tag: free



 

Our house: office gallery wall

So as I mentioned last week, life has been busy. Hectic. Unorganized. So not much has gotten done around the house but I am trying to keep doing things that don’t take a lot of time or supplies. One of those things has to finally hang photos and art.

In my office I have a wall across from my desk that I stare at all day long and I decided to create a gallery wall full of images & objects that mean something to me or just that I like to look at.

And it is done!

my office gallery wall

I love my wall. It is random and pretty and makes me smile all day long.

Starting from the top left here is what it consists of:

  1. ‘be’ canvas – dollar store canvas and some paint. I printed the word off on my printer and used carbon paper to trace it on the canvas and just painted around it letting the white canvas show through. I made to remind me to just be myself and not worry what anyone else thinks about me.
  2. paper tole flower art – this was my husband’s grandmother’s. She had it hung in her house and we received it as a gift to remember her by. His aunt made it and I reframed it in a Ikea Ribba frame to bring it up to date. I love it!
  3. grateful print – by vol25.
  4. lanscape print on canvas – $5 from a flea market
  5. clock – $4 from walmart
  6. peace print (grey print in the black frame) – free printable from simple as that. I love this print because I had chosen ‘peace’ as my word of the year and this describes what I mean by that perfectly.
  7. skeleton key – found at a local country general store
  8. wooden letterpress ‘j’ – a gift from a friend. So happy to have it on my wall!
  9. mini canvas – a canvas I created using my grandmother’s handkerchief.
  10. dream – metal sign I purchased at a home show years ago. Was originally aged white paint and rust coloured so I painted it to go in here.

  11. Wizard of Oz poster – I have had this since I was in my teens. It is a mounted posted that was hung in my bedroom. It got placed in my office temporarily while we were dealing with our rec room carpet and I loved it. So it stayed.
  12. Photo of a rainbow – caught this gorgeous photo of a low lying rainbow in the back fields near our house. Took the picture with my iPhone and loved it.
  13. small print in gold frame – $5 at a flea market
  14. letter j – this was a cardboard letter from the dollar store and I covered it with some free printable paper with modge podge.
  15. a picture of me and a dolphin – a picture from a vacation I took where I got to meet (& kiss) a dolphin.
  16. Julia Child print – from unraveled design.

Up next? Painting the cabinets, organizing my files & making a note board.

 

mini canvas

So since I have been working on a gallery wall in my office as well as adding some new art to the kids’ rooms, I have been keeping my eye out for things around the house to make interesting and meaningful art. And this mini canvas is a perfect example.

This was a souvenir handkerchief my grandmother had in her possessions that I was given after she passed away. It was from Florida and I just really like the design and colours but don’t have any real connection to Florida itself. I just wanted to use one section of the hankie to showcase – the flower.

First I searched my house for the perfect frame but couldn’t find what I was looking for (and believe me, I have a lot of frames hanging around – my plans are to get them all on the wall by end of February) but then I remembered a mini canvas I had and gathered some supplies:

my supplies

So I laid out the mini canvas and used hodge podge to attach the fabric the way it would show the flower and the pretty scalloped edge. I also removed the staples from the visible side and just hodge podged the canvas down on that edge to make it look cleaner.

And now I have this little piece of art in my office.

my new wall art

And I love it!

 

free printable – meal planner – updated

Since I originally posted about my meal planning, I have made some tweaks based on my own use and some comments from people. I added 2 more days for those who like to plan the whole week, turned the paper upright, reduced the amount of groceries and added an area for notes (or a recipe). I am adding this version to download but keeping the original as well. Let me know what you guys think.

free printable: meal planner v.2

Download this free printable PDF (for personal use only).


So I have been meal planning for about 2 months now and can’t get over how awesome it is. We save money on groceries, but more than that, we aren’t throwing out rotten food that never got used, and I don’t stress in the evenings on what to make.

Now my meal planning system is based on advice I have been given from good friends and is very simple:

  • Pick 5 evening meals per week and buy groceries for those. (I don’t meal plan breakfast or lunch, just supper.)
  • Don’t decide what meal for what day, on your first day pick the meal you feel like cooking and cross it off your list.
  • Work your way through the list until you have made all five meals.

The reason you choose five meals is because two of the days will be leftovers. That depends really on what you make and how much you make. Often I find day 3 is a good leftover meal of day 1 & 2.

I love that this system is simple and flexible and just allows me to decide daily what I want to make but also removes the “what should we have for dinner” frustration in the kitchen.

I have made myself a pretty meal planning PDF that I am now using in my kitchen household files that combines my meal list with my grocery list. I added checkboxes to my grocery list as I HATE missing things when I am at the store.

free printable: meal planner

Download this free printable PDF (for personal use only). Enjoy!

Linking up to: I’m an Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday

 

our advent calendar

There have been so many great ideas about activity based advent calendars on blogs and pinterest in the last month, that I wanted to make my own. But I wanted it to match my style and use things I already had. So first I went shopping in my house. I found this:

old ikea drape and a 16 x 20 canvas

A blank canvas and an old unbleached cotton drape. So I cut up the drape. One piece to fit over the canvas and the other into little squares that were about 2.5″ X 3″ in size. 48 of them to be exact. I had made my measurements on a piece of paper and then used a cardboard template to trace the squares on the fabric.

yes, pencil on fabric! ;)

Then I sewed the little pieces together like pillows, turned them inside out and ironed them to make little patches, so to speak. (side note: I did this because I did not have any reinforcement to stop any fraying if I left the edges raw).

Then using embroidery floss, I stitched the numbers 1-24 in random colours on the front of each patch.

embroidering the numbers

And using matching thread, I stitched each patch on to my large piece of cotton on 3 sides to make little pockets.

sewing the pockets

I then stretched the fabric over the canvas and stapled it to the back (I had a hammer to make sure the staples went in flush). I covered the staples with masking tape to make the back look nice too!

stapling it to the frame

Lastly I printed out my activity list in different (again random) colours to fit in each pocket.

some of the activity cards

Next year I may add some more embroidery decoration to the background fabric, but for now I love our family’s new reusable advent calendar. (excuse the early morning photograph/bad lighting!) It sits perfectly at home right next to our 3 foot nutcracker.

our advent calendar

And for those wondering about my list, this is what I have (not necessarily in this order).

  • hang lights
  • get tree
  • decorate tree
  • hang stockings
  • go see santa
  • pizza night
  • gingerbread houses
  • bake cookies (x2)
  • christmas shopping
  • wrap presents
  • go to the library
  • hot chocolate
  • bubble bath
  • dinner at a restaurant
  • movie and popcorn
  • play board games
  • make paper snowflakes
  • christmas colourings
  • give a toy to charity
  • go to the library
  • wear red to school
  • breakfast for supper
  • open one special gift (for christmas eve)
 

a little bit of colour at no cost

Our kitchen is a place I am always looking for ways to add colour. The issue is that if you just place stuff around randomly, it can often look cluttered and not cohesive. So I have decided to infuse a little bit of green here and there to create a pulled together look.

One thing I love when I look at kitchens online and/or in magazines is the bright coloures utensil holder. I just don’t have the budget to spend money to replace something that was already functional. So last night, I had an idea.

I took this tin a friend gave us during a visit. And painted it using some craft paint I had already in the colour I wanted.

utensil holder - before

utensil holder - before

I then sprayed it with 3 coats of extra thick clear coat glaze. And ended up with this.

utensil holder - after

utensil holder - after

I love what I was able to do for $0 dollars.