Archive for the ‘I fancy myself an interior designer’ Category
Paint And Grocery Budget Update
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Last Monday Mike took the day off to get some painting done around the house. We had three rooms to paint and he got them all done by Wednesday night of last week! Some of the paint we’ve had for several months. I love how the rooms turned out. It’s amazing how a little paint cane change the look and feel of your house.
I’ll show you the girls’ bedroom first:
Here’s the before
Pardon the wall border mess. Mike was in the middle of peeling it off. I don’t think I’ll ever do border again! What a mess! This room was the nursery and still had the original nursery theme used by both Katelyn and Madelyn when they were babies. It was kind of bittersweet putting all of it away. I can use it again if I need to in a different room someday!
Here’s the after!
It’s a little bold but I think once we get all their stuff and other decorations on the walls it will tone it down a bit. Mike ruined it a little bit for me when he started calling it ” The Dora room” because of the color. The pink/orange combo was also supposed to be 60/40 not 50/50 like it ended up.
Mike wants to sand their floor and re-stain it then we’re going to move them back in. I can’t wait! We got a free set of bunk beds from a man at church so once we buy the mattresses we’ll set that up in their. We won’t set them up as bunkbeds ,though, since we feel they’re a little young for bunkbeds still. I’m not going to have a real “theme” for their room since they have an eclectic mix of stuff already. Their bedding is Disney Princess (they got it from Nana and Papa at Christmas)but their new valances are some mod looking flowers with pink and orange in them. Because the princess bedding has a little orange in it ( I think!) it should go fine with the pink and orange on the walls.
Here’s the color of our bedroom walls. This is the first time we’ve painted in there since we moved in 6 and a half years ago. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the color. It’s called “Tibetan Orange”. If my room had been clean I would have shown you the whole room. But it looked terrible so I’ll have to show you a picture once wall art and picture frames are back on the walls and my bed is made (with the new bedding I got for Christmas!).
I don’t have a before but just picture a dingy off white with ugly holes in the wall!
The color does darken our room a bit. That’s my only complaint about this color.
Here’s the color that we painted the playroom. The playroom was originally the dining room so I hope any prospective buyers will like this color for a dining room. I love it, although I know it’s another bright color and some may not.
Any of you who have been reading my blog for awhile have caught occasional glimpses of the walls in this room. They were the same dingy off white as my bedroom.
This color is called ” Japanese Fern”.
All in all I’m happy with it! When we had been looking at moving our realtor had kept telling us to paint everything neutral. But a) We already had most of the paint and b) Maybe I’m different, but I liked the houses that had the bold, trendy colors. And if someone were to like our house enough to buy it in the future, it’s just paint! They can repaint it if they want. But I think these colors add a little something to the appearance on the inside.
Just my two cents!
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Grocery Shopping On A Budget Update
I mentioned several weeks ago that our grocery budget was being cut almost in half once we started budgeting when we started attending Financial Peace University. I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to manage on $105 a week in groceries when we had been buying $200 a week before. Well, we’ve managed!!! And done pretty well at it too. And I haven’t been using coupons all that much. Not because I don’t like them or clip them. I do. I just haven’t been able to find too many coupons of stuff we actually buy. I’ve shopped with my list, kept a running tally with my calculator and bought a lot of store brand stuff.
Note: I have found that store brand stuff is not always just like the name brand stuff like many people claim. I bought store brand cheerios and gave them to Katelyn. I didn’t tell her they were different cheerios. After taking one bite she said ” What are these? I don’t like these Cheerios.”
Store brand dish washing powder has also not cleaned like Cascade. As soon as I’m done with the box I have I’m going back to Cascade.
I also switched grocery stores. I started shopping at the cheapest grocery store in our area, Market Basket. I’ve never liked them because the inside is usually ugly, old and sometimes not even that clean. But, boy, is my grocery bill smaller by shopping there. Like Mike reminded me, I’m not shopping because of the look of the store. If I want a nicer store I also have to pay higher prices. And I’ve found that the one I use is not as bad as I remembered and has a pretty good selection. Menu planning has really helped and not buying a lot of “extras”.
I don’t buy yogurt cups anymore. I buy the container o’ yogurt instead and spoon it into small cups. I don’t buy a lot of snack items i.e bags of chips, 3 or 4 different kinds of crackers, cookies etc. I don’t buy a lot of frozen stuff anymore. I don’t buy a large selection of breakfast cereal like I used to. I stick to Cheerios and Kashi Go Lean Crunch. Buying in bulk has helped. All of these small changes have made a difference.
I’m trying to make more stuff from scratch. I do still want to get the couponing thing down. My problem is finding coupons that I can use! I’ve also been price comparing( more than I ever have. EVER!) . I found 2% gallons of milk at Sam’s way cheaper than our cheapest grocery store here. Sam’s was selling them for $1.85 a gallon! I don’t know if that’s permanent or not but I grabbed 4 gallons. (Expiration on 4/24) I felt so proud of myself for noticing! I used to not really notice the price of grocery items unless they were outrageous. And when I used a coupon here or there I thought I was doing a great thing.
I’ve found that living on $105 (or less!!) a week is very doable.
Happy Monday!
