DIY Workbench and Tool Storage

To say that my husband has a lot of tools/building equipment would be an understatement. It is an enjoyable hobby of his, and fortunately it is a cost effective one. Building our own furniture and other things we need in the house, and in general doing our own fixing saves us money, in both the short and the long term. The problem is that when you have a lot of tools, it can be hard to keep track of them and find what you need when you need it.

To be able to store his tools more easily and make them easily accessible to him, my husband built this tool storage station of sorts, without spending a thing. We have a small apartment, as we divided a two floor home into two apartments, one to live in and one to rent out. We have "stairs that lead to nowhere", as the division between the two apartments was made by building a wall at the top of the stairs. We use the upper part of the stairs for storage, and my husband made use of the landing in the middle of the stairs, as a place to store his tools. (Eventually we would like to build a storage shed in our yard, either from scratch or prefabricated, and plan to move this work station there.) I like that his tools now have a place of their own, out of the way of our general living area so it doesn't take up valuable room in our small home, and out of the kids, meanwhile utilizing what otherwise would be wasted space, yet easy enough for my husband to use when he needs it.

Homemade Pallet Spice Rack- DIY Makeover

I wrote in a previous post how many spices I use, and how the little bitty spice racks I see them selling all over doesn't hold nearly enough spices for me, and the few I've seen that seem somewhat large enough are extremely over priced. I was overjoyed when my husband made me a homemade spice rack made entirely out of pallet wood. It was beautiful and rustic and perfect and held so many spices....

Our New Upcycled Guest Bed -- Completely Free and Very Easy!

When we were first married we lived in a two bedroom apartment, one room for us and one for guests. Then we had our first child and while he started off in our room, by a certain point he ended up getting the second bedroom, and we lost our guest bedroom.
When we moved to our smaller apartment nearly 6 years ago, we still had two bedrooms, but one was teeny tiny, and it got filled with two children, my two boys, while my daughters slept in our room.
I enjoy having guests, and one of the hardest things for me about our extra small space was our inability to host anyone - at first we didn't even have a couch in our very small living room/dining room/kitchen.
We managed to find a couch that fit our extra small dimensions and bought an Ikea Solsta couch that opened up into a bed! We could have guests at last, even if it meant them sleeping in our living room. Only the bed that opened up was extremely uncomfortable- two thirds of it was padded but the last third was just wood covered in fabric, not something I'd offer to a guest. We had children over (nephew and niece) who were short enough to fit on the soft 2/3 of the couch bed, but no sleep over adult guests.

One of the things that excited me most about our new and much more spacious house was that it had three bedrooms, one which became my office, but also is intended to double as a guest room. However. while I wanted a guest room for so long, with so many expenses involved in moving and setting up a bigger household and all the new furniture we needed, a guest bedroom just wasn't a priority from a financial perspective. And so, despite our larger home, we still didn't have accommodations for guests.
We do have a spare mattress that was fitting under the triple bunk bed in my kids room, for when my daughters want to sleep in separate beds, and when my little sister Lizzy asked to spend the weekend, I set up that mattress in the guest bedroom, which was OK to sleep on, but honestly, wasn't the nicest accommodations so I wouldn't feel comfortable inviting anyone else to sleep over with the room looking like that.

Homemade Pallet Trash Can

My husband loves building out of pallet wood. I've already shown a couple of projects my husband made out of pallet wood (sometimes with my help, but more often than not without). He likes building out of pallet wood because it's free, easy to find, and you end up with a nice rustic look, of which my husband is fond.
Quite a few times in the past I came home and found my husband with a ready made project built from pallets, waiting for me.

The other day, I came home from teaching a foraging class and saw my husband's latest project- a trash can, or as my South African husband would say, rubbish bin, made from pallet wood. I hadn't known this, but for a long time our garbage can was irritating my husband, as he finds the standard plastic one to be quite ugly, and not space efficient at all. The fact that trash cans are generally either round or trapezoidal makes them leave empty space at the sides, so you can fill up the trash bags less and need to take the garbage out more often.
The covers for most garbage cans tend to be swinging ones, which often get dirtied when you throw in the trash, since even once you pick them up they swing back into place. And at least with our previous one, the hole in which you need to place the garage sometimes isn't big enough, which meant that often when trying to empty the dust pan into the trash can, it didn't fit, and some stuff spilled out onto the floor.

