Minky/Satin Blankie Giveaway

Updated:  This giveaway is now closed!

I am so excited about this giveaway from Mom's Creative Touch!

Faith makes these beautiful 18" x 18" and 36" x 36" baby blankets....

and she is going to GIVE ONE AWAY to one lucky Thrifty Decorating reader!

The winner gets ONE 18" x 18" blankie of your choice with free personalization!

Faith has 16 Minky options, 27 satin options and 17 cotton options for the blankets at 

her website Mom's Creative Touch and you get to CUSTOMIZE your blankie!!

 

Faith is a homeschooling mom of 4 who hand-makes each one of her blankets....I wish 
she made a 60" x 60" one for adults!  They look so cuddly!

In order to enter you MUST be a follower of Thrifty Decorating....either through Google Friend Connect, Linky Followers or subscribing through the RSS feed.  

Entry #1:  Visit Mom's Creative Touch leave me a comment telling me one of 

your favorite blanket combinations.

Entry #2:   "Like"  Mom's Creative Touch on Facebook and please leave a comment on her wall letting Faith know I sent you and then come back here and leave a comment on this post!

Entry #3:   Tweet or put a FB post tagging Mom's Creative Touch and Thrifty Decorating, 
sharing this giveaway.  Leave me a comment on this post telling me that you did!

I'll pick a winner on Friday!

Please be sure to leave a SEPARATE comment for each entry!  Please make sure your email is 

enabled in your profile or else leave your email in your comment, so I have a way to contact you!  

Winner will be picked via Random.org.  Giveaway will run from 2/19/12 - 2/23/12.

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Last minute gift ideas

Are you still looking for a teacher gift idea??

My very crafty friend, Melissa, made these......she went to AC Moore and bought

the candles when they were on sale.....4 for $10....

She just embellished them with scrapbook paper and ribbon....they can be customized for any season!

Melissa also used Martha Stewart's idea for these button ornaments....

You can just use old buttons and green pipe cleaners!


Thanks so much for your ideas, Melissa!!




If you have a crafty idea, feel free to email me a picture and I'll feature you, as well!!

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Christmas gift idea. . . .

If you've been hanging around my blog for any length of time, then you know that I homeschool.....I never would have pictured myself as one of "those" homeschoolin' families, but we are one of "those" now....

A while back, I stumbled across a blog written by a 17 year old homeschool girl.....I had a soft spot immediately for her because she was homeschooled and also because she had her own jewelry making business....we've been corresponding back-and-forth and she recently sent me one of her products to review....

Let me just first say that I am totally inept at taking shots of myself in the mirror....I had a lot of pictures perfectly focused on my camera LENS! GRRR!!  I had to delete another 20 pictures because they showed my WRINKLES too clearly!!

Aren't these just the cutest earrings??

Can you guess what they are made from??

GUITAR STRINGS!!! Isn't that the best idea?? Shaylynn recycles old guitar strings into pretty earrings!

I pretty much only wear hoop earrings and her earrings matched my outfit perfectly today!

Here are some of the other products available for purchase in Shaelynn's Faerie Shoppe...

{Stardust Earrings:  $10.00}

{Elegant Beaded Bobby Pins:  $5.00/4}

{Christmas Charm Bracelet:  $8.91}

{Handmade Wire Pearl Bracelet:  $6.15}

So if you are looking for a unique, hand-made Christmas gift, head over to Shaelynn's Faerie Shoppe....


Shaylyn is also offering FREE SHIPPING to Thrifty Decorating readers...just enter the code thriftydecorblogreader11 and it's good until January 1st.

She's going to do a giveaway with me after Christmas....I can't wait!

Would it be wrong to enter my own giveaway???

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DIY business cards . . .

I just love making friends in the blog world.....one of my virtual friends is Mindy from a {day} with lil mama stuart.  We started our blogs about the same time and I have enjoyed all of her wonderful ideas!


When I put out a plea for help because of the craziness of this past month, Mindy responded right away and this idea is AWESOME!!

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Since I got ready for BlogHer in a few days notice, I had to whip up some business cards in no time! Here’s my no design background whatsoever way of designing your own business cards using picnik.com (a free photo editing website).

1.  Upload a background. Sprik Space has an amazing series of free patterns, in 20 colors! The project possibilities with these are endless!

2. Roughly crop your photo to a rectangle shape. Then resize it to 1050x600 (unclick the "keep proportions" box) for a 3.5x2 business card. The proportions of the pattern might get skewed, so keep undoing and play around with the cropping and resizing until your pattern looks right.

3.  Add text boxes with your pertinent information (name, email, website, twitter handle, Facebook page, phone number and address if you aren’t creeped out by that, etc). Change the colors and sizes and rearrange to your liking. TIP: Always note the numbers of your colors. It's easy to match later on if you mess up or recreate your file.

4. I added clip art from their selection of stickers (I do not have a premium account). Right click to rotate, flip, resize and reposition as you please. Adjust colors and sizes. TIP: Don’t make a border around your card. The cutting process is not precise, so it’s easier to just not have one.

5. Save your file.

6. Open a word doc. Insert your business card file. Double click or right click to resize to 3.5x2 (uncheck "lock aspect ratio" box). Adjust your page margins to be .5 all around. Copy and paste 9 more, so you have 10 on a page.

If you want a double sided business card, repeat all steps.

