A Paris bedroom

When we bought our town home almost 2 years ago, we decided that we would decorate our rooms in themes of different cities.  We looooove to travel, so we thought it would be a cute way to fill our house with items that are meaningful to us because of that love.  Plus, it's SO fun to shop for stuff, so many of my fave home stores (HomeGoods, TJMaxx, Ross, Marshalls, even Target) sell "country" themed items. 

Our bedroom is themed around Paris.  I have been twice, Dave has never gone but wants to so badly because I talk about it alllll the time.  We are actually planning a trip to go this summer, hopefully!  I can't think about it, it gets me way too excited.  So anyways, we bought a normal bedroom set from Gardiners when we bought our home.  It's all the same, kinda matchy, but really nice furniture.  My aunt & uncle got us a very nice bedding set for our wedding, and I bought black out type brown curtains to match, since Dave has to sleep during the day.  I had some artwork from Paris, and my old apartment, and things I swiped from my mom that I put up on the walls, and I added some Eiffel Tower type accents to the room.

It's still not right.  As I am learning about design, I want my room to look Parisian.  Not because it has Paris stuff IN it, but that it has that Paris feel to it.  I used Pinterest and my memories and thoughts of Paris to help me get ideas to vamp up this room. 

First I had to think of a color palette.  Our walls are already painted this beautiful green called Fresh Guacamole, its soft and lovely and a nice Paris green.  I have cream and brown accents in here now, in the  curtains and the bedding, but that needs to change.  It's way too earthy for Paris!  I am planning on adding purple as my main accent color, with white as well.  Plus the dark brown accent of the furniture.  I have an idea book that I have dedicated to home decor, I write down projects and ideas in here - it helps me narrow down what I want, because it changes constantly!

That's the book!  Here are my color inspirations...

I wanted to change the artwork above the bed.  The art I had up there was a means to an end, I didn't have anything and mom gave me these four little hand painted Paris pics, so I threw them up there right after we were married to have something on the wall.

I didn't really like the black frames with the dark brown furniture, but the pics are very sweet.  Way too small for that wall though.  I thought about it for a few weeks I figured out I wanted a French looking picture, but not a pic of Paris or anything, and I wanted it to have purple in it.  I envisioned something with flowers...a cool French pic with flowers.  At Target tonight I wandered to their small art section and found the perfect piece!!

It's perfect.  It's French, its vintagey (its a word! lol) and it's bigger scale for this big wall.  It has a touch of green like the walls, and purple and creamy white accents, with a muted black color in it that looks like our furniture.  It's the "one"!!!!

Next I need to update our bedding, I want a beautiful, sort of frilly, white fluffy set.  With vintage white and green and purple like pillows.  I want to update my black out brown curtains with something else.  Maybe white.  Maybe lilacy white.  I still have to think about that.  I want to also possibly add white netting around our bed.  I have no idea how to do that yet, I don't want that mosquito net thing, I want it to be more like a canopy.  Romantic.  I want to take off the mirror that came with our bedroom set and find a more Parisian one, one with character.  I also want to switch out my night stand with a stack of old suitcases.  It's easier to show you my inspiration from Pinterest!  To see the whole board, click here :







or



I love Parisian and vintage accents...







and I love this Paris wallpaper!  I have this tiny built in book shelf on the wall opposite our bed, I and think maybe I'd do something like this on the back wall of that inset shelf?  How sweet would that be??



We have this ugly light and fan that I'd love to replace with a romantic chandelier.  I would have to convince Dave to let me nix the fan altogether then...I don't know if we want that?




Those are my ideas.  I get all excited about a room and go crazy thinking about it, and dreaming it up.  I am so happy that I found that picture at Target tonight.  I love dreaming and all, but I like actually DOING things to spruce up the room too!

More updates to come as I add more and change more!!

Yep, I am one of those people...

I have been couponing since the beginning of October.  I've learned a lot about it in the last 4 months.  Here is what you need to know if you want to get started, or get into it more.

