Valentine’s day Calendar

I finally found a way to surprise my hubby: Just don’t think of it until the night before. Then everyone gets surprised!

Well, the night before Valentine’s day I thought of making Joel a new large wall calendar.

His work one we made him many years back was growing a bit old and was on the small size.

(No he isn’t into math like crazy, those are one of our workers who used to be a math teacher!)

For a while we had used electrical tape we’d cut down for the lines but about a year ago he took those off…I know, yuck.

I had checked into boards like these, but they run around $50.

No. Thank. You

By chance I heard my hubby tell our bro in law last Saturday that one can get a wall covering that is a white erase board.

So using this as inspiration:

And this one where a lady painted the whole wall in her narrow hallway:

I found the board the hubby had talked about at Lowes.It was really cheap ($11) for a huge sheet of White/Gloss Hardboard Wall Panel. I took a marker with me to make sure it would work as white board. In hind sight that could have turned out really bad if it hadn’t worked!!! Lol!

The guy who came to my aid at Lowes instantly regretted it when I told him I needed 36 squares. It was 7:30 in the morning. Maybe he was still waking up and I misunderstood his look.

He cut a great 8x8 squares for me and then I dug through the garage for tools to drill holes. I finally found drill bit that worked and drilled away! My idea was to make a calendar that the day’s could easily be removed and written on then hung back up. So the nail holes needed to be large enough to not get caught up.

I got a circle punch from Hobby Lobby and used a coupon so it cost only $9. I punched black circles out and then cut the numbers out of white paper. Then I laminated them by hand using clear laminate. then stuck them on with sticky tack.

I use this stuff all the time. It works for labels and covering books. It is the best!

 

I used it to cover the days of the week as well.

Finally, my creation complete!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thrifting for the family

 

“You find such GREAT deals!”

I hear this a lot. Do you? When pointing out my $6 kid rug ($30 at Target), or $5 Roman curtains (who knows how much at wherever!)…and I have to agree. But it is work. To find the deals you have to look. Over and over and over. Luckly I have eBay to sustain me between good deal for myself!

Today’s find was this:

For $3.99 I got a microwavable $35.95 Pop corn popper. Which apparently is super healthy and organic and small enough to fit over my fridge!

And I love the way it looks! Beats the one my folks had while I was growing up:

Oddly enough I had just decided that popcorn would be a great snack for the kids. I wanted to have a snack bin for all those “I’m hungry” times. We don’t do store bought snacks in our family and this will be a way to ‘splurge’. So on the way home I stopped by the grocery and purchased a pound of popcorn for $1.47.

And the popper worked perfectly!!! This is 1/3 cup of popcorn!

 

When I finished bagging the popcorn I stuck all the kernels on the bottom back in the microwave.

Waste not, want not!

So I now have a nice snack stash for my 3 youngins’!

Oh, and I popped the corn plain for now, but it does come with a lid for melting butter in it.

I’m just not sure how the metal will do in the microwave…still doing research on why they made this with a metal lid, now they use all silicone lids.

So that is my thrifty find for the family! How did you do?