Happy Halloween!

I'm sorry I've been M.I.A. lately, my family has been in town! It has been wonderful :) My sister and I decided to carve pumpkins for old time sakes. It was a blast. I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween!

Grass Vase

Here is a pretty simple project that took me about 15 minutes to complete. All the items I used were purchased from the Dollar Tree except one item (I already had it). First I purchased a vase from the Dollar Tree which I've used in projects past.

I then placed a vase floral insert in the bottom of the vase.

I apologize about the quality of the pictures. I apparently could not hold my camera still and did not notice until after I had completed the project.

I then added some fake moss to the vase. I have used this moss for about 5 project recently, I think it is safe to say it was a great purchase :)

I made quite the mess here. I then used some fake grass pieces I bought from the Dollar Tree to fill the vase. I cut them down with my wire cutters so they fit to the desired height I liked. After pushing the grass in my moss was smashed down a lot so I added some to the top to make it look fuller.

I placed the vase in my main bathroom. I really like how it turned out! I needed some color in that bathroom. (P.S. Those glasses holding the q-tips and cotton balls are also from the Dollar Tree).



Plastic/Glass Bowl

Ok.. I understand that this title is a bit confusing but let me explain. I wanted a new funky shaped glass bowl, however I didn't want to pay for one. I was browsing the Dollar Tree and found the perfect bowl... only problem was it was plastic.



Pretty cool huh? No I don't have a secret way to change plastic to glass. I just decided to get the bowl, fill it up and hope no one gets close enough to realize that the bowl is plastic. I know it is a silly plan but hey...it may work. You're the only ones who know the truth ;) So I filled it with these cool lemons from the Dollar Tree and here is the final product.

And there you have it.

Contemporary Topiary

Topiary seems to be everywhere you look these days and I finally decided I wanted to try my luck at putting something together. I knew I wanted it to be super modern and contemporary because that was the look of our master bedroom. I decided to collect some supplies. I picked up everything from Michaels and got to work. I sprayed my pop with some metallic silver paint and painted my Styrofoam ball black.

I struggled for awhile deciding exactly where to go from here. I didn’t know what I wanted to put on the top or what I should fill the pot with. I was browsing the new Christmas….yes I said Christmas section at Michaels and came across these little ditties.

They were .99 cents a piece but on sale for 50% off. I’m not sure if the sale was an early bird Christmas sale or what. Anyways, I picked a few up and brought them home. I then cut off all the silver balls from the twig branches they were attached to and began to stick them in my Styrofoam. I then added a little moss I had used for a few previous projects to cover up the inside of the pot. I loved the look of it but knew that something needed to be changed so I painted the top of my pot black to break up the silver and here is the final project.

 

I love it! I think it turned out pretty good. My boyfriend thinks it looks like something that belongs in a science fiction movie but I don’t care :)

Kitchen Table Center Piece

I have a huge square kitchen table and I love it, minus the fact that it looks huge with nothing on it besides some placemats. I know I needed something to put in the middle of it but on a low budget I had to be frugal. I went to my favorite DollarTree and invested in a square plastic bowl for you guessed it….$1. I liked the shape of the bowl but the color wasn’t exactly “right”.

No problem I thought, nothing a few coats of metallic gold spray paint for plastic couldn’t handle :) I got to work attempting to spray an even layer. I’m horrible at spray paint…I honestly find it hard to make it even and not too much and to not get running drops. Is it really that hard? Or am I just a little challenged in the spray paint department? Anyways, I sprayed my bowl to the best of my ability and from far away it looked even! I then needed something to fill my bowl with. I put some moss I had down on the bottom and filled it with some vase fillers I also found at the DollarTree. I also had a few of those decorative balls laying around so I threw a few of those in as well.

Not too shabby. It will do the trick :)

Pantry Organization

It was a matter of time before my OCD kicked in with this poor excuse for a pantry.

Ugh seriously there was stuff thrown everywhere and with the space being so small there is no room for that. I decided I needed to take action. The first problem is how small this pantry is and the second problem is these wired shelves.

Everything tilts on these wired shelves. I went to the dollar store and picked up some tubs and crates to sort things out. I sorted everything out and printed out some labels and this was the final product.

Much better :)

The Color Bee

I was so excited when I discovered The Color Bee! They have the cutest prints. I knew I had to order one so I ordered one. When it arrived I was so excited but realized right now I don’t have the funds to professionally frame the piece. I went to Goodwill and picked up a frame for $2.

