Wish me luck, and I'll see you on the other side!
My Final Finals Week
Alright everyone, this is it! This is my very last finals week before I graduate! I will be a little MIA until all my crazy projects are done. I'll be holing up in a quiet corner of the library with my 25 page assignment today.
The Fault In Our Stars - Book Review
Have you read The Fault In Our Stars by John Green? It was recommended by Jenn at Peas and Crayons, so I picked it up at Barnes and Noble last week. As a member, I even got a discount since it was on the best seller's bookshelf. Hoorah!
I don't even know where to begin with this book. When I read that it was about a person named Hazel who had cancer, I had no idea it would be a 16 year old girl. Don't let it fool you though, this isn't your typical book about the impact of illness on a person's life. It is told from the perspective of a diagnosed teenager, who is doing the only thing you can do in her position....try to accept her life for what it is.
Naturally, Hazel spends much of her time trying to minimize the impact of hurt and pain she will have on others if......more like when.... she will die. A philosopher and book-worm, Hazel spends most of her days indoors reading or watching America's Next Top Model while hooked up to her breathing machine. That all begins to change when she meets Augustus Waters at her cancer support group.
Life as a teenager was complicated enough. I can't imagine getting your driver's license knowing that you are more likely to die from an illness inside your body than a car accident. I came to love Hazel and Augustus and their witty remarks and thoughts about life. They may be teenagers, but their lives are full and they are wise old souls.
I laughed. I cried. I became emotionally attached to these very real and extraordinarily relatable characters as they seek the answers we all do.... How can I make a difference in life? How will I be remembered when I am gone? How do I let myself love without reservation?
Read it. Love it. Learn from it.
DIY Washer Necklace
Yesterday I promised I would show off my washer necklace, so here it is! I threw together a few ideas I have seen online and a bit of my own style. The result? A super cute and quirky washer necklace that's perfect for summer time.
Want to make one? It's super easy, I promise. And the best part? It cost less than $2!
Gather Your Washers
I used varying sizes to get a fun and whimsical look.
Wrap With Baker's Twine
You could do anything here. Use yarn or mix colors of baker's twine. How cute would a rainbow wrapped washer be?
Assemble The Necklace
Layout your necklace and start tying it together. I used plain string to tie mine.
Finish it With Ribbon
Make the neck tie as short or as long as you want it.
Tie it on
Wear it Proudly
So what do you think? Would you wear jewelry made from washers? They are so cheap, you can try making your own, and if you don't like it...chuck them in the tool box to use for something else!
Washer & Ribbon Bracelet - Money Saving Monday
I have seen several tutorials for making washer necklaces with ribbon, so I thought why not try to make a bracelet in the same way?
I used the tutorial from Tiny Sparkly Things to make my bracelet. It was quick and easy, and most importantly, it was super CHEAP! These washers were only 10 cents a piece.
Despite the low cost, this bracelet makes a bold statement.
The bow adds an element of cuteness to the industrial feeling of the washers.
Head over to Tiny Sparkly Things for the DIY tutorial. What else can you make with washers? Come back tomorrow to see my version of the washer necklace!
My Weekend With Black Mold
Recently Sam and I have both been waking up feeling congested with sore throats and headaches. We thought we were just getting colds, but it seemed to be the worst in the morning and then almost better by the end of the day. Well, today I discovered the disgusting source of our misery.
There was an abundance of black mold growing behind our bed on the wall. EEWWW!!! I read about the best ways to get rid of it online, and was grossed out to learn that it can cause some serious health issues. After covering the surrounding surfaces with plastic, I proceeded to get to work with some bleach water and a dust mask.
 |
| excuse the poor quality |
Let me tell you, it was not a pleasant experience. After scrubbing the walls down and tossing all rags and the brush I used to clean it, I felt like I needed to be power washed clean. The window is open, and there is a fan drying the wall out, so I hope we can rid ourselves of this disgusting problem.