1.  Couponing is messy!

This is actually a pretty tamed mess because I've been cleaning everything over the last day.  But, don't be fooled.  Couponing is messy.  You can expect that on any given day your main living area will be cluttered with papers, inserts, circulars, clipped coupons that float around, mailer coupons, catalinas, etc.  My dining table is usually covered with paper, and that includes all our regular junk too (mail, bills, Ashley's school papers) and it drives me crazy.  I've done a few things to help corral the mess, and I'll get to that later.

2.  Couponing takes up a lot of time!

I don't have a picture to illustrate this.  Maybe a huge clock or something.  It takes up a lot of your time.  I usually set aside time on Sundays to clip & organize my coupons.  Then, during the week, I have to take time to browse the circulars, and the couponing websites, to find the deals that I want.  Then I have to make lists (a few, depending on how many stores I want to go to) and then I have to pull all the coupons I want to use together for my shopping trips.

I have to admit, I'm not great at couponing yet.  I am sure there are better ways to organize, and sure there are better ways to time it all out.  I think that the more I do it, the better I will get.  It's just a messy time consuming process!

Ok, so now that you know all that, and you still are interested and haven't shut off your computer or written me off as a wack-a-doodle or something, here is how I do this!!

Couponing 101 from Tee - The whole crazy process! 

I'll try to explain this the best I can.  In all honesty, couponing is worth the effort and time it takes me!  Plus, it's FUN.  I can't describe how good it feels to be at a store, after every item has been scanned, and you give your store loyalty card over and your coupons and you just watch that total dwindle down and down and down.  You feel like celebrating!  Right?!?

Here is my weekly process, hopefully it makes sense!  On Saturday or Sunday, I get The Sun (our city newspaper) delivered to my house.  This is an exciting day because I run out for the paper, flip through it and see what goodies we are getting this week.  Then, I go to my local store and pick up 3 more papers.  I like having 4 all together because my most-visited store (ShopRite) has a limit of 4 items per sale.  I don't always buy 4 of everything, only if it's a great sale matched with a good coupon, but I like having 4 for that purpose, because it can be a great deal! 

Something slightly off topic, I would recommend looking into recycling if you don't.  We didn't before this, but I felt so bad throwing away all that paper that I had to start because I do care about our trees and our earth and our oxygen and trashing 4 papers worth of stuff made me feel extremely guilty.  It was really easy to start, I looked up our county's policy on recycling.  I thought it would be complicated to start, and that we would have to go buy a bin for it and all that.  Not so!  All we had to do was find a container, preferably blue, and put a big X on it and take it out with our trash twice a week.  SIMPLE!  Why haven't we been doing this the whole time?

Ok back to it.  I thumb through each paper and pull out all the circulars that I know I may need, they include:

ShopRite
Giant
Wegmans (if there is one - a lot of their deals are usually posted online)
CVS
RiteAid
Walgreens
Target
Walmart
Safeway

**Safeway and Giant don't always come - their deals aren't Sunday - Saturday deals, so their circulars sometimes come separate.

You can always look up most stores deals online too.

So I pull those out and then I pull out the gold: the coupon inserts.  Then, I recycle the rest of the paper.  I usually don't read it, sometimes I'll read the travel or Dave may want the sports, but usually it all goes to the recycle bin. 

Then I make a pile of all the inserts, matching them together from the 4 papers, i.e. all the Replums go in one pile, all SmartSource in another (those are the 2 main ones) and then the PG, etc.  You can sort of see my system here...

So after I have my piles, I pick one and start.  I'll take each insert and carefully rip all the pages out and match them all up from each.  Then with the pile of each page, I cut the coupons together.  This saves lots of time.  See in the pic above?  I had 4 pages from the same insert (in which I have 4 usually) of women's hair care products and I just clip them all at the same time.  Which saves me from having to cut each individually.  Then you end up with piles of coupons that are the same all spread out (it's messy, remember!  This was a fairly small insert so there aren't as many as usual)..

