DIY Date Night Idea Jar

    DIY Date Night Idea Jar        

        Life is way too busy sometimes. We are always running here, then there, and even though we don’t mean to, we forget to spend time with our spouses. Not just time, but real quality time. I think it’s important that no matter how long you have been married to always keep dating each other.

            Now, even though my husband and I are still in the “newlywed phase” we are guilty of major slacking in this department. Between working on updating the house, my medical problems, and him traveling for work dating just seems to get pushed to the back burner. Even when we do have the time and energy, what do we want to do? Do we really want to go to that same restaurant again? That’s why I decided to put together a “Date Jar”. Depending on how much time and/or money we are planning on spending we can draw a stick from the jar according to its color code.

                Off to Michael's I went! I grabbed some chalkboard paint ($2.29) and markers ($7.49), popsicle sticks ($4.99), and a piece of card stock ($0.99). I already had the mason jar glass plus some tulle and ribbon to decorate it with at home. I started by making a list on notebook paper of different date I thought would be good. I sorted them into 3 categories: At home/$, Night Out/$$, Requires Planning/$$$. I then painted all of the sticks, wrote the dates in the corresponding color, and made a guide out of the piece of card stock. After that I just decorated it with tulle and ribbon and viola! Now we can just draw from the jar for our weekly date night. 

Brass Chandelier Makeover

Brass Chandelier Makeover

            Last summer we bought our first home together. It was built in 1981 and extremely outdated. We looked past the gross carpet and horrible design choices of the previous owner and were so excited about all of the wonderful potential we knew it had. Turns out, tapping in to all of that potential also puts a little strain on your bank account. I have had to get pretty thrifty when it comes to decor to help save as much as possible.

            I found this old ugly chandelier in my dad’s garage one day and asked him if he’d mind letting me have it. I headed to Lowes and grabbed a can of Rust-Oleum metallic spray paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze. Once I got home I hung the chandelier from a tree branch outside, removed socket sleeves, then covered sockets with painters' tape.

               Once I had it taped I gave the brass a good scrubbing. (You want to make sure you get all of the built up dirt and dust off so the paint will adhere properly.) Now I was ready for the fun part! Starting with can about 8 inches from the surface I lightly sprayed chandelier using controlled pressure on handle, being careful not to spray one area for too long. Allow paint to fully dry for about an hour between coats. After final coat had dried, I slipped on the socket covers and replaced bulbs. Can you say EASY? The best part is the whole project cost me less than $10!!!

DIY Dyed Drop Cloth Curtains

DIY Dyed Drop Cloth Curtains

  So I have this big glass sliding door leading to my backyard and as wonderful as all the natural light is; it makes it very difficult to watch TV during the day. I looked into getting some pre-made curtains from different places, but they are so expensive and I’m a girl on a budget! I am currently without a functioning sewing machine so buying fabric and sewing them myself was out. After doing a little research online on different no-sew options I decided to attempt to just dye some drop cloths and hope for the best. If I failed miserably at least I wouldn’t be out too much money (only about $50) and I’d have an interesting DIY fail to share.

Here’s the supplies I used:

 6 of Rit Dye Liquid Fabric Dye, 8-Ounce, Black - $4.19 each on Amazon 

(1 bottle/lb of dry fabric for light colors or 2 bottles/lb for darker colors)

 2 Canvas Drop Cloth, 6 x 9-Feet, Natural - $11.95 each on Amazon

2 cups salt

Since I'm clumsy and uncoordinated, I decided the best option for me would be to use my top loading washing machine to dye the drop cloths. You can use your tub, but there is always the possibility that it will stain and why use the manual labor if a machine will do it for you, right?

First thing first, I had to wash the drop cloths! When I first opened the package I was hit with this awful smell. (Don’t worry, it goes away after you wash all those nasty chemicals off. Just don’t dry them, you will need them to be wet.) Once they were washed I set them aside and filled my washer with HOT water. Next I added 1 cup of the salt and 3 of the bottles of fabric dye. The directions say to agitate to mix so I just took a pole off one of my brooms and used that to stir it all together until the water looked consistent throughout. Once that was done I added ONE of the wet, unfolded drop cloths to the water. I didn’t want to add both at once and all of the dye since the bottle warns that any more than 4 bottles at once will just go to waste in the washer.

                           

As I put it in, I could see how well the dye was already taking. I extended the wash cycle for an extra 30 minutes, just like the bottle told me to. After that I did have to run the rinse cycle about 3 times before the water came out clear. Then I sat that one aside and repeated the process for the next panel. Once both were done and rinsed, I washed them together on warm with my regular detergent and threw them in the dryer. That was it! So easy! I just hung them with a couple packages of cheap drapery clips from Walmart. They didn’t get as dark as I originally wanted and you can tell there is a blue/purple undertone, but I actually like this color better. Even if I didn’t, I could always get more dye and run it through the process again.