Cheap holiday teacher gift.

In preschool, kids have a lot of teachers I have learned. In my sons class, six to be exact! It would be ridiculous to go out and buy Starbucks gift cards for all of them, because that would be a lot of money! As I was searching on Pinterest, I found an adorable idea!

After school today we headed over to our local mall to get some foamy soap from Bath & Body Works where you can buy 6 for $20! Aiden found the Christmas ones and counted to six as we picked them out! They even threw in the clear bags! (If you do not want to buy ribbon or tags, they also offer those!) I saw these tags online, and I downloaded them for free and printed them on photo paper to make them thick and shiny! 

The ribbon was from the dollar bin at Target. So, all together I spent under $25 for all six of Aiden's teachers!

I have a few friends that are teachers and they said Starbucks gift cards and hand sanitizer were very useful gifts, so I thought soap was close enough! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Family Room.

I am so excited to share the pictures from our family room. It desperately needs a warm paint color on the walls, but we will get to that in due time. Painting the boys rooms is our first priority. Here is a tour of our family room all decked out for Christmas.

Our home is very much brown and tan, so keeping the theme neutral this year worked pretty well. I copied a lot of my ideas from the Pottery Barn Christmas catalogue, only I searched for things at Hobby Lobby and Target because PB is a little too pricey for my liking! 

Sources: TV stand and coffee table were DIY projects, lanterns, vase on coffee table, tray on coffee table, gold trees, giant ornaments, lamps, black table, and neutral pillows - TJ Maxx and Home Goods, couches are PB Comfort in camel from Pottery Barn, sisal rug  and small button pillows are from World Market, stockings, burlap, ornaments, glass vase on black table, and greens - Hobby Lobby, Aspen canvas - American Furniture Warehouse, tree, tree topper on mantel, black frames, baskets in coffee table and gold stool - Target, the galvanized bucket (16.5 gallon) and curtain rods - Home Depot, small white bowl on black table - Crate and Barrel, curtains - IKEA. 

Building a home: Gallery upgrade decisions.

I have had a couple people ask me about the upgrades we chose to do on our home when we built. We actually did a lot of research and put a lot of thought into what we were going to upgrade, and what we were going to pass on.

We were fortunate that our house came with a slab granite, front and back landscaping (including sprinkler), as well as wood floors in the entry, kitchen, and dining area. This saved us a lot of money.

Things to definitely upgrade:

• Ceiling and door height. If your builder gives you the option to have 8 foot doors and 9 foot ceilings, definitely do it. This is not something you can change in the future. We have been into other houses in our neighborhood that did not chose the high doors, and it just makes the homes look so much smaller.
• Carpet. Builder grade carpet and padding is shiny, and looks like a matted stuffed animal after a small amount of wear and tear. Going up one step in the carpet will make a huge difference in the look of your home. Plus, you only usually pay the difference in the cost of the carpet. If you plan on tearing it out in a few years, you will be paying much more for all new carpet than the small difference in cost now. 
  
  
  
• Cabinets. Again, you pay the difference in the cabinets. We opted to do the 42" cabinets, with extra detail, and thicker molding for $1000 more. For a kitchen our size, with custom Java cabinetry would be almost $10,000 to add in the future. The $1000 was a small difference now, but pays off later. 
  
  
  
• An under mounted sink. If you get granite counters, do not get a sink that mounts on the top of the counter, it just looks tacky and cheap. 
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• Bathroom counters. You can put laminate in, which most builders provide. But, to replace the counters in the future is just a pain in the butt. Do it now, pay the difference, ours was less than $500 for both upstairs bathrooms to add corian. 
  
  
  
• Tile work. Unless you are a tile pro, or really good DIY-er, this takes time and patience. Two things we are not really good at. 
  
• Air conditioning. If you do not get air conditioning automatically, and you live in warm climates like Colorado, get it. Ours was an extra $4,000 for it. GASP. 
• Pre-wire for sound system. IF you have a sports fanatic husband, and some day you play to have a sound system, it is much cheaper to wire it when there are no ceilings. 
• Appliances. We wanted stainless steel, and we did not want to go through the hassle of selling the including black appliances and getting new ones in a few years. We only paid the difference to go from black to stainless steel, which cost $399. That is much more worth it, because our last home cost us $1600 for new stainless steel appliances. 
• Wood floors. If you have kids and pets, putting wood floors on the whole main level makes the most sense. We did manufactured wood which is slightly cheaper than hickory and it holds up better in the drastically differing climates of Colorado weather. 
• Fan prewires in the bedroom. This is just hard to do in the future, and incase you want to add your own fan, it is there to do it! 

