Save Water with Upcycled Milk Jug Watering Cans

If you're like me, you follow the mantra, "Waste not, want not." I absolutely hate watching all the cold water go down the drain as I'm waiting for the shower water to warm up. The other day it occurred to me that instead of taking all those milk jugs we go through to the recycling center, we could fill them with the cold shower water, save them for spring, and then water our trees and plants with them! (We killed two new maple trees this past year because we didn't water them enough. Next year, we'll do better, I promise!)

My husband was like, "And what are we going to do with 100 milk jugs while we're waiting for spring?" Good point. We have a little overhang where the house meets the patio, and we're storing them under there for now. I think we'll run out of room though, and then I guess we'll just have to keep them on the patio. We haven't filled them to brim so here's to hoping that they won't explode after freezing and thawing!

Update: It's now midwinter, and we have probably fifty gallons of water sitting all over our patio. I bet the neighbors love that. I'll probably get a letter from the HOA telling me that having milk jugs sitting all over my yard is a violation :)

I just ran across this idea today, which goes right along with my milk jug watering can idea :) She takes a lighter, heats up a needle, and pricks holes in the lid of the milk jug. Excellent. I am so doing that this spring!

A First Birthday Party, Seuss Style

I cannot believe my baby is 1. He's walking. (He's been walking for at least 2 months). He walks backward. He tries to run, (although it's really more like a speed walk). He has four teeth, and a fifth one that finally cut through just days before his birthday. He likes applesauce. He hates mommy's homemade peas. He enjoys clapping. If you point at him, even from clear across the room, he'll hurry over with his little index finger outstretched and come up and touch his finger to yours, like he's straight out of ET. We totally should have had an ET themed birthday party. That would have been hilarious :)

But instead, I opted for Dr. Seuss. Jonas likes the PBS show, "The Cat in the Hat Knows a lot About That." We read "Green Eggs and Ham" almost nightly. It's my oldest son's favorite book. I also figured that since we don't own all the Dr. Seuss books and/or movies, that would be a good gift idea to tell the relatives. No one knows what to get our boys because We. Have. Everything. They always ask, "What do the boys need?" Um, nothing. We have toy boxes, filled to the brim, in every room. We have totes of clothes that they boys are waiting to grow into. Seriously- I have totes of clothes that go up to size 6 (my oldest son currently wears a size 3). I have a thrifting problem, but that's for another day :)

I scoured the internet and amassed quite a Dr. Seuss party pinterest board. I found recipes that weren't necessarily Dr. Seuss, tweaked them, and made them for the party. We had The Grinch's Roast Beast, One Fish Tuna Fish, Green Eggs, Ham & Cheese Pinwheels, Fish in the Pot Goldfish Crackers, Thing 1 and Thing 2 Blue Tortilla Chips with Salsa, Pink Yink Drink (Tampico has a really good pink punch!), The Lorax Orange Sherbert, and Orange Jello Poke Cake.

Most of my photos didn't turn out very well because of the lighting, but I will share a few with you.

I thrifted this fish bowl last December in order to put Christmas ornaments in it. 

 I almost donated it back to Goodwill, but then something made me keep it.

The sherbet bowls are from Dollar Tree. They were two for a buck, and they included two matching spoons in the set.  I added some Lorax mustaches and gave them away as favors.

Brotherly Love in "Green Eggs and Ham" attire :)

I dusted off the cobwebs pulled out my trusty Wilton cake decorating set 

and went to town on these deviled eggs.  

Big Brother trying on one of Jonas's presents

The food table before the food came out-- after the food came out, most of the pictures didn't turn out. The first birthday decorations on the wall were thrifted back for my oldest son's birthday party. I dragged them out of storage and then added some Dr. Seuss bulletin board items from Michaels.

The Grinch's Roast Beast sandwiches :)

The little orange frames all contained a picture from a Dr. Seuss story, depicting what that particular food was.  The frames didn't do any good, because everyone ended up asking me what everything was anyway!

Going a Little Quote Crazy

Quotes on ottomans...

Source: freakingcraft.com via Jodie on Pinterest

Quotes on the wall...

Source: etsy.com via Jodie on Pinterest

Quotes on canvases....

Source: karenemcgee.blogspot.com via Jodie on Pinterest

And I need them all! Hey, I'm a poet and didn't even know it :)

Today's project is the quotes on a canvas. Michaels has two packs of 16x20 canvases on sale for $5. Yowza. That's cheap.

I snatched up a pack, along with some raised scrapbooking alphabet stickers, and skipped merrily all the way home with my finds.

I already had some orange spray paint on hand, so I painted the entire canvas orange. When that was dry, I added my letters. As you can see, it screams Halloween, and that's not what I was going for.



Then I took off the words "brother" and "hug," painted the black letters with the orange spray paint, and painted the remaining two words with white spray paint. (I also found that the letters needed primed before painting).

After it was all dry, I reattached the white words to the canvas, and voila, it does not look like Halloween anymore :)




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Oversized Prints: $3 at Staples

You've probably seen these:

Source: infarrantlycreative.net via Jodie on Pinterest

Source: sugarbeecrafts.com via Jodie on Pinterest

What?! You've never seen them? Well let me tell you, it's easy and cheap! Just visit the engineering prints page at staples.com to get started! The website says that engineering prints are not suitable for photographs, but if you have a good enough camera (ours is 10 megapixels), it works just fine!

Your size choices are 18x24, 24x36, and 36x48. Of course, the $2 poster frame I thrifted was none of those three sizes.


(That thing rolled up on the frame is the print. They print out your photograph on very thin paper).

