More Valentine freebies!

I have much love for these artists who provide free printables for various occasions.   Here are two more!

First, an adorable vintage-inspired card and matching envelope. Get it here.

Second, amazing fruit stickers for Valentine's day.  So cheesy but so cute.  Get them here.

Shopping at the library

I have recently rediscovered my love of the library.  Bookstores be damned!  The library is FREE!  My favorite feature of the library?  Online requests.  It's like online shopping but it doesn't cost anything!  So, last week The Decemberists, one of my favoritest groups, released a new album and my library had it on the release day.  So I be-bopped on over the the website, searched, clicked request, and was sixth in line to get the new album.  When I was a kid I didn't understand getting tapes and then CDs from the library because you had to return them.  But in the age of itunes and digital files, well, it's the gift that keeps on giving.  Plus, our local library is quite literally over the river (well, creek) and through the tiny little woods from our house.  I can see it through the trees during the winter.  Hi library! 

When I was a kid we could check out 14 items at a time from our county library, good thing because that's about how many Baby-sitter's Club books I could carry at one time.  Here I can check out SEVENTY-FIVE items at one time.  75?  That's a heckuva lotta items!  Your assignment today is to find out how many items you can have checked out at one time at your local library.  And then get a library card.  

Here ends my love letter to the library.

Did someone say FREE?

Amanda over at Our Humble A{Bowe}d periodically shares free printables for different holidays and occasions.  Today she is sharing some Valentine's Day goodies!  (<-----click here to get the PDFs)

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They are all formatted to print 8.5x11 and to fit in an 8x10 frame but I'm printing different sizes to use for different projects.  So cute, right?

Feed Your Soul

Do you know about the free art project, Feed Your Soul?  It's a website that offers free art prints in pdf format for you to download, print, and display.  I'm not gonna lie, some of the stuff is a little trippy for my tastes but each month they feature different artists and there are some cute things.  Here are some of the things that I've saved in a folder for future use:

 Simple and cute.

Maybe hanging over a crib someday?

A little chaotic and oh so festive!

I'm a sucker for anything with red cups.

And for anything with birds and music.

New prints are added each month at what seem to be random intervals.  Have fun perusing! 

DIY mania!

Before the mania, I would like to say that I now remember the real reason why I discontinued my previous blog: I never write anything.  So, I'm just sayin', don't let your expectations get too high.

And back to the mania.  Well, it's not really mania exactly, more like mild interest.  But I do like doing things myself.  In this way I am very much like a 5-year-old.  My recent underemployment and increase in free time has led to some redecorating (and a little too much shopping...eh).  I wanted to share one of my more successful projects -- hand-painted curtains!  This was crazy easy and also crazy cheap.  I've been looking for bedroom curtains for a year and a half and I fell in love with these Ballard Design panels that Nate Berkus used on a Oprah show makeover.

 
Soooo beautiful!  And $65 per panel.  We would need four panels.    No Ballard Design curtains for me.  Then I saw simple white curtains at Target for $8!  Regular price!  (I can't find them on the website or I'd share my find.)  I made a trip to Michaels, got the cheap craft paint, a package of stencils, and a foam stencil brush.

(hi Buddy paw)

Stencil, hang to dry, stencil, hang to dry, stencil a little bit at a time and about 4 days and 40 dollars later we had this!

It was a cheap, easy, and custom project.  Oh, and then after we rearranged our room I got excited about painting and did these -

Again, really simple: a 2-pack of canvases from Michaels, 89-cent craft paint in yellow and white, and some picture of birds and branches that I looked up on the internet.  A coat of yellow, some copying of pictures while I watched Dr. Oz and TA-DA!  ART!  And now our bookshelf area isn't so boring.

 

OK, enough of that.  These are things I thought I couldn't do and now that I know that I can, I know that anyone can!  :-)