Not my favorite painting I’ve ever seen and apparently my dog didn’t think so either.

Good thing I wasn’t planning on keeping that :) So I got to work taking apart the frame and spray painting the frame grey. I sprayed the frame and then added black paper to matte my Color Bee print. Once everything was finished I had a half way different framing job for less than $5! I hung it in our bedroom. If you haven’t yet check out the Color Bee. I’m sure you’ll love the prints!

Dollar Store Hurricanes

UPDATE #2: I finally found where I originally saw this post! I saw this post over at an amazing blog called Racks & Mooby
UPDATE: Lauren over at diy31 let me know that she has seen this tutorial over at 320 Sycamore

I have seen these around some blogs lately but can’t seem to find those who were responsible for this great idea! If you are responsible for this genius project or know who is please let me know so I can properly link back to you or them, thanks :) Anyway this idea is easy, fast and fantastic. First go to your local Dollar Tree and purchase a glass candle stick and a glass vase for you guessed it a dollar each.

 

I selected this duo. See that annoying sticker on my vase? I tried scrubbing it, rubbing it, peeling it and then decided to put soap and hot water on the little sucker, BAD IDEA. WARNING: Placing hot water on your dollar store vase will cause it to crack! Bummer! So I went back to the dollar store (I wasn’t too frustrated because I managed to forget cotton balls the first time I was there). I arrived back home and got to work finishing the project. I first very carefully removed the price tag and then I placed some super glue around the edge of my candle stick. Plopped the candle stick upside down on the vase and put a book on top of the candle stick to get it to stick better.

I left this structure sitting for about two hours. At the Dollar Tree I also picked up some vase fillers that looked like this.

They had a few other colors but these are the three I settled on to layer. After the two hours were up I flipped over my now hurricane and filled her up.

Pretty easy and cheap :) Again, let me know if you know the original genius of this idea or you are yourself the genius!

Thrift Store Frames

Recently when I was digging through the frame section of Goodwill I came across this beauty…

Cute huh? Ha well it is not so much my style it may be someone’s style. I picked up the piece for $1…yup that’s it. I figured there had to be some new life left in the old frame. The frame needed a good dusting and then I took out the glass and painting so that all that was left was just the frame. It is hard to tell by the picture but the frame had small indents around the edges. I picked up some metallic gold spray paint for $2 from the Hobby Lobby clearance section. I took the frame outside and gave it a good coat of the metallic gold.

I then hung it above our small book shelf.

It looked super boring. So I left it like that for about a week because I had no idea what I wanted to place in the frame. I was at the store and had a bunch of frames I was going to paint the same metallic gold and place them inside the frame but ended up putting them back on the shelves. I was at Michaels and found a heart twig wreath for $4.99. I decided to try it out in the middle of my frame. I also picked up at Michaels some slightly darker gold ribbon for $2.99 to hang the wreath with. Here is the final project.

I love it and it looks pretty “fall-ish”. It was an easy and inexpensive project and solved my issue of big empty space above my tiny book self.

Dollar Store Fall Wreaths

So craft blogs have been blowing up lately with many different kinds of fall wreaths. I even made one already for my front door that you can see HERE. I’ve previously mentioned that I work at a golf course and so I needed to decorate the course a bit for fall. I decided to make two more wreaths out of supplies from the dollar store. I started with the small wicker wreaths they have for sale.

 

Of course I needed my trusty glue gun for this project. I then purchased a few bags of leaves. You really only need one bag for two wreaths but I wanted some color variety so I picked up three different bags.

I then just began to glue leaves all around the wreath wherever I felt like I needed them.

I continued to do this until my whole wreath was covered (I saved the trouble and didn’t even do the back…no one is going to see it anyways).

So I finished the first one. I liked it but I needed a little something else. I had some big leaves left over from the first wreath I did (also leaves bought at the dollar store). So I decided to add some flair with these bigger leaves. I placed two leaves on top of each other on the side of my wreath. I added a few pearls I had in my craft box to the center of the leaves to add just that finishing touch.

Ta da! I love it. I need to get some fall colored ribbon to hang it with but other than that I am all finished. I like the fact that these can work for all of October and all of November. I paid $3 for three different bags of leaves. I had the big leaves but they were also $1 at the dollar store. The wicker wreath was $1. I had the beads laying around. So really this project could have been $2 total!