All you will need are:

1. Newly fallen leaves 2. Glue gun 3. Sticks (you can even gather branch sticks or make a square from flat pieces of cardboard) 5. Ribbon

Step 1: Hot glue your sticks together

Step 2: Arrange and hot glue your leaves onto the sticks.

Step 3: Hot glue a ribbon to the back of your wreath

How easy is that! There are methods for preserving your leaves if you want to reuse the wreath from year to year. For me, I can easily change out these leaves for new ones next Fall.

You might have seen the Milk Jug Ghost idea before. All you need are clean and empty milk jugs, flameless candles, a marker and scissors. Cut out space in the milk jug, place your flameless candle and make a face. How easy is that? You can also make Skinny Ghosts with the 1/2 Gallon milk jugs.

You can also mummify a glass jar by taping it around with masking tape, draw a face and place a flameless candle inside. Easy peasy. 

I am setting these out on the front porch on Halloween with some spooky music for ambiance

I had this blank wall in my kitchen. I needed a place to jot down grocery lists and weekly menus. Enter chalkboard paint!

I can’t believe this project took longer than painting the stripes in the foyer.

I realize I have not posted a project in a while but Little Miss E will be starting school in a couple of weeks! And I am taking time away from blogging and projects to prepare my baby for this new journey.   

I am making a conscious effort to buy safer and more eco-friendly school supplies for her.  I have not told you, have I? In the past several weeks, I have been bit by the green bug. I learned so much and there is so much more to learn! I will plan to include material on my new page Coloring My World Green.  

In the meantime, you should definitely check out Jennifer at Growing a Green Family. Her blog is awesome. She has a special post for Back to School, a handy reference for greener and safer school supplies for our little ones.

I will be back soon my friend. Happy school shopping!

Tracking monthly expenses such as car payments, mortgages, utilities (on a budget plan) are easy because they are unvarying and those are tracked in a monthly budget. Expenses such as eating out, groceries, and gas are not. Sure we can budget for them all we want, but without tracking how much we are spending along the way for each and every transaction, the monthly budget means nothing.

There are automated tools you can purchase for your personal and business expense tracking. You can even get expense tracking software on your phone.  For us, we opted for something more “organic”.

Several friends suggested the Envelope Method. This is a good method and works for a lot of people but for us, we knew we would not like the hassle of carrying around cash envelopes.

Another couple suggested we track each and every transaction in a notebook, an Excel Sheet, etc. But the idea of just documenting was not enough for me. I wanted to document each transaction and get a running total right then and there along with the remaining budget amount. For example, if I spent $4 on eating out and another $5, I wanted something to tell me you have spent $9 and have $1 left. The SUM Formula in Excel only works when you highlight several cells to get a total but I wanted a running total. See the difference? If not, no worries, keep reading. You will understand it soon.

After searching and probing, I finally found macros that can do that functionality. And with some formatting, I created my very own:

Daily Transaction Tracker – Template

Note: WordPress does not allow uploads of Excel files. I uploaded in PDF just for view. If you would like me to send you the Transaction Tracker (working Excel), leave me a comment with your email.

This is so easy to use!  At any point during the month, we have an accurate snapshot of how much we have spent and how much we have left. This tool takes out all the guess-work! Again, the expenses I record are varying expenses.

At the end of each day or at the beginning of each day, I check our bank accounts online and record purchases we have made under the appropriate category. While you may have a monthly budget, this can serve as a supplementary tool for tracking the everyday expenses you make. I figured if I have time to check my email(s), I have a couple more minutes to track our expenses.

Another thing that has been really helpful with using the Transaction Tracker is the varying non-monthly items such as gifts, doctor visits or RX, etc. Mr. BLB and I have a monthly budget amount that takes care of all miscellaneous expenses. You can do that or even better, you can set a budget for each and every miscellaneous category. You will have to figure out what works best for you.

The tool is really easy to use. If you get in the habit of tracking your expenses daily, you gain that much more control over your finances.

For directions on how to use the Transaction Tracker, click on the following (this will open a word document with the directions):

Transaction Tracker Directions

If you have any questions on how to use the Transaction Tracker, leave me a comment with your question and your email and I would be happy to help!

This is another chance to win a Silhouette Craft Cutter. Check it out at A Soft Place to Land. You have five chances to win! Good luck!

1. Calculate the width of each stripe.

Measure the height of your wall. Ours was 92 inches.  Divide that number by 2 and keep dividing by 2 until you reach a digit for a width that you like.

For example, 92/2=46/2=23/2=11.5.  We rounded 11.5 to 12 inches. We ended up with 8 stripes 12 inches in width.  

2. Mark.  Line. Tape

Take a leveler and line your stripes all the way around with light pencil marks. We used a combination of a manual leveler and a laser beam leveler.

Take Blue Painters Tape and place on your lines. The tape has width to it so you will have to account for that and place the tape sometimes above your marked line or below your marked line.

This is the tedious part and by far the longest of the process. It will take patience.

There will come a point in time where you want to give up. Don’t. There will come a point where your husband will curse the day he agreed to help you with this. Give him a kiss, stroke his ego and keep on.

Tip: Do not use any other type of tape. Paint will seep through it. Blue Painters Tape or Frog Tape is the best to use for this project.

Tip: Do not leave your tape on your wall for days and days. When it came time to remove it, it took some of our paint with it.

3. Paint!

We used a roller to paint our stripes but depending on how thick your stripes are, you may need to use a paint brush.

Now go paint some stripes

But stripes were on the mind and I had to try it.

Here is the foyer before and after:

I will post a tutorial soon!

Aside from the giveaway, if you are interested in buying one , Thrifty Decor Chick has a special coupon code as well.

Good luck!

I am entering my Craft Room and hoping for the best!

If you are interested in submitting your renovation, check out the details here. A winner is chosen once a week and featured on the site.  The weekly winner receives a $50 dollar gift certificate to either Lowe’s, Home Depot, or Amazon.com. Nice!

OPC also donates $100 dollars to Habitat for Humanity in your name (and for each weekly winner). 

At the end of the summer, the community votes, and the winner receives a bonus $150 dollar gift card. Extra extra nice!

Good luck to everyone!