See?  Nice little neat piles of coupons ready to be filed.  Now, I do the coupon binder system.  So I bought a huge white binder and 3 packets of plain white divider tabs and I made 25 sections.  You can see my binder up above, and here is a close up of the tabs...

My sections right now (they change as I figure out what I need and what I don't) are as follows: cookies/sweets, salty snacks, granola bars/fruit snacks, bread/PBJ, fruits/veggies, pastas/dinners, soup, baking, breakfast, sides/rice, condiments/dressing, drinks, fridge, yogurt, freezer, candy, ziploc/storage, paper products, cleaning, laundry, dishwashing, first aid/meds, womens, mens, pet/misc, and dental.  I have changed these a few times to work for me.  You will probably do different. Right now, we don't have babies so we have no need for those coupons, I usually try to donate them.  This is my system, but really try to do what makes shopping and organizing easier for you!

Anyways after all the coupons from one insert are cut, I file them in here.  I use the baseball card organizers which you can get from Target, WalMart or order off Amazon.  I love them!  They are the perfect size for the most part, sometimes I have to fold the bigger coupons.

As I file I try to see if there are any expired coupons in the section.  If there are, I pull them out and set them aside.  We will get to this later...

Then I'll start with the next insert.  Again I rip all the pages apart, I throw away the ads for granny panties and what not, and make new piles, like you can see here.  I start cutting and organizing all over again!  It takes about 2 hours of my Sunday to do all this, if I work fast and efficiently and don't have LOST on to distract me...like I do right now.  It's the episode about Mr. Eko, and it's very distracting, LOL!

So that is the cutting and organizing part.  Hopefully that all makes sense!  I try to go through the binder every month at the end of the month (when most coupons expire) and pull out the ones that are expired.  I am guilty of not using a lot of coupons.  I once read that you should cut ALL coupons, even if you won't use them.  I don't like that advice.  I've started cutting ones that I know I'll use, and even ones that I may use.  But...coupons for products that I know I won't buy, like hair dye or some certain frozen foods, I don't bother clipping and just put in the trash pile.  GASP.  I know, I should cut these and donate them too, but I don't.  At least not yet.  Oh well.

You can donate your expired coupons to the military.  As long as they are within 6 months of the expiration date.  You can go to this site, the Krazy Coupon Lady, and read how to do this.  I love this site and she is the one that taught me how to coupon from the start.

Speaking of websites, below I have listed the sites that I go to to find the deals for each week.  You can look through your circulars and match your coupons to the deals yourself, but a lot of people out there have done the work for you!  I browse their sites, find my stores, and read about the deals.  Then I decide which ones I want to buy.  Here are the ones I like a lot, but there are SO many out there, just google your store or your area with something like, "Coupon match ups for_____" your store, or "_______ weekly deals and match ups".

Couponing Websites:

Krazy Coupon Lady

Couponing to Disney

Living Rich with Coupons

Deal Seeking Mom

Coupon Mom

Frugal Girls

Hip 2 Save

These are just a few that I like to check a lot each week.  Like I said, there are tons of sites out there!  I like to check them all because sometimes they have different deals posted.  Something to remember though, that deals vary from state to state, as do each stores couponing policies. 

I'll check these sites and from there make my list.  I have a template that I use that lists the store, the item, the original price, the coupon to use, the price after the coupon, how many I want to buy and the total of all items.  Oh here, it's just easier to show you:)  This is a screen shot of my list.  I usually hand write it, but for your sake I typed this one because my handwriting is awful!

Actually I am providing the template for you to use!  You can download it and use it as you embark on a couponing journey;)  Download the template here and enjoy!

So I'll write out my lists, I usually have a few because I shop at a few different stores every week (like ShopRite, Target, Wegmans, etc) and then I'll get my binder and start pulling the coupons I need.  I like to keep them in like accordian file for when I shop, separate from the binder so that I don't have to thumb through that big honker to find what I need.  I got this from Target's $1 section:

I keep the coupons separated by store so there is no confusion.