And so, this pallet trash can.

Upcycling, Reupholstering, and Plastic Covering Our Chairs- A Tutorial

All our newly reupholstered and upcycled chairs

Chairs have been the bane of my existence since we've been married practically...

When we were furnishing our home from scratch ten years ago, our budget was really tight. We ended up buying a set of 4 matching chairs second hand, and another chair from a second hand shop and dumpster dove 1 chair, so we started out with 6 chairs, only 4 of them matching. After about 5 years, the four matching chairs got really yucky looking, so I reupholstered them very easily.
As our family grew we dumpster dove a few more chairs (and tossed one of the original four that ended up breaking entirely), and then bought some second hand Ikea chairs as well (that I ended up hating because they aren't stable...).
By the time we moved into our new home, we had 10 regular chairs and a few folding chairs (plus some stackable outside chairs) which were functional, but they were not only mismatched, but they had really gross seats. It was embarassing. We'd have guests over, and we'd offer them a seat and they'd avoid sitting down since the seats were gross (and make comments about how they heard its healthier to stand). We really wanted to buy new chairs, because in our house with a new, polished, and put together look, these chairs were a big eyesore. And it didn't help that people kept telling us to throw out our chairs.
I looked into pricing for chairs, and each set I saw being sold second hand only had 4 or 6 chairs, so it still wasn't enough chairs to be a matching set to give the place a uniform look, and they weren't in the colors I wanted. I looked into pricing of new chairs, and the cheapest half decent chair (not even in a color that I wanted) was $75 each. I really struggled with this, because my chairs bothered me immensely, but I didn't want to spend a fortune on replacing them. The thought originally crossed my mind to reupholster them, but I didn't take that idea seriously because the chairs were all different colors- some light wood, some dark wood (veneer), some black, some white, not to mention most with different shapes and designs. However, I spoke with a friend who suggested painting them as well as reupholstering them, and I was sold.

Our New DIY Pallet Shoe Rack and Tiny Useful Mudroom

We have a lot of shoes in our family. Six people, each at least with a few pairs of shoes... It adds up quite quickly.
Before we moved to our current home I tried to declutter as much as possible, and in doing so, got rid of all the pairs of shoes that people refused to wear or no longer fit, because we had so many shoes in the old house that we needed a huge amount of space to store them all. And when space is at a premium, it is silly to allot so much of your limited space to shoes.
But even after going through the shoes and getting rid of what no one wore, we still needed a place to store our shoes. We don't have an official mudroom or similar in our current place, but right next to our front door there is a narrow area that is dead space, because it is too small to put any regular furniture there, but it seemed too big to not be used.
Pinterest showed me many ideas of compact and useful mudrooms and I decided to use that as inspiration to design our entrance as a good storage space for shoes, coats, gloves and hats and umbrellas and all other seasonal weather gear that we'd need right near the front door.

I love how this came out so far.
It is still a work in progress, but thus far it is loads better than how it was before.

Our Kids' Free Upcycled Quadruple Bunk Bed

I had all sorts of plans for beds for my kids in our new home. We specifically designed the outlets and doors in the bedroom with the plan that we'd have a set type of beds that would be able to sleep all four of our kids. We were going to have 4 beds, in the shape of an L, with the ends overlapping each other- a four tiered bunk bed with two beds along each wall. 

We got to the new home, and for a few days, my kids slept on mattresses on the floor while we brought over the furniture and slowly got it put together. However, when we went to put it together, my kids didn't want what we'd planned, and I wasn't sure it would work so well either.

Instead, we ended up making beds for four (or even five if you want to get technical) all on top of each other, which saved even more room. The kids are loving it, and I'm loving how space efficient it is, but the biggest perk was the cost.

We spent nothing.

Rental Kitchen Mostly Installed Ourselves!

So yesterday I posted that we installed our Ikea kitchen cabinets (upper) ourselves, first time doing cabinets, and it was much easier than we expected. Putting the cabinets together was a cinch, and installing them was not super simple, but easy enough.

Today, my 9 year old son and I put together the rest of the kitchen cabinets, this time the ones for the rental unit upstairs from us. Mostly it was as simple as doing the rest of the cabinets, other than the corner unit that was harder but still doable (I just needed to look much more closely at the instructions and follow them very well, since unlike the rest of the cabinets we installed, this was not symmetrical so directions made a huge difference.)