After doing a few test prints, I brought a jump drive with the two files (one for front and one for back) to Office Depot for printing (I’d do the cutting myself). It cost me $25 to print 200 business cards (20 sheets) double sided on glossy paper.  Then it was just me, 20 sheets, and my paper cutter in my closet floor for two late nights. Turns out I only dished out 60 cards in my 2.5 days at BlogHer’11. Should I hand the other 100+ out to every parent I see at the park??

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Wasn't that a great DIY idea!!  (And Mindy just takes incredible pictures!)  

Mindy offers a part 2 to this tutorial....

....would you believe that she made her business card holder out of duct tape?!?

For a complete tutorial, head over to a {day} with lil mama stuart!

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Salt Scrub . . . .

Hey there
Thrifty Decorating readers. I'm Tiffany over at
Ladycrafter14. I'm pretty new to blogging but
am totally addicted. 


I love to craft, create, photograph, sew, do it myself, and of
course share my obsessions with anyone willing to listen. 


I married the love of my life
 and we have 4 trophies attesting our love: 3 girls and 1 boy. He
farms and ranches and I blog about all the stuff I do
 while he is hard at work.



Thanks to the Lovely Laura at Live.Laugh.Photograph I was inspired to create some salt scrubs of my very own to gift to friends and teachers and what not. Her post is very good and I wanted to give her credit for the inspiration even though I kinda made up my own recipe. Just a dollop of this stuff scrubbed into your hands or feet and then rinsed leaves them silky smooth and smells so yummy!



To begin you'll need EVOO (extra virgin olive oil), lime or lemon juice, coarse salt, some fragrance oil.


The recipe I have found works good is... 5 cups coarse sea salt, 1 cup lime juice, 1 cup EVOO, and 3 tsp of coconut-lime fragrance oil (plus more in the jars)


(Purchased the oil below at Walmart)




Combine the ingredients in a large bowl. If it isn't your desired consistency then add a little more EVOO.

Smells so good..... I lastly spooned the mixture into jelly jars, then added about 1/2 tsp of fragrance oil to top off each jar. I added a little twine and label which you can print HERE. I printed on cardstock and attached to the jar. So charming and so easy! Perfect homemade gift for any occasion and so easy! This recipe filled 9 jelly jars.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and recipe. 
For a few other crazy little tutorials click HERE or 
to follow me on Pinterest click HERE.


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Tiffany also made some gorgeous fall pumpkins....

I love that they are not orange!!

And I'm loving those flower balls!

Tiffany....thanks so much for visiting Thrifty Decorating!

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How to make a gift bow....

I am the worst gift wrapper in the world....truly!  One Christmas I actually hired a girl in our youth group to wrap our gifts because I was too embarrassed to take mine to the family Christmas......(This was earlier in my marriage.....I've since learned!)


So I always stress when my kids go to birthday parties or we have gifts for weddings because my wrap-job looks like a 4 year old did it!


The other day, I was in Walmart and was getting school supplies but I walked past their bow section.  Now for some of you, this is basic bow making 101....for me, it was complete enlightenment and I suddenly realized how to make a fluffy-looking bow!


So...just in case there are others like me....gift-wrapping inept....here's how to make a store-bought bow!


Cut some long lengths of ribbon.......about 3-4 feet each.

After you have cut about 20ish lengths of ribbon, fold them in half and tie with another piece of ribbon to secure the bunch.

Using scissors, curl your ribbon lengths.  (I only have a few lengths here, but when I made my actual bow I had a lot more ribbon!)

And that's it....truly an awakening for me!

Now if I could only learn how to wrap!!

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Fourth of July Firecrackers...and a giveaway!

{Be sure to read until the bottom!}

Do you know about Pick Your Plum and GroopDealz??  They are awesome discounted crafts, jewelry, vinyl deals.....they come daily to your inbox and are greatly discounted, but only for the day!


So when this came into my inbox, my mind starting spinning.......

First you need some background..... 

In our family, we fight over who gets to mow the grass.....I have actually withheld the mowing from my almost 12-year old because that means we would have to split the mowing 3 ways instead of 2....yes, I know that I am weird!

The only thing that I don't like is all the stuff that is laying around the yard in the way of the mower....namely, garden stakes that my hubby uses for his grapes.  We take turns throwing them in each other's way...

What can I say....I'm lazy, I don't want to get off the mower!  But they have been driving me crazy!!

{outlines of their yard imprint!!}

I've been looking for ways to get rid of them, so when I saw that email in my inbox, I knew exactly what I was going to do!!  CHOP THEM UP!!  

The only problem is that I am slightly terrified of the saw.....so I had to beg for the hubby's help!

We cut the garden stakes into 3 different sizes....no measuring, just eye-balling!  I grabbed some supplies and got to work!

I painted the wood....

....and sanded it to distress it.

I also took some distressing ink on a cotton ball and rubbed it all over the wood to make it look more aged.

Cutting a star out of wood is beyond my skill level with a saw and it's 40 miles round trip to Michaels, so I improvised!!  

I painted a piece of cardstock gray, free-handed a star, traced it on the cardstock and cut it out!  At some point, I'll replace it with the real thing, but until then, you can't even tell!!

I ran out to my clothesline and snipped three little pieces off the end and tapped them into the top of the wood with nails.

Voila....my own FREE version of Fourth of July firecrackers!!

Are you ready for the BEST part???  I made TWO sets and I want to give one away!!

So to enter.....become a Google Follower and leave me a comment telling me that you are a new follower.

(If you already follow, just tell me!)

For a SECOND entry, follow me on FB and leave me a comment!

For a THIRD entry, follow me on Twitter and leave me a comment!

(And if you are already following those places...just tell me!)

I'll be giving these away Thursday night!!

Places I party....

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