A Summer Transformation

This time last summer, our dining room looked like this:

It was dark, it was moody, it was elegant, it was....hardly ever used. The white chair cushions made it impractical for everyday dining, and on formal occasions when guests were joining us it rarely provided enough room for everyone to squeeze in. We usually preferred to dine in the kitchen where the table would seat eight with the leaf in, and cleanup was a snap.

So I begged. I pleaded. I argued. I rationalized. And finally I convinced my husband that our neglected dining room would much better serve our family as a bright and happy playroom! So after much creativity and hard work, by the end of the summer it looked like this:

See how happy the kiddos are playing in there?

Well, it was quite the transformation, but it was done on a budget, and over the next week or two (or three, depending on how often I get around to posting) I will share how we did it without breaking the bank.

I am delighted to report that this room is now used and enjoyed by all members of our family, and it is one of my favorite rooms in the house thanks to the bright cheerful colors and clean finishes. The main thing I learned in doing this transformation is that you have to make the space you have work for you. My husband was so ingrained with the idea that we HAD to have a dining room, and it took a lot of persuasion to get him to realize that a dining room just wasn't working with our lifestyle right now. I felt like the square footage in that room was just dead weight that wasn't serving our family. So we cut ties with the idea of a dining room (for now) and created a fun, functional space that serves our needs.

Is there a space in your house that isn't serving your family? How can you transform it to reflect your needs and wants without spending a lot of money? Leave a comment and share!

Could Rite Aid be my new best friend?

$1.01 at Rite Aid...

I ran into a couponing buddy yesterday at Wal-Mart and I bemoaned the fact that I just hadn't been seeing any good deals around lately. She said she'd been frequenting Rite Aid and finding lots of good deals, and she told me about a few, specifically, a deal on Pampers wipes. So when I got home, I did some research of my own and this is how my trip went today!

**NOTE: All prices listed are only good with your Wellness card**

- 4 boxes of Pampers wipes $2.49 each

- 2 bottles Old Spice Body Wash 2/$7

- 3 packages of Carefree pantiliners $0.99 each

- 1 bottle of Lubriderm lotion $3.99

- 1 bottle of Dawn dish soap $0.99

I used these coupons:

- 4 $2/1 Pampers wipes

- BOGO Old Spice Body Wash

- 3 $1/1 Carefree product

- 1 $3/1 Lubriderm (in-ad Rite Aid coupon)

- 1 $2/1 Lubriderm printable

- 1 $0.25/1 Dawn

- 1 $5/$25 Rite Aid coupon

I ended up paying $1.01 out of pocket, and I got a coupon on my receipt for $4 off my next Rite Aid purchase, so I made $3 today! Not bad for my couponing comeback!

For those of you who haven't heard, Rite Aid is now doing a new program that appears to be just like the CVS Extra Bucks program- that's what that $4 coupon on my receipt was for (from the body wash deal).

Glad to be back in the game! Have you been couponing lately?

Give Yourself Some Love!

I realized last week that I was tired of cleaning, tired of clutter, tired of never feeling like I was ever caught up with anything! (can anyone relate?) I decided that I needed to find someplace to declare a sanctuary, and I decided that my bedroom would be it.

You know how it is, you get married, you "nest" and get pretty bedroom furniture and linens and hang nice stuff on the walls and then the kids come along and over time, your room gets filled with piles of little clothes, random toys, diapers, and pretty much anything else that doesn't have a home in the rest of the house because nobody sees your bedroom except you, right? And all that pretty stuff is still there, it's just buried under all the junk!

So here is my beautiful thrifty challenge to you this week: CLEAN YOUR ROOM! Ditch the clutter, dust the pretty furniture, hang another picture, and vacuum the floors. Then, grab one of those candles that have been gathering dust on your dresser and LIGHT IT! Make your room a sanctuary. Then get in bed 30 minutes earlier than usual, turn on your bedside lamp and read a good book or thumb through a favorite magazine. Trust me, you'll feel renewed! (don't forget to blow out the candle before you doze off to dreamland, though!)

