Welcoming Fall In My Entryway

I bought this (cheap but sturdy) cabinet at Goodwill this summer so we could have a place next to the front door for sitting to pull on boots.  The doors hide grown-up work boots and off-season throw blankets.

For the summer months, I piled my Peruvian bright striped pillows in front.

 We call this the "boot basket", although it holds the kids' tennis shoes too.

I thought the basket looked summery enough on its own, so we left it bare.

The trees are finally starting to change colors around us, and the Fall weather has started,

so we started bringing Fall inside too.

My only rule for decorating as the seasons change:

"Use only what we already have around the house" ...

aka "Spend no money."

I wrapped the boot basket with a textured piece of fabric

and secured it with two pieces of twill tape tied together. 

I moved the bright striped pillows to the back and covered them with another piece of fabric, then piled the brown pillows in front with a green wool one that I borrowed from my bedroom.  My son helped me choose some branches off a tree in our front yard, and we stuck them in a bottle that we rescued from the recycle bin.

And my pumpkin pillow?

Why, yes, it is just an old orange cashmere sweater stuffed with a pillow!  

I tied the sleeves together at the top and stuffed the ends inside, then wrapped a brown washcloth around the knot for a stem.  Then I borrowed a scrap of felted green cashmere from my daughters' craft supplies, tucked it in next to the knot, and called it a leaf.

Fall has officially arrived in my entryway!

Lofty Progress

It's not done yet, but remember the loft we were using for storage?

I covered the plywood floor with blankets from Goodwill (a temporary fix until we get around to putting in actual flooring), and we moved the music room/office up into the loft.

With all of the electronics moved upstairs, what was formerly the guest room/office/music room is now just a guest room,

except that we moved the (rarely used) TV in there too, along with all of Stella's paperwork, cleaning supplies, and spare parts.
Now that the TV is no longer taking up space in the living room, there is room for our favorite chair and a lamp!

I'm not sure which is the best part: the newly created favorite reading spot in the living room, or the fact that I now only get on the computer once or twice a day. It's not so convenient to "just check email really quick" when I have to climb two sets of stairs and a ladder to do it!

Laundry Room Make-Over

I finally couldn't take it any longer.

The clutter in the laundry room was getting to me.

So I decided to give the laundry room a make-over.

The only rule was that I had to use only what I had on hand around the house.

It almost...

...ALMOST...

...makes me want to do some laundry.

Unintentional Air Freshener

I got some fresh herbs from a friend this week, and decided to dry some of them.  I couldn't think of very many places that were high enough to be safely out of a toddler's reach, so I hung them from the knobs of my higher kitchen cabinets.

I don't imagine that I will ever combine these two herbs in a recipe, but as they dry we can smell them throughout the entire kitchen, and they smell SO good together!  We've got a couple bunches of mint, and one bunch of oregano.

It's organic, chemical-free air freshener 

that will end up re-purposed as tea and 

seasonings!  Two for the price of one, 

except that it was free!  (Thanks Amy!)

Head over to Tammy's Recipes for 

more useful kitchen tips!

Handy Multi-use Cleaning Tool

I keep a handy, multi-use cleaning tool in my dish drainer -- an old toothbrush!  It has come in handy for cleaning those hard to reach places that I can't get as clean as I would like with a rag or scrub brush (like behind the faucet, or in the ridges of the fridge's water dispenser tray), and it's easy to clean when I'm done using it.  Sometimes soap and hot water is all it needs, but sometimes it gets a bleach bath just to be safe.  :)  I let it air-dry with the bristles up so it doesn't get gross.  

This week I discovered another use for it -- I squirted dish soap on it like I would toothpaste and scrubbed out all the little bits of turkey and herbs that were stuck on the inside of my baster.  :)

Have you discovered Kitchen Tip Tuesday at tammysrecipes.com yet?  Go visit!

Christmas Challenge - Part 12

12 - Use old maps as wrapping paper.  My husband is a pilot, so we have a lot of expired sectional charts around our house.  We reuse them as wrapping paper for our kids, families, and like-minded friends.  :)  

(Side-note:  I don't like using the comics out of the newspaper like my grandparents did because I don't like getting newsprint everywhere, and we don't get the paper anyway.  It's a great idea too though!)

