Lots of Change

You're probably familiar with the domino or butterfly effect. You change one thing and it slowly escalates to the new thing affecting other things, sometimes unintentionally, so then you have to change that thing, which makes something else need altering. We'll we've unleashed an army of crafty butterflies at our house. Last week Andy got an early Valentine's/Anniversary present. We've been together over 12 years and we can't wait for an actual holiday to celebrate. He got a Russ Isabella original photo of the U of U gymnast Kristina Baskett for his man cave. For those of you who don't know Russ Isabella, he is one of the main shutter bugs for the U of U. He has some amazing shots of athletes in action. Getting the new pic led to us rearranging pictures and furniture throughout the house, and for $120 we now have a new family room and a new living room and an updated bedroom. It's funny how your stuff can be re-purposed and you don't have to spend a ton. My favorite addition to his room???

I made this clock--or remade this clock. I call it upcycling--making something better than it was in it's original form. It was an oak and brass clock we got for our wedding. With a bit of spray paint and some scrapbook supplies my man has a new man clock for his man cave. I don't just love it because it was FREE. I love it because it turned out so great AND it was free.

I also won a $25 gift card to RC Willey from a Super Bowl cooking contest. So I got a 30 X 40 canvas landscape print for our room and an iron sculpture--both FREE. I guess if you count the hour it took me to find something I needed/wanted, it cost me one hour, but was worth it.

The crafty mess continued at Home Depot. We had to buy $2 worth of bolts to anchor Lexi's crib. That led to an "accidentally/on purpose" purchase of $1000 cabinets. Many of you know I hate my kitchen. The layout was likely designed by either a man who had never been inside a kitchen to do anything but eat, or a woman with no children who really liked shiny things. We have a huge open space on the north side of the wall and we've been dying to create a large serving buffet/ upstairs office space for years. We had budgeted (of course) for this, but I told Andy we had to wait for their yearly sale. I've been hunting the ads for weeks, and happened to miss last week's Home Depot ad. As luck would have it, they went on sale last week, 20% off. That's huge. So that's his next project...our next project. You really can never do a home improvement project right until you go back to the store at least 3 times. So far I'm going on trip #4 to make another return of extra handles.

My last craft was new summer dresses for the girls. I found a cute idea online for pillowcase dresses. I guess this is one way mothers would "make it do" back in the day by remaking pillowcases into dresses for their girls. I tried it and my first attempt made Danni look like an orphan who'd been born in a patch of wildflowers. So I remade it. Then I made a second one. Trust me it's an improvement. She looks so cute in it. Of course once I told her that, she took it off and said she'd only wear it on holidays. Is a summer dress on Valentine's too much to ask? The great thing about this design is that it can be worn over leggings and t-shirts to adapt to the season. Also the ties are longer so as she grows the dress length can be slightly altered to fit. I am going to have to make up fake holidays so she'll wear it more often.

Sometimes change is good.