Things not to upgrade:

• Window coverings. We did not think that spending $1200 dollars on fake wooden blinds (for only the bathrooms and bedrooms) was worth it when we ultimately did not like those anyway. If we would have been able to afford the thousands of dollars for plantation shutters, that is what we would have done. Right now I have bought all of the bedroom and bathroom windows for less than $600 on amazon.com. 
• Paint. Although it is expensive to paint, I am not one to have every room painted the same color (with only the choice of two different colors). It was $1200 to upgrade to a darker color (whole house) and it was still flat paint. Flat paint is not good, ever. So this was seen as a waste to us. 
  
  
  
• Light fixtures. We can easily replace light fixtures on our own, so paying three times as much for a light fixture to be installed was not something we wanted to do. I am not a huge fan of overhead lighting anyway, so in the bathrooms we had 'boob lights,' but will slowly change those out. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• If you do not cook often, do not do a gourmet kitchen. For us, it was a waste of $2500, and took away counter space. 
• Backyard slab. If you live somewhere where the ground settles a lot, wait a year or two before installing slab so your house can settle. 
• Door hardware. If you are fine with the standard look, in our case it was brushed silver, we stuck with the standard and it still looks great.
  

Luxuries that we upgraded but is not necessary:

• Fireplace stone. I liked it so much better than the tile.
  
• Santa Fe doors. The Richmond homes come with standard six panel doors. We liked the look of these better. 
  
• Backsplash. We love ours and did not want to take the time to do it ourselves. 
  
• Window sills. We love the look of an actual sill instead of just sheetrock. 

Christmas kitchen.

Every room should have a little bit of Christmas decor in it - and the kitchen is no exception! I love our kitchen. I was dead set on wanting white cabinets, but my lovely husband talked me into the Java cabinets and I love the way they look! Our kitchen has a ton of natural light so it lights up nicely even though it has such dark features!

Here is our kitchen and the Christmas decor for this year as well!

I think right now this is my favorite room area in our house. I am standing in our family room taking this picture, so essentially it is one giant room. Other than paint, get a window covering, and install pendant lights, we are done in here! 

Sources: Table & chairs - American Furniture Warehouse, wreath - Michaels, ribbon on wreath and decorative greens - Hobby Lobby, leaf frame - model home show, glass jars and poinsettia - Wal Mart, silver tin and both white bowls - TJ Maxx, spice rack - gift from my MIL but I have seen them at Bed Bath and Beyond, kissing bird salt and pepper shaker and decorative boat on cabinet- Pier One Imports, oil and vinegar cruets - World Market, place mats - Crate and Barrel (wedding gift), and the crocks are all antiques. 

Coffee table makeover.

When visiting all of the model homes while our house was still being built, they all had big, square coffee tables. Well after searching IKEA, Target, American Furniture Warehouse, Larabee's, and all of out other typical go-to's.... we came up with NOTHING. Literally, every 40 x 40 coffee table is over $700 dollars, which was just not happening.

We started thinking of making one. Well, re-doing on. We went to Salvation Army (I know, bad store and I can't believe I gave them our money!), but they had a 50% off sale and we found 'the one!'

It was 38 x 38, so close enough. We were planning on doing a slight over hang anyway. It is U.G.L.Y.  That may even be an understatement. The metal bars have these springs on them, they just needed to go. But, it was $25 dollars so we bought it. 

Then we started brainstorming and came up with a farmhouse coffee table. We bought six 1 x 8's (pine) and cut them to 40 inches long. (First we bought 5, because five times 8 is 40 = perfect. Well, make sure you measure because the supposed 1 x 8, was really 1 x 7.25. We ended up having to go get another one so it is slightly not square anymore.) We also bought ebony stain and used some wood filler we had. 

SIDE NOTE: Wood putty and Wood Filler are not the same. Wood putty does not dry - don't use it to fill holes!! (lesson learned)

I also bought a new quart of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Country Grey. I used about 1/8 of the can so that really equates to about $4 for the paint. 

My lovely husband stained the wood for me, we let it sit over night, and then we used liquid nails to place them on the filled, painted, table. We also used some old 1.5 inch screws that we had to secure the boards.

Now we have this....

I am kind of in love with it. LOVE it! 

Before: 

After:

This project cost us $48 dollars all together. I'd say that is much better than the $700 plus that it would cost for a table this size through another store.