Then I am all ready to shop!  I'll still take my binder with me, along with my purple accordion file, in case I run into an unadvertised deal in the stores which almost always happens (think of all those clearance items at Target!  I score great deals with those!).  I carry everything in a cute Vera Bradley market bag.

Because Vera makes everything more fun;)

Then, once you have your system down and a few months of gone by, you'll have a wonderful stockpile of goods that you won't know what to do with?!?  Mine has out grown my storage for it, and we are working on fixing that!  Here are some pics of our stockpile.

This is up in our linen closet, we keep all beauty/health stock up here, but I think we'll have to move it to the basement soon because it's growing and growing.

A close up of the top...

and the bottom.  We have enough shampoo, conditioner, body wash and deodorant to last us all over a year!  I probably spend less than $50 on all of this!!

A close up of the basket on the top, which holds tooth brushes, razors, chapsticks, etc.

This is our little cabinet in the basement.  We bought this to hold my stockpile originally, it's not nearly enough space!

Here it is all open and full, you see I have already outgrown it.

Close up

Another close up - we've got all sorts of food stuffs in here!

All that doesn't include our pantry in our kitchen that is full too!  I love having a stockpile.  It means I don't have to run to the store every night for something I need for making dinner, etc.

09/2013 Update:  This stockpile lasted almost 2 years!  The foodstuffs went a bit faster because of expiration dates but we STILL have a few bottles of the shampoo/conditioner/toothpaste stuff!!  It goes to show that once you have a good stockpile, you can chill out for a while, until you get low on something.  Awesome!

Last but not least, here is a little something that I have that helps me stay organized, and sometimes less messy.

This box is handy because it has a top with compartments for this I use when couponing like pens and binder clips and paper clips.

Inside are files and folders that help me separate things and keep them out of the way.  I don't use this as much as a should.  It is handy for keeping all that stuff off my table!

Ok, that is my couponing plan in a huge nutshell;)  I hope it helps clarify the process for you and make it easier.  I am sure there are a million better ways to do this, but this works for me.  I'm not an expert yet, and I am sure there are so many more ways to save money by doing this.  I am hoping that as I do this more, I will learn more, and from there save more money!  It's a tedious process but it's worth every clip, every minute, every inconvenience it may cost me.  I love couponing and the money it saves my family.  We are able to travel with the savings, pay off debt, eat out, and buy things we may need, or even just want.  I enjoy the trip to the cash register every time! 

What do you do that works for you?!

This weekend I've linked up to Tatertots and Jello - for their weekend wrap up party!!

Live {together} or Die {alone}

What is it about those little brackets that makes everything cuter?

Guess what has taken over my life lately?



That's right!!  Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Charlie, Hurley, Claire, Jin, Sun, etc...they are my BFFs:)  I've gotten Dave re-addicted to it too.  So we aren't getting a lot done around here because we are glued to the TV all the time!  But hey, its winter - and even though the snow has forsaken us this year so far, it's still and gloomy outside - and it's nice to be lazy sometimes.

Today mom & I visited the Habitat for Humanity Restore in Baltimore.  I first heard about it on one of my fave blogs Young House Love and have always wanted to go and look around in one.  It's a huge discount home improvement warehouse.  It has furniture and cabinets and appliances and paint stuff and light fixtures and it is really cool!  If you have a hankering for home improvement and restoring old pieces and furniture or cabinetry, or need a sink or toilet or a fridge, this could be a cool place for you!  There are 3 in the Baltimore area, the link up there will take you to the website.  I was excited to go and bought two sconces, pictures to come, for $12 each.  Score!

Here are some pics I snapped in the Restore.  Furniture and bathtubs...

more furniture & cabinets...

more furniture...

 lots and lots of appliances...