We use a humidifier in our room every night, partially for the white noise and partially because it's so dry here, but I guess our home just doesn't have the air flow needed to keep the moisture levels down. We won't be using it again, that's for sure. Hopefully this will solve the mold issue.
What did you do with your Saturday?
DIY Pillow Makeovers
Recently our cheap Wal-Mart throw pillows have been...decaying. They are literally unraveling and in desperate need of a makeover.
They might look fine on first glance, but check out the glorious holes that are appearing quickly.
I think it's time to give these babies an updated look. I've rounded up my favorite pillow makeovers below. Let me know in the comments which is your favorite!
Which one was your favorite? Should I use any of these design ideas in creating my own pillow makeovers? Let me know in the comments below!
Pottery Barn Inspired Rope Wrapped Hurricane
I love home decor items from Pottery Barn, but I don't always love the price tags. I recently decided to redecorate one of our bathrooms with a nautical theme. I found a fantastic rope wrapped hurricane from Pottery Barn that would go great in the bathroom, but it was way out of my price range. It was time to make my own instead!
 |
| Pottery Barn Aegean Hurricanes |
All you need for this project is some rope, a glue gun, and a hurricane container. I found my rope at Wal-Mart and my glass hurricane at the Dollar Tree. I already had the mini glue gun (which you can tell by it's old and grungy appearance).
It's a really simple process. You're just going to start gluing and wrapping your way around the bottom of the hurricane.
Be sure to press the rope into the glass and keep your rows of rope stacked tightly together. You don't want gaps between your rope.
The hardest part is just being patient. I found myself humming the Jeopardy music while I worked.
Once you are satisfied with how high your rope is wrapped, you can cut the end and glue it down. I didn't want the extra rope hanging off like the Pottery Barn version, but you could certainly leave a tail dangling down. You can also wrap the whole hurricane instead. Play around with it and see what you like best.
I love how it turned out, and I can't wait to build my collection of nautical items to decorate my bathroom.
So here's the cost breakdown:
Rope - $5 for 100ft. I used just under 14ft = 70cents
Glass Hurricane - $1.00
Two glue sticks - estimated 30cents
TOTAL - $2.00
That's a lot better than $39.50! It's not the same size as the Pottery Barn hurricane, and I know the rope looks different, but it achieves the overall effect I was looking for, and I didn't have to break the bank to get it. What else does this project inspire you to create?
DIY Crackle Medium - Money Saving Monday
I ran across this fantastic DIY crackle medium tutorial from Make the Best of Things. There are great pictures to show you the whole process. Go check it out and save yourself some money!
DIY Kitchen Wall Shelf
I wanted to quickly share with you a picture of my finally finished DIY kitchen wall shelf! I don't have pictures of the process since my loving husband did all the work on this project. You see, we have to come up with some pretty creative ways to add storage to our small apartment kitchen. Utilizing wall space is a great way to do that, but wall shelves can sometimes get expensive. We decided to simply make our own.
You might be thinking that it looks and awful lot like some floor shelving units that you've seen before. That's because it came from one!
We wanted a kitchen shelving unit to go between our chest freezer and our prep table. The only problem was, to get a shelf wide enough for the space, it was way too tall. That's when my handy husband saved the day!
He cut the main support poles of the shelving unit down to only have three shelves. The other two shelves he used to put on the wall for me! Finding a way to support all the weight with only one stud in the middle of the wall was interesting, but once that was taken care of, I suddenly had two more shelves of storage in my kitchen!
Now all I need is a bookend for my leaning cookbooks! I'm sure I'll find more fun kitchen gadgets to decorate utilize my shelf space!
John Rotellini's Tourpocalypse Show
This week I had the chance to see a friend perform a fantastic show for our little town. You see, John Rotellini is a magician! How often do you get to say you are friends with an actual magician? He isn't just your card tricks and rabbits in hats type of magician. His show was almost entirely audience participation, which kept an exciting buzz going the whole time. Everyone was nervous or excited to be chosen to go on stage.