Most photograph editing programs have the capabilities to crop the photo to the right dimensions. After cropping the photo the way you want it, upload it to the staples website, select what size you want, and it will be ready to pick up at your local staples before you can say "Decorating on the Cheap is more fun than watching Magic Mike!"

When I made mine this morning, it cost me under $3 plus tax to make a 24x36 print. I'm not sure if that was a special sale or that's their every day price, but other bloggers have quoted slightly higher prices.

When I picked it up, for some reason it was still a little larger than my 22x28 frame. I just had a little extra trimming to do, and then it fit into the frame perfectly. I <3 how it turned out!!



I can't wait until the basement is finished so I can get this up on the wall!!

Gerber Training Underwear Refashion

It's potty training time in our household!!! Can I get a Hallelujah! (And on a side note, anyone want to share how you washed poopy underwear?)

Anyway, awhile back, I had thrifted two pairs of new Gerber training underwear (they're they ones with the plastic outside, which by the way, do not stop pee from coming out and soaking the carpet). The tag says "tumble dry low." Just FYI, the dryer completely melted the plastic exterior in multiple places. *Sigh*

But never fear, I have a fabric stash a mile high which came to the rescue :)

I ripped off the old plastic coating, got out a thrifted jersey sheet (that's t-shirt material in case you don't know that term), and traced around the underwear leaving an inch or so all the way around for hemming and for a little extra give.

Cut two pieces out (one for the front, and one for the back). You can make the back piece a little larger if you want. With right sides together, I sewed the crotch and sides first.



At this point, the Gerber interior and the new fabric exterior are still two separate pieces. Then I started attaching the two parts together by stretching out the elastic waistband as I sewed. I sewed the top of the exterior as close to the elastic waistband as possible.







If you have a favorite underwear pattern or idea, I'd love to to hear about it!

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My Little Man with a Yellow Hat

You've all heard of Christmas in July, right? Well, it's Halloween in July :)



After reading over how other people have used yellow felt to create a yellow hat and realizing that I value my sanity too much to attempt it, I decided to go thrifting and find one to spray paint or dye instead. That didn't pan out so well.

But one trip to Michael's later, and voila! For $4, I scored a brown foam explorer hat! I already had yellow spray paint, black ribbon, and hot glue on hand.





If you're wondering how I made the faux necktie or how I changed the outfit from white to yellow, just follow the links :)


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Sock Monkey Kids' Travel Pillow

Have you seen these seat belt pillows from Super Jenn? After seeing how comfy her kids looked, I knew I should totally make one for the car ride down to the Outer Banks for my three year old. And on a side note, with the HORRIBLE traffic we hit about just before we crossed over onto the islands, it took us 14 hours to get there. It was supposed to take us 11 hours. Sitting in three hour traffic for the last 15 miles was NOT FUN. Anyway...

This travel pillow was a completely free project! I almost forget about the miserable car ride when I think of the word free.

I already had the sock monkey fabric on hand. I had thrifted two sock monkey pillowcases awhile back and had a little fabric left after making a handmade swaddler for the baby.


Aww... Isn't he cute? He's a month old in this photo.
Now he's nine months old!

I followed Super Jenn's awesome tutorial, but I think I would have made the fabric flaps that go around the seat belt a little larger. I never did put velcro on mine because I don't think my flaps are large enough to get around the seat belt. That's okay though, because I could see my three year old throwing a tantrum on the interstate when he didn't want the pillow on his lap anymore. The way I did it, the pillow just rested on him so he could use it or not. He was free to remove it from his lap and throw it on his baby brother when he was done with it. Not adding the velcro also addressed the safety concern that some people had... although really, I don't think the thin flap of fabric that would have been under the seat belt would cause a safety issue. That flap is thinner than a sweatshirt or jacket!

To fill the pillow, I used a combination of thrifted polyfil and t-shirt scraps. I'd say the pillow was a huge success, and in a year or so, I'm going to have to make another one so that boy #2 has one too!

Pirate Appliqued Jammies

Did you know that Blackbeard was killed off of the Outer Banks in 1718? Argh!


We are home from the Outer Banks! And usually, as you head north to Ohio, the temperature doesn't increase. But holy smokes, as we crossed the bridge from West Virginia into Ohio, the little temperature thingie on the car said that it was 107 degrees.

*Beads of sweat rolling down our faces*

This heat is no fun. I can't imagine what our men and women are going through in Iraq and other hot places. I hear it's like 120 degrees there typically :(

Back to sewing. I found some really cute pirate jammie pants down in the OBX. At $11.99, they were a bit of a splurge, but I bought them anyway because I'm a sucker for anything with pirates on them. They had really cute pirate jammie tops too, but none in his size. And even if there were some in his size, I wasn't about to spend another $11.99 for the top. The way it is, I could have bought 12-24 pairs of thrifted PJs for that (and nice ones too, not the ratty I-would-never-dress-my-kid-in-this kind!).

I also saw a really cute appliqued lady's pirate tee down there, and I'm kind of kicking myself for not getting it. I found it online in kid sizes and pinned it:

Source: grays-sportswear.com via Jodie on Pinterest

I figured I could free-hand a pretty good pirate head from looking at this picture, and make an appliqued pirate PJ top to match the PJ bottoms I bought on vacation.

As I had already invested $12 in this outfit, I wasn't about to put another single penny into it. Using things I already had on hand, I created a pirate PJ shirt for my son :) The shirt itself was from my sister-in-law's heading-to-goodwill pile. I sewed down a plain black shirt of hers to fit a four year old. And then using red, white, and black t-shirt scraps and some fusible web from my stash, I made the pirate.

I looooooooove how it turned out!!! He, on the other hand, was not thrilled about it until I pointed out that the pants have little guns on them like HIS gun! His gun is a replica George Washington pistol :)









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