Home and Garden

Photo Credit: Happy Money Saver

It’s time for another post in our Spring Cleaning Bash, today you will find Karrie over at Happy Money Saver showing us what she did to spruce up her garden and yard to get ready for Spring.

We are getting Spring-like weather here, so she has inspired me to get outdoors and watch my kids clean the yard.   Just kidding!   I promise to help!   We were so excited when we bought this house because it came with a nice sized yard, but boy is it a lot of work!   It really does require the whole family pitching in to get it cleaned up!

You can keep track of all the upcoming projects in the Spring Cleaning Bash announcement post. Make sure you also follow the Frugal Spring Cleaning Pinterest board for more ideas.

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I am happy to announce that in March, me and 8 of my Northwest Blogging friends are teaming up to bring you a Spring Cleaning Bash!    Woo Hoo!   Nothing says party like a clean house.    Truthfully, a clean house usually means there is a party or get-together happening soon at our house.   Please tell me I am not the only one who’s kids ask “who’s coming over” when the house is really clean.    That happens to you too, right?

Below you will find a schedule of areas that we will be tackling and the days the posts will go up on the respective blogs.    We will be sharing frugal ways to clean and organize your home in each of these areas.   It’s going to be fun!    I hope you will join in and get organized too.    Who’s with us?

March 1 (Friday): Master Closet (with The Coupon Project)

March 4 (Monday): Yard & Garden (with Happy Money Saver)

March 8 (Friday): Bathroom (with Because More is More)

March 11 (Monday): Office & Paperwork (with Grays Harbor Deals)

March 15 (Friday): Pantry (with This Beautiful Frugal Life )

March 18 (Monday): Garage (with Coupon Savvy in Cowlitz County)

March 22 (Friday): Kitchen and DIY Cleaning Solutions (with Sweet Deals 4 Moms)

March 25 (Monday): Kids Rooms (with Centsible in Seattle)

March 27 (Wednesday): Kids Rooms (with Thrifty NW Mom)

March 29 (Friday): Laundry & Craft Room (with Thrifty & Thriving)

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I am excited to be bringing back the Homemade Holiday Series this year, I will be sharing lots of fun gift, home decor and baking projects throughout the holiday season.

If you are already thinking Christmas and want to get a jump start on gift making here are some of the homemade gift ideas from the last 2 years.   Enjoy!

Washer Pendant Necklaces (these are super easy and inexpensive.)

Glass Tile Pendant Necklaces (these are also super easy and inexpensive)

Glass Tile Magnets and Coordinating Gift Packaging (I love how these turned out)

Button Bobby Pins and Packaging (Super Simple and cheap!!)

Post-It Note Holder (great for kids to make for their teachers)

DIY Marshmallow Shooter  (fun kit you can put together so kids can make their own marshmallow shooter) This is one of my most popular posts!!

Make your own gift wrap (fun and easy!)

Here is last years Christmas Countdown, I am making a new version this year and I am super excited to show you once I get it all done.

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I mentioned that we are throwing my daughter a fun tropical themed birthday party.   I just finished up the treat bags and wanted to share them with you  . The majority of our budget has been spent on decorations and food, so I wanted to make sure the treat bags came out as economical as possible.   I am happy to report that the treat bags came in for around $1 a piece.   I used the dollar store and clearance finds to put these together.   Here is what I did:

She chose fuschia, orange and yellow as the colors for her decorations, and we found a cute little 3-pack of bags at the dollar store.   We decided to use these instead of just the clear cello bags we had originally planned on using.  Each bag is about $ .33 each.

We added one of the Tropical Lip Smacker lip glosses to each bag.   I picked these up at the Target Easter clearance when they were 70% off, these cost me $ .38 each.

I saw these bracelets at Kohl’s on clearance to 80% off.   They just happened to match the colors of my daughter’s party.   There were exactly 8 bracelets in the pack for $3.20, which is exactly how many treat bags we were making.   The cost of each bracelet works out to be $ .40 each.

I had planned to go out an buy some candy to put in the bags, but I remembered I already had these YummyEarth Organic Lollipops on hand that I picked up from Amazon recently.   These were FREE from Amazon with my Swagbucks. (If you haven’t tried these yet, you really should, they are so good!).

I used my Silhouette to cut out a hibiscus flower to dress them up a bit. So the final results are a treat bag with a bracelet, a lip gloss and some organic suckers all for only $1.11.  We made 8 treat bags, so the final cost for all of them was $8.88.   I am pretty happy with the results and my daughter is too!

I would love to hear your clever ideas for treat bags and any money saving tips you might have.

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My pantry is in need of some serious organization.  It seems like every 4 months I have to clean and reorganize the pantry, because things just get shoved where ever.  I decided that this time around I want to organize it with bins and labels so that everything has its own place.  My husband laughs at me, because he is pretty sure bins and labels aren’t going to solve my problem.  He is probably right, I am guessing we will need to get rid of a couple of children before it will actually stay organized, however, I am willing to give it a try!

I hope to tackle the pantry this weekend and share my results with you sometime within the next 2 weeks, but before I do I have agreed to share my “before” photo with you.  I really wanted to straighten it up a little before I took the picture, but I fought the urge and I decided to keep it real for all of you.   So, here you go…my crazy, unorganized and overloaded pantry.

Is your pantry in need of some organization?   If so, I hope you will join me in getting it organized!!   So, who’s with me?   Don’t forget to take a “before” and “after” picture so you can share them.   Let’s aim for getting it accomplished by Wednesday, February 22nd.

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