I used a cardboard box (instead of foam board), a stapler, a staple gun and burlap for mine. I also used a rotary cutter (or scissors are fine), and a yard stick. I had everything except the burlap which I purchased 3 yards of at Joann Fabrics, with a coupon, for less than $6.

Quite simply I just made it up as I went. But, I also read a few of the different tutorials too. It was as simple as measuring the window, marking the box and cutting it. I added about three extra inches to each side and scored a line, so that the cardboard would fold easily and be able to secure to the window frame.

I cut my burlap about two inches larger on all sides of my cardboard so I could wrap it like a present.

And that’s just what I did. I wrapped it and using a normal desk stapler I stapled it all around. I stapled it like the way you’d staple something onto a cork board, by opening up the stapler, not the way you’d staple two pieces of paper together. Get it?

After that I used the hot glue gun to touch up any spots that were being rowdy; mostly on the corners.

Then, where I had scored the ends, I bent it gently to get it to square off so I’d be able to secure it to the window trim.

I called in the muscles to staple it to the window. Al got to work, reminding me about how he hates that burlap sheds. But in the end we were both pleasantly surprised.

I had this feeling that this cardboard box window treatment was going to look like, well, a cardboard box. But it didn’t! I hate drapes with a deep passion so I think this is a great alternative. And for two windows it was less than $6. Can’t beat that.

How do you guys dress your windows? Do you love drapes? Or maybe you just use shades or blinds? A side note on the photos…there is SO little natural light in our house. For the past 15 months I’ve taken more photos trying to figure out the best way to take photos in this house and I’ve reached a point where I’m almost giving up. So I apologize that the photos are dark!

We have them scattered around in all the rooms including a few other flowering plants.

And every so often I have a bouquet of flowers in the house. I usually split up the bouquet into a few vases and put them in different rooms. This particular bouquet my dear Alton bought me last week because of what I’ve been going through with my foot.

Since I can’t move around very well I never got around to splitting it so it’s looking pretty nice and full in the kitchen…in a tall beer glass!

Many of the plants we adopted from my father-in-laws house and we grabbed a few at Home Depot.

Al definitely has way more of a green thumb than I do.

Any plants in the house that are dying are because of me, the thriving ones are because of him. This one for instance was my doing, we’re still trying to save it…

I love having plants around. They add such a nice green touch and they’re working hard on the air quality when you didn’t even know it. Do you guys have any particular plants in your homes? For more info on air purifying plants go here. They have no clue who I am, just have good info about the plants!

Pretty much though, behind closed doors, I try to reuse shoe boxes for most organizing. They’re the perfect size and are typically pretty sturdy cardboard.

I use them in the freezer to organize foods. Vegetables in one, fruits in the other. I use them in the bathroom cabinet.

First aid supplies in one, medicines and miscellaneous items in the other.

I use them in closets to corral extra toiletries and travel sizes items.

Shoe boxes are also great sized boxes to wrap gifts in. Of course, take out the paper and that stay fresh packet thing first. I’ve also found a great Pinterest Project, that involves shoe boxes, that I hope to work on soon.

Overall they’re great for a lot of things other than storing shoes. I’d love to know if you use shoe boxes for anything. Storage? Organizing? Wrapping?

So for the next few days I’m sitting back and chilling out. Which is really hard for me, as Al has witnessed over the past few days. I’m incapable of sitting still. Maybe I’ll take up knitting?

Anyway, I’ll be back in business next week hopefully. For now, don’t take your feet for granted!

We decided to use the piece as a console type stand under our television. The TV is on the wall so we needed somewhere to stash the cable box, modem and blu-ray.

I was able to combine two piece of storage into one with this perfect find. Originally we had this piece working as home base for the cable box and we had this piece housing games, DVD’s and blankets. And then I had a basket on the bookshelf stashing extra batteries, flashlights, etc.

Now, everything fits in this one piece. Batteries, flashlights, extra remotes in the drawer; games & DVD’s in the cabinet and everything else placed on top.

I’m thrilled with it. And just by removing the chest that was stashing things it seems like there’s lots more open space in the room. The total cost of the whole project was just under $4 — only paid for the can of primer. Everything else was either free or already owned. Ahhh gotta love the curbside finds!

Let me tell ya though, this thing was in rough shape. But just the type of rough shape that I like. That’s some sort of oil stain on the top and I had to clean it, like scrub clean the whole thing, at least three times.

And there was definitely still some dirt that we just painted over and pretended it wasn’t happening. We both got splinters from this project too. Goes to show it was a good one. Al may or may not still have some wood in his hand.

After we really scrubbed it down, we sanded it. Kind of lightly, but very thoroughly. I also went around and made sure that it was all smooth and there were no more slivers sticking up.

I decided to go for a spray primer just to simplify the process. Though, more and more I’m leaning towards spray primer. It’s just so easy and clean and easy. We used a Rustoleum brand primer.

Al primed the whole thing and I made him wear a mask. That’s my new thing, mask wearing while spray painting. He fought me on it but I won. He primed and we let it sit for a bit before painting.

The paint was a free sample can that I got at an Ace Hardware. Whenever I have a free sample of paint I always go get it before it expires. I’ll usually get it in a neutral color because I know I can always use it for something. This one was Benjamin Moore’s Silver Half Dollar. Only problem with the samples is that it’s always a flat base, so I might add some sort of gloss to this when it’s done.

He gave it two nice smooth coats of paint, letting it dry in between and now I’m just letting it set for a bit before adding better knobs and putting it into place. I’m thrilled with the way it turned out and it’s going to be perfect in our living room.

