I carry big purses so it works for me.  Best of all is how inexpensive it was!  All I had to do was buy the composition book which was less than $2 at an office supply store.  You can customize it to fit your needs!