After you've created your sanctuary, be sure to protect it! Keep it off-limits to anything that doesn't make you feel peaceful and calm. My new decluttering question is: If this item were to get ruined or destroyed, would I feel a) sad or b) upset because I would have to replace it? If I would not feel either of those things, then it's probably something I don't need. For example, my closet is filled with extra linens. If that tan comforter got torn up somehow, would I be totally bummed because it was a favorite? No. Would I be concerned about replacing it with a new one right away? Nope, not really! Goodbye comforter! You'll find that there are a lot of things you can do without, and releasing the weight of all that clutter is freeing! You'll have more breathing room, less stuff, which means that cleaning will be easier and take significantly less time.

So make yourself a sanctuary, a place that you can escape to, even when there are piles of laundry on the floor in the laundry room, dishes mounting in the sink, and dust bunnies chasing each other through the halls. Give yourself a place where the only person you have to clean up after is you, and where you love yourself enough to not make yourself work too hard, and where you can light a candle, put up your feet and relax. Enjoy!

Do you have a sanctuary? If not, are you going to create one? Leave a comment and tell me about it!

Onesies and Birdies and Projects...Oh, My!

I found this really awesome blog that made me want to find my sewing machine and learn how to thread it! (Seriously, no idea where it is...if I still have it...I may have let someone borrow it...?) I absolutely LOVE the project ideas that Jill has, and she has impeccable taste. Pretty much everything she makes is something I would be willing to buy. Funny enough, I found out after I fell in love with the site that she is actually the sister of a friend of mine! What are the odds?
Anyway, if you feel like getting a little creative inspiration, take a gander around her site- http://www.homemadebyjill.blogspot.com. Enjoy!
By the way, like my new look?

Lessons Learned from My First Attempt at the $20 Challenge (well, $40 Challenge for me...since the first $20 didn't really work...)

Winnie the Pooh Book Set- 10 adorable hardback miniature books for $10! Just one of the items I've listed on Craigslist today.

So I mentioned in my last post that I was venturing to try something kind of like the $20 Challenge, and today I thought I'd tell you little bit more about my goals and my plan.

This summer, we will be going to Florida with my husband's family. They have a timeshare with the Marriott resort in Orlando, and they invited us to come along. They go every year and they always drive; we have gone with them once before and we drove also. It was not fun. Well, the vacation was fun, but the driving was NOT! I felt like it took me two days just to recover from the drive, then I dreaded the drive home, then after we got home I felt like I needed another week just to recouperate from my vacation! Needless to say, it takes something out of the vacation for me.

So this year I suggested to my husband that we fly. He was appalled and aghast at the cost (with the plane tickets plus the cost of the rental car we'd need when we got there it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $800). I can't blame him- it's a lot of money. But I want to ENJOY my vacation! I'm frugal by nature, but there are certain things that I am perfectly fine spending money on because I feel that my sanity is worth more to me than the money. So as far as I'm concerned, $800 is a bargain.

Well, we finally reached a consensus. If I could earn the money to get us there and do it outside of our regular family budget, then he would concede. He still won't like it, but he'll concede. And so my little brain began to work on moneymaking schemes.

To be honest, I haven't gotten especially creative, but this is what I've decided to do: I will utilize the Goodwill Outlet near my house to purchase items in good condition and then resell them for more than I paid, thus turning a tidy profit. This takes some doing, as the Goodwill Outlet is filled with a lot of, shall we say, crap. (sorry, but it really is) However, on my first trip I managed to spend $15 and find several items that I felt were worthy of resale.

I brought them home, took photos, and listed them on Craigslist. Well, I currently have a $3 return on my $15 investment. Surprisingly, the one item that sold was one that I had gotten fairly creative in putting together- I went through the book section and found 5 classic childrens' books to sell together as a set (Goodnight Moon, the Cat in the Hat, etc.). I had several people interested in them, so I know that is something that's in popular demand. What I also learned was that the other items- random toys, mostly aimed toward the toddler set- must be more complete in order to sell. What do I mean by that? Well, I tried to sell two Aquadoodle pads, but without the markers to go with them, no interest. Likewise, I tried to sell several Fisher Price Little People playsets, but without the Little People figurines with them, no luck.