Considering he could easily read any mind, no secret inside your head was safe from the audience. If that's not enough to make you nervous, just know that he also threw knives at people! Just when you thought he had made a mistake or that you had figured it all out, he would whip out a mind-blowing surprise for his eager audience. It truly made me feel like a little kid again, in awe of the impossible magic in front of me.
There was a great mix of people in the audience. This wasn't any little kid's birthday party magic show. Being in a college town, we saw a lot of college age adults in the crowd, but there were older adults and quite a few kids, too. Every age was entrapped by this world of magic.
 |
| Please excuse the poor photo quality. |
It was so fun to see new audience members go up on stage for every stunt and trick of the show. Some of the participants thought they could outsmart John, but he always got them in the end!
Here John is showing us his amazing ability of heightened senses when he is blindfolded. That's a steel blindfold over his eyes, and there was duct tape under that!
It was such an amazing show, and I feel like I experienced something unique. John has already worked with big names and famous faces. I know he has big things in his future, and I feel honored to have been at one of his small town shows in the beginning of what will surely be a fantastic career. To learn more about John's magic and the shows of his Tourpocalypse, please visit the John Rotellini website.
Pull Apart Garlic Bread
I make a big effort to actually try the recipes I put on my food board on Pinterest. I was in charge of bringing bread to an Easter dinner we shared with friends. It was the perfect opportunity to try this delicious looking bread from Spoiled Much.
It tasted SO good! I will be making this bread again and again. It is sure to become a staple in our home. It tasted similar to delicious breadsticks, but with a light and fluffy texture.
Here's how mine turned out.
It tasted SO good! I will be making this bread again and again. It is sure to become a staple in our home. It tasted similar to delicious breadsticks, but with a light and fluffy texture.
Our friends loved it so much they ate the rest of it for breakfast the next day! It was completely worth the time and effort it took to make. Get the recipe here!
How I Compost
I've been small scale composting for about two years now. I'm still learning about the process of composting, and I'm always looking for ways to improve. Today, I want to share with you my current composting system.
There are a few things that have shaped my system into the way it is today.
- We have limited yard space.
- Riley (our dog) gets into everything.
- My husband was worried about the compost smelling.
- I am fairly lazy.
These factors led to my trash can compost bin. You can find a great tutorial to make your own here. This system is great because the trash can protects the compost from the nosy dog, and it can live out by my garden. No smells by the house, and it doesn't take up a lot of room.
To make life really easy, I purchased a bucket from my local ranch supply store to use for our kitchen scraps. Every day we just throw anything you can compost into it. At the end of the day I fill it with some water and take it outside to the composter.
This system has led to the phrase "Chuck it in the bucket!" which we say whenever we are getting ready to throw something out that should be composted instead.
Right now the bucket has parsley that was a little past its prime, an old banana (which I cut up into pieces to help the decomposing process), strawberry tops, and bits of a toilet paper tube.
My compost bucket has to be secured to my garden with a bungee cord, since the wind blows so much here. In fact, the bungee cord holding my lid on broke and the lid blew away.
This means that I can't roll my composting can around the yard right now. I have found that turning it with a pitchfork works just fine, but it does dry out much faster without the lid.
I get pretty lazy about composting in the winter, so my pile has been a little neglected. I need to get some greens on this baby to get it going again.
I'm so excited to be eating great, fresh foods and using them to feed my garden, too. I am planning to add some red wriggler worms to my compost bin soon. I hear they do wonders for speeding up the composting process. Some people have compost bins based entirely on using worms! I'll probably buy mine from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm.
So that's it! That's how I try to be a little greener and feed my garden with my own compost. To learn more about how to compost, visit Composting 101.
New Design
I think I've fine tweaked all the details of the new blog design. I am loving the direction is has taken. It's been a long time coming, but this design really reflects my personality and the feeling of simplicity I want for Nest Candy. So, what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Is it too white? Is anything confusing or bothering you?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. I write for you, my reader, so I want to make the blog a place for you!
