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DIY Personalized Spring Tulip Wreath

March 22, 2015 6 Comments

It’s officially Spring! With the warm weather we’ve been having over the past couple of weeks, it feels like Spring came early. Especially because we typically get some freak snow storms in March or April, and sometimes even into May. I hate to say that and jinx my luck, because I’m almost sure we’re not in the clear yet. Even so, we’ve already had some beautiful days that just begged for porch sitting, sun soaking, and beer drinking – so I’m taking advantage whenever I can, even if only for a half hour after work. And look! We have tulips coming up.

This type of weather also seems to inspire things like spring cleaning. I have lots of to-dos that could fall into the spring cleaning category, but with temperatures in the 70s over the weekend, who wants to be inside cleaning?! So I found the discipline to spend about 20 minutes last week dusting the wooden blinds in our living room, and then decided to reward myself this weekend with something fun like a new wreath to brighten up the front door! Baby steps, ok?

DIY, Save Money

DIY Home State Going Away Gift for Under $20

March 7, 2015 6 Comments

One of the things I love the most about living in Cheyenne is the people that we’ve met and the lifelong friendships that we’ve made. It’s kind of an odd place to find a social niche, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of people that we have managed to find, and our friends are definitely one of the big reasons we don’t plan on going anywhere in the foreseeable future. So obviously we were super bummed to find out that a couple of our awesome friends made the decision to pack up their belongings and their adorable 1 year old and move back to Iowa to be closer to their families.

I wanted to do something for them that would be more personal than a gift card. My first thought was to have a cool map of Wyoming printed, have several of our friends write on it/sign it, and frame it as a way to capture the memory and also double as artwork for their new home. However, I have been known to procrastinate occasionally, so I found myself frantically trying to find an image that might work for this project last Friday, the day before the going-away bash. Of course at this point I didn’t have time to order an actual print to be delivered. If you are looking for cool prints of maps and you are more responsible than I am and leave yourself longer than 24 hours, there are some great options on etsy (if you’re not looking to go broke – the first site I found before searching etsy was City Prints. They apparently think pretty highly of themselves, with prices starting at $50 for pre-designed prints, up to $250+ for a custom print. Psssh… fat chance getting me to pay that, City Prints!). Here are some affordable shops that I like:

DIY, Save Money, Wedding

Printing Photos Online – Quality on a Budget

February 22, 2015 No Comments

Since receiving our wedding photos, I’ve had a bit of a tough time choosing images to print as well as deciding how to display them. Having over 600 images to choose from makes it a daunting task, but it’s a good problem to have so I won’t complain. I’ve been slowly working toward making some decisions on the images that I’d like to have as artwork in our home. The first project that I decided on is in progress, and I thought I would share what I’ve learned about online printing options.

For this particular display, I had two specific images in mind, and knew I wanted to print them at a fairly large size. I love the artsy composition of these photos (no faces necessary), and thought they would look nice in our bedroom as a kind of showcase of our wedding day fashion. Because even though you only get to wear that wedding dress once, it doesn’t mean you can’t look at it daily!

Home Ownership, Projects, Wyoming

A Fence Post – Part 2

January 25, 2015 No Comments

If you read Part 1, you know the basic steps that we took to learn the rules, plan out our materials list, and estimate the costs of building our fence. Now for the fun part.

Part 2: Building a cedar fence

Purchasing Lumber:

As I mentioned, to get the best price possible, we bought our materials at two different stores. Tools, concrete, posts, rails, and small pickets we purchased at Lowes. Our 6′ privacy pickets came from a local lumber yard. Here’s a super important tip: Pick out your lumber yourself!! You will inevitably have a couple posts or rails that are not 100% perfect, and some pickets that may be split or bent, but you will minimize your waste factor by physically going through the stock pile at the warehouse and choosing the best ones. It really doesn’t take too long to pick up each piece, close one eye and sight down the board. You will be surprised how easily you can spot the badly warped rails or pickets, which you can leave at the store.

Home Ownership, Projects, Wyoming

A Fence Post – Part 1

January 20, 2015 No Comments

The one major project that we tackled upon buying our house was to build a fence. The house itself was done, but there was no fence, which is a problem for Reagan (she is usually very good about staying near the house, but one time before we had the fence up, she disappeared when we let her out for a minute. We were on our way out to go to dog obedience school, no joke. The little shit must have sensed it. We got a couple of phone calls and found her making friends at the dry cleaners a couple blocks down the road). So even though we closed on the house and moved in mid-fall, we knew going in that this project was non-negotiable. Jesse used to have a little business where he and a friend put up vinyl fences, which it turns out is almost nothing like putting up a wooden fence. He is quite handy though, and we’re not afraid to dig in and figure out a solution. We also knew that paying for professional labor would cost us an arm and a leg, and we weren’t about to watch someone else put up our ~~white~~ brown picket fence, only to nit-pick at how we could have done it better (“they didn’t install the damn screws straight!”). So here’s how we went about it.

Part 1: Planning a cedar fence