It was really cool.  Not too far a drive either.  I'll get some pics of the sconces soon!  Meanwhile, I am going on a spray paint kick - I went to Lowes and bought a few pretty colors that I love and now I am going through the house thinking, "hmmmmmm...what can I spray paint?!?!?  Make pretty?!?!" LOL

Sorry, my camera on my IPhone really stinks if I don't use Instagram.  Need a new camera!  I'll post pics of things I spray-a-fy soon;)

Coupon post coming tomorrow!!  Yipee!  Finally!

MIA

That's me the past week!  Oh, I've been getting stuff done, but blogging?  Nada.  Last week I went to the DR and was diagnosed with a sinus infection (after 2 months of just plain sickness and not feeling well) which puts me to sleep by 10pm every night - so I have some time to do things but hardly the time to write about them!  Thankfully, after 6 days of an anti-biotic and getting some rest, I am feeling better!  Yipee!

What have I been up to?  So much!  My promised coupon post is coming soon, I am still taking pictures and getting things together, the draft is written I just need to add some things. 

I've been getting tons of ideas for our house lately.  I'm on this huge kick to mix things up.  A lot of our stuff is way to matchy - I am trying to layer color and pizazz in this place.  It's going to be so much work!  But fun, lots of fun.  Here was my first project, and it's still in progress.


This buffet used to live here on this wall.  I love this piece, it's big and beautiful.  But...its too big for this little wall.  I felt like it was too crowded, it needed room to breathe!  So we moved him to the basement where we are going to turn him into a cool bar for the man cave. 

I looked and looked and wondered what would be best to put in that spot.  Something smaller of course, and much easier to move around at Christmas (our tree goes here!).  I had been thinking of putting a small desk on this floor for a while, to hold all the stuff that usually goes on the table (mail, catalogs, etc) things that we need to sort.  Also a place for Ash to sit and do homework, or for me to sit and pay bills or blog or do the budget.  We found one that we liked at Target so we found the measurements and taped it out at home to see what it would look like:

You know that episode of Friends where Chandler and Monica move in together and she tapes out a space for his ugly chair?  That is what this makes me think of!  "Someone killed Square Man!" LOL.  Hey, at least we knew that it would fit perfectly.  Much better than that big honkin' buffet table.  It was so simple to put together.  I LOVE it here.  I need to buy some accessories and possibly some things to hold paper and organize stuff.  I think I'll mind less if this little desk is messy, then if our big dining room table is messy! 

It has a cool drawer that holds my laptop perfectly, with an opening in the back for the wire.  Plus, other space for other things.  Its perfect.

We've added a few other things to our home.  I posted  about some pillows for Clifford (our big red couch) to make him more swanky a few weeks ago - the 3 on the left are  from HomeGoods (LOVE THAT STORE) and the black one on the right is from Ross.  That is my latest pillow - I got that one on sale for $3.49!  Score!!!  I think the pillows and the couch are liking each other, everyone is getting along!  I had another pillow there from IKEA, but he didn't fit in, poor fella, so he found a new hang out in the basement.

Someone else came home with us.  You know how, if you are addicted to Pinterest like me, you pin things that you love and you hope that one day you can find them, or buy them, or make them...one day?  Well, I pinned these guys about a month ago:

I thought they were so sweet and cute and I have this obsession with owls, even though a lot of people say they are creepy.  I don't think they are creepy!  Anyways I pinned them and then forgot about them and their cuteness until I found this guy!!!  At HomeGoods!!!  I bought him!!!  I didn't want those B&N ones because I don't need two (they are bookends) but this one was perfect for me.

He looks almost exactly like those Pinned owls!  He is so sweet.  Poor Dave, I was cradling this owl all through the store, agonizing over whether to buy it ($19.99) or leave him.  After 30 minutes Dave was just like, "Oh just buy him!"  LOL!

I still have to find a good spot for him.  I also have to stop buying owls.  We have too many now, and it's getting a little weird;)  I really don't think that I can have enough owls.  I saw so many at TJ Maxx tonight, I wanted to buy them all.  It's like they are little kittens and I want to bring them all home;)

Are you obsessed with anything that is getting out of hand?