So, with some lessons learned I returned today and I hit the jackpot! I found several good quality items that were still in the brand-new plastic packaging, along with entire complete book sets (books in a series) and more! New sells much better than used, and when things are in sets it gives the illusion that they are more new than if they are just pieces of the original. I came right home and immediately photographed everything and put it on Craigslist...now I am just waiting. Watching and waiting. Waiting and watching. Hoping the money will come in.

I spent $17 total today, so right now I am out $29. If all of the items I post today end up selling, I should get a total of $56. Not too bad for a few hours of work, but it's going to take a lot of Goodwill trips to make what I'll need to get us to Florida! I'll keep you posted on my progress.

By the way, I am also going through stuff I already have and looking for items that might bring in some cash, like an old technical pen set from college that I'm selling on ebay. Every little bit helps!!

Have you found success in any moneymaking ventures? Leave a comment and let me know! I need all the help I can get!

The $20 Challenge? Interesting...

Hello, friends! I was just visiting my favorite thrifty website, MoneySavingMom, and I came upon a post she did about a post on another blog in which the writer and her husband have begun a "$20 Challenge". The goal is for each of them to start the year with $20 and see how they can creatively invest it into various projects to make it grow. By the end of the year, whoever has the most money wins!

Now, I don't know that I would take this on as a challenge with my husband (for any of you who know my husband, you know that I will lose. Pathetically. He's like the guy who started with a paper clip and ended up with a house). But I do like the concept for me personally, mostly because I have actually kind of started something similar to this myself in order to earn money for my family to fly to Florida for our summer vacation rather than drive. I will go into more detail about that later.

Anyway, this might make some good material for future blog posts as I update you on my progress. But for now, what are your thoughts? Anyone think they might give this a try?

To Blog or Not To Blog?

Happy Spring, everyone! So it's been a little while since my last post, and a LONG while since I've had any meaningful posts, but I just wanted to give you a brief update on what's going on in my Beautiful Thrifty Life.

First, please welcome Little Boo to the family- she was born last September, and I haven't had a chance to formally introduce her yet. She is a ridiculously cute addition to our family, and she is loved to bits by her mommy, her daddy, and especially her big sister and big brother. It's hard to believe she's already 7 months old!

That lovely little picture illustrates the reason why I have not been blogging as of late. I barely have time to do thrifty things, much less blog about them! But writing is definitely a passion of mine, and I would hate to let this blog go, so I will tell you this much- I will do what I can to post whatever I can whenever I can! I still have a head full of ideas, it's just a matter of finding the time to get them out there in cyberspace. But I'll just do my best and what will be will be!

On a positive personal note, I was quite thrilled recently to achieve a long-time goal of mine: I ran an entire 10k race. Let me tell you, I am not a runner. Not by any stretch of the imagination, but 2 years ago my husband decided to run the Monument 10k with a few guys from his office, just for fun, and when I went to cheer him on I got inspired. I decided that I wanted to be able to run the 10k- and not just get through it, but to go into it knowing I could do it and to be able to have it feel okay- not feel like I was going to die. At that point, mind you, I was unable to run a mile. In fact, I couldn't run for longer than a minute without gasping for air! So believe me, running a 6.2 mile race seemed beyond my reach. But something in me seemed to know I could do it.

So I began training. I started using a heart rate monitor and read about training using your heart rate which helped me immensely. Before I knew it, I could run 2 miles! And then I got pregnant. I tried to continue running, but I would be so wiped out when I was through that I would feel sick. So I had to call it quits for awhile, but in October I ramped it up again! The race was at the end of March, so I knew I had to get my act together or I'd never make it. The pressure spurred me on.

About 2 weeks ago I was able to complete the Monument Avenue 10k, running the whole thing, and it felt so good! I didn't set any land speed records (1 hour 19 minutes) but the point was that I accomplished my goal, a goal that was something that a few years ago I never would have dreamed I would have been able to do. The front of my shirt read, "You don't have to go fast. You just have to go."

So I guess I'm taking the same approach to my blog. It's not going to go fast, but it's going to go! I won't be posting every day, or even every other day. But every once in awhile I'll pop up again, and eventually I may even bring it up to a faster pace. Until then, we'll just go slow. :-)

By the way, thanks for the input on the blog color- it is brown. Redesign is imminent...