Construction
The blog is going to be a bit of a mess for a bit. I'm doing some construction! Don't worry, it will all be back to normal soon and better than ever. Thanks for your patience!
Why I Failed at Couponing
About a year ago, I shared a post all about my shiny new coupon binder. I was so excited and dead set on becoming a great couponer. I thought that soon I would be getting steals and deals on everything I picked up at the grocery store. Unfortunately, I did a few things along the way that didn't make this an easy or a successful process. Today, I'm going to tell you why I failed at couponing.
1. I thought it would be easy.
I knew that couponing would be a time intensive process, with all the gathering, cutting and organizing of coupons, but I assumed that I would have the process down in a week or two. There are so many great resources out there for people who want to get into couponing, but unfortunately, there aren't very many for my area. Wyoming sometimes has different deals and sales than other states. I would often get excited for a deal I had seen advertised on a website, only to find myself later disappointed that it wasn't the same in my area.
2. I didn't fully commit.
I wasn't sure how successful I would be at the whole couponing process. This meant that I would only buy two newspapers from outside the doughnut shop on Sunday morning. I did look into ordering newspapers, but I just never got around to actually doing it. This meant that if I wanted coupons from the Sunday paper, I had to get up every Sunday morning and drive to a newspaper dispenser with my quarters. I'm sure you can figure out how long that lasted!
3. I have limited store options.
My little town only has a Walmart, a Safeway, an Albertsons, and a Kmart. Oh yeah, and a Staples. Those are the only stores that I ever found coupons useful for. I desperately wanted to take advantage of the Target coupons I would find, but the closest one is about an hour away. Also, only having one of every store means that if they are out of an item, there aren't any other locations to check. That's it.
4. I'm kind of a brand snob.
Okay, I actually have to blame this one on my husband. Before we got married, I would easily switch around between brands. Let's just say he has very special taste buds that can only be satisfied with the correct brand. To be fair, I have become just as picky as he is. This makes it difficult when you're trying to take advantage of sales.
5. I prefer fresh foods over boxed or processed.
Let's face it, a majority coupons for chain grocery stores are for boxed or processed foods. I found myself buying foods that we wouldn't normally have purchased, simply because I had a coupon for it. I'm not saying that there aren't coupons for healthier and fresher foods, but they are much harder to come by in my area.
6. I don't have kids.
This might seem like a strange reason to list for failing, but the fact is, when you are only feeding two instead of a family, you don't need to stock up on things the same way. For some perishable items, if you don't go through them fast enough, it's a waste of money. Also, we aren't buying things like diapers or baby formula. When it's just two adults, you begin to realize how many coupons are for kids' snacks or products for a family.
7. I don't have to coupon.
I don't say this to brag, but simply to point out that financial necessity plays a huge role in how motivated you are to succeed at couponing. The truth is, we don't need coupons to afford our groceries. I was just hoping to save money on food items so we could have a little extra for fun things that we have to skip out on normally. Who doesn't want to have their cake and eat it too? The fact that it wasn't necessary for me to coupon allowed me to majorly slack off.
It turns out I was just not made to be a coupon queen. That's okay with me, but if you're hoping to be more successful at it than I was, take note of my mistakes. Try to find online resources for your area, and don't give up if it's important to you!
**Update** Since receiving a large amount of discussion due to this blog post, I'd like to clear a few things up. I don't consider my small savings from coupons a failure. I claim that I failed at "couponing" because I don't consider the act of using a coupon now and then to save money the same as being a "couponer" who won't buy things unless they can match a sale and a coupon to stock up on the item. This post was written to explain why I felt that the "coupon queen" style of couponing just wasn't working for me. I will always check for coupons when I'm purchasing my weekly groceries, but I won't be creating my shopping lists based around the sales. I hope this makes sense, and that this clears a few things up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