And in case you were wondering, when we went to the store to get poster board they had none. So I used a card board box and the backside of wrapping paper for posters instead. But, I wasn’t even annoyed at the lack of poster board because all I could think of was my sweet piece of free furniture in my trunk!

In efforts to fix the problem I pulled every single item out. Well, except the condiments.

I had some baskets in there but they had slanted sides, so they didn’t really fit much of anything and they didn’t fit nicely on the fridge shelves. The Container Store was having one of their big sales so I decided to splurge and pick up some of these amazing, easy to manage, baskets. And by splurge I mean spend $11 instead of the $19 it would have cost me full price. Hey, what can I say, I love me a bargain. I had a coupon too.

We now have a basket for cheeses, one for fruit, meat and one for veggies. They all fit perfectly side by side and it’s so easy to pull them out when we need something. It’s also much easier to clean if there’s a spill because it stays contained in the basket versus spewing all over my fridge. Which has happened before.

The freezer, well, that still needs some help. It’s just soooo small! We freeze a lot of foods. We eat mostly frozen fruits and veggies, though more often than not we buy (or pick!) fresh and then freeze them.

Due to the food restrictions I have it’s hard for Al to eat an entire butternut squash or bag of spinach alone before it perishes. So we freeze things in individual portions. I also make a lot of purees for myself which need to be frozen. Majority of the freezer is produce, with a little meat/fish and a few other things.

I try to keep like items together, but it doesn’t always work that way. And yes, that is a shoe box in my freezer. I was short one bin and really needed something to corral fruit to simplify the smoothie making mornings.

I’m just really happy I went out and got the bins for the fridge. Makes a huge difference, we can find things, it’s organized and, well, it looks a tad prettier too!

I started with a large pile of t-shirts, collected over a while. Every time one would be worn out and grungy I’d take it from Al and put it in my pile. I wanted all white but you could do all different colors (like in the tutorial I followed). I followed this tutorial that I had pinned on Pinterest.

I started by cutting one t-shirt in half and then cutting out an oval shape for the base of my rug.

Then I cut two entire t-shirts worth of 6 inch long, 1 inch wide strips.

I then made vertical and horizontal snip-its in the oval shape. I alternated doing one row horizontal, one vertical and so on. When I was done I had a big oval with lots of holes.

I started to thread the strips through the holes. I’d pull it through the hole and then loop it around back and pull the other end of the strip through another hole close by. Then I’d start with another strip and thread it through one of the same holes that there’s already a strip in and loop it through to another empty hole. Is this making sense? The tutorial probably explains it better!

And then I get really excited and on a roll and forget to take photos of anything during the process. Check here for photos during the process.

I did this for a long while, easy but time-consuming and a bit tedious. I sat and watched the Bruins game while I did it. Definitely a mindless, in front of the TV project.

Once all the holes were filled I went through and made a few extra, random snip it’s where there were open spaces. I threaded more strips through until it looked fuller.

I was really pleased with the outcome! It’s just a tiny rug, I’m not sure I would have had patience for much more than that, but it’s the perfect size, texture and dimensions that the top of the stairs needed.

For cleaning purposes I figure since it’s not a high traffic shoe area, I’ll probably shake it outside gently pretty often. When washing is needed I’ll put it in a mesh bag to wash so that all the pieces stay together.

What about you guys? Have you been working on any Pinterest projects lately? I’ve been working on them a lot more now because I’m just loving the inspiration and ideas!

I love them equally, but due to the fact that Hayley’s birthday is a milestone I must embarrass her more. Plus, Tim handles embarrassment much better than Hayley so it’s way more fun with Hayls.

Point is I love them both to the moon and back and they’re the best siblings EVER. Even if they do get to celebrate their birthdays together… and this many years later it still annoys me. Ahh poor middle child syndrome.

Happy, happy 29th to brother Tim. Don’t worry, next year you’ll have lots of embarrassment to celebrate the big 3-0. Might even break out the baby pics. Have the best day ever!

And Hayls, 25. It’s a tough one. It’s that time when you’re officially in your mid-twenties (eeeek) and you’re starting to realize you need to be an adult. Though, maybe you won’t, who knows, it’s up to you. Hope you have the greatest day. You have a huge year ahead, get ready for it, 25 is going to be awesome!

Love you both lots. And now for the slide show… Happy Birthday sibs! xoxo

In case it was unclear to you, that’s Dora the Explorer and Diego two photos up. And she totally took one for the team when she rode the camel with our cousin!

The weather here in New England is slowly starting to warm up so we took advantage and got started on some spring cleaning this weekend. It felt great to have the windows open and the fresh air circulating.

We started to clean up the yard and get it ready to plant our garden. We raked all of our outdoor space, pulled some weeds and started space planning for the garden.

I washed all of our hats, mittens, gloves, scarves and winter jackets and packed those away for next year. I love when winter concludes because it means I gain more space and less clutter from all these items!

We brought out our warmer weather clothes and went through everything, purging what we don’t need/want. We’ll make a trip to the consignment store and donation bin this week.

We started a bin for yard sale items. My family is planning another big multi-family yard sale this spring so I figured now’s a good time to start collecting sellables.

I cleaned the kitchen top to bottom. Really scrubbed, including the inside of the fridge. This is the time of year for ants and other bugs so I’m trying to keep them OUT as best I can!

I even took some time to catch up on cooking and freezing some GP friendly foods for myself. I pureed butternut squash, carrots and oatmeal.

So, all in all it was a pretty accomplished weekend. At least a good start to our spring cleaning. Still lots of other projects on the list but for now I feel like we’ve made a dent. Are you guys doing any spring cleaning? Any tips and tricks you’d care to share?