Christmas Challenge - Part 9

9 - More decorating with frugal finds.  Last year at this time, all six of us were living in one hotel room (by choice!).  Decorating space was hard to find, and we were on a budget.  These glass bulb ornaments that I got for $.25 at the thrift store found room to come home with us after that experience, and now they fill a large vase and brighten up a corner of our house.  They serve three purposes; they add color, they remind me that we don't need a lot of "stuff" to live happily, and they remind me to keep my priorities straight.  Big jobs for humble old ornaments!  :)

Christmas Challenge - Part 8

8 - Use an old photo album as an address book.  I keep an alphabetized list of all the people we correspond with at Christmas in an old photo album.  I write their current address in pencil in the space next to the picture, and I put the most recent picture we have of them (usually their most recent Christmas photo-card) in the photo keeper slot.  It keeps me organized in the midst of the Christmas chaos, and it comes in handy too when my husband can't remember a name!  :)

Christmas Challenge - Part 6

6 - Reuse Gift Bags and Wrapping Paper.  We (the adults in the house) reuse these same gift bags every year for each other.  The kids get wrapping paper on their gifts, and if the paper survives the gift-opening experience, we save it to use again.

Christmas Challenge - Part 5

5 - Use paper clips to hang ornaments.  If you already have a surplus of paper clips around your house, don't bother buying those cheap ornament hangers (that never last anyway).  Just reuse a paper clip by twisting it around until it turns into a hook.

(Hey, I never said these ideas would be earth-shattering!)  :)

Christmas Challenge - Part 4

4 - Turn old Christmas Cards into Gift Tags.  After Christmas is over, and the decorations are all put away, I sort through the Christmas cards we received and put aside any that we can reuse as  gift tags.  I look for small pictures, with extra space to write on.  Then the girls and I cut them out neatly and store them away for next year.  Sometimes we tape them to a package, and sometimes we punch a hole through the tag and attach it to the package with a ribbon.  A simple, practical idea (that I borrowed from my Grandma!)  :)

Christmas Challenge - Part 2

2 - Reuse paper towel tubes to wrap Christmas lights on for storage.  This idea not only reuses the cardboard, but it makes decorating the tree a little easier.  The tube full of lights is easy to pass around the tree, and the lights don't get tangled up like they do with other methods we've tried.    

Christmas Challenge - Part 1

My challenge to myself during this Christmas season:  find at least 25 ways I reduce, reuse, recycle, or am otherwise frugal in ways that are specific to Christmas.  (This should be fun!)  :)

1 - (Free) Artificial Tree

I confess.  We usually buy a live Christmas tree.  This year, circumstances being what they are, I was seriously considering having the kids create a tree out of green construction paper and sticking it to the wall.  However, our wonderful neighbors came to the rescue and offered us one of their artificial trees.  Everyone is happy!  The girls got to decorate a tree, Mr. Adorable says "Oooooh" every time he sees it, and I gained a new appreciation for my husband (who usually strings the lights every year).

Our neighbors' generosity in letting us reuse their tree saved us a bundle of money, and I don't have to take it to get it recycled in January, either!  :)

Color-full Cans

Crayons never stay "nice and neat" in their boxes in this house, nor do they ever stay in one piece.  My solution is the Crayon Can, a huge old coffee can, washed and re-used for over 6 years now.  

Colored pencils used to at least make it INTO their box, but they were always getting broken in the process, until I introduced this cheap storage solution -- the Toddler Puffs can.  And I'm not admitting how long I've had THIS one!  :)

Fill 'er Up!

With two adults and four kids in the house, I do a LOT of laundry.  If I stay caught up, (which rarely happens, of course) I do an average of 2-3 loads a day.  Which means that I go through a LOT of dryer sheets.  I save the used ones in an old gift bag hanging in my laundry room, and when it gets full, I transfer them to a bean bag cover.  This bean bag cover (pictured) is completely filled with them, which makes it pretty heavy to drag around, but it is SO comfortable, and it smells great too!