We Finished Installing Our Ikea Kitchen

We did it! My kitchen is now complete! After 9 year old Lee and I built all of our Ikea kitchen cabinets, yesterday Mike and I installed them into our kitchen.  If I want to be honest about who did what, I went to the hardware store to get advice about what type of screws were best for securing cabinets and bought them, then I measured how long the rails upon which Ikea cabinets sit should be, and then marked them, then Mike cut the rails while I held them in place. I then measured and marked on the wall where the rails should go, and marked all the places to drill. After that, Mike drilled into the wall, and added the screws. The screws went in properly onto one wall, the one with the taller cabinets, however, the wall wasn't deep enough for the screws on side with the fridge, so Mike needed to problem solve and figure out different ways to secure the rails onto the wall, which he accomplished very well.

Building Our Own Ikea Kitchen- Because We Can!

The kitchen, as it arrived...

Yesterday in Ikea I placed an order for a complete kitchen, and as I paid for the delivery they assumed they also were charging me for assembly. When I told them that we were assembling it ourselves, they said "Oh, your builders are putting it together for you?" I told them no, my husband and I would be doing it ourselves.
Then when I was walking around the bedding section I was talking to someone there, and mentioned that my husband and I built our own beds; this person asked "Oh, you designed it together and then had it built?" I insisted that no, I didn't "have it built", that I did more than just draw designs on paper but actually did 50% of the physical work on top of doing all the planning and sketching.

Today the kitchens arrived and there were boxes and boxes and packages of materials and the deliverers again asked the same question, who was building it, and then not believing me really when I said we'll do it ourselves. The contractor who is doing the finishing touches to the upstairs apartment asked me the same and was downright incredulous when I said that I planned on doing it myself.

Now let me admit something. I've never built a kitchen before. And today when it arrived and I saw just how much of a huge project there was ahead of me, without any assembly instructions for the kitchen as a whole I kind of balked. I wasn't sure I knew what I was getting myself into...

So why build it ourselves?
Well, a few reasons.

Homemade DIY Pallet Nightstand or End Table

I went to Ikea today to pick up some more things for our home and to place an order for the kitchen, and when I got home, I saw that Mike had started working on another DIY project out of pallets we collected- a nightstand for me. I had mentioned that in our room I didn't yet have a place to put down books or my glasses or phone, so Mike decided to build me one.

Since he was just at the very beginning of the project, I helped him build the rest, and gave design input, and held the wood while he sawed and drilled and sanded.

Homemade Wooden Pallet Spice Rack DIY

I grew up in a home that used a large variety of spices. I get surprised when I am in people's homes, and go to cook something and realize that they're missing what I consider to be basic spices. I have to remind myself, though, that everyone's cooking style is different, and I use so many more spices than the average person, so even my "basics" are not something most people have.

Since I've been running my own household, I've never been satisfied with where I've been keeping my spices. In our first apartment, they were on two small shelves in an upper cupboard, and it was hard to see what I needed and hard to access it. Since we moved to our current home, my spices have been stored in a deep drawer, and there isn't enough room for all my spices. its hard to tell what is where, and it's just one royal mess. Some spices came in plastic containers- when they finished, I refilled them, and sometimes filled them with different spices or homemade mixes, and it is all a jumble, with no way to really tell what spice is what, other than by taste and smell...
I decided that in our new apartment, I didn't want to use up a drawer for my spices, nor did I want them in a cabinet. And I definitely didn't want to be using recycled plastic spice bottles.
Growing up, all my mom's spices were kept easily accessible in glass screw top jars on a wooden spice rack on our counter, and I've wanted something like that for a long time, and figured our new house would be the perfect place to switch my spice storage to that system.

Crafting With Nature

The kids and I recently went to an event that had as its activity green crafting, which was a great frugal activity that I wanted to share with you, as it was really fun, not to mention can be done entirely for free.

All the crafting base materials were items found in nature, or things that would have otherwise gone in the trash. There were all sorts of dried out seed pods, shells, acorns, various sticks, wood, corn husks, stems, pine needles, pine cones and so many other types of forageable items, as well as bits and bobs of plastic that were saved from the trash, milk cartons, etc...

The only items that cost any money were the glue (hot glue, in this case) and paint.

There was a table with sample items, mainly different critters made from these materials, glued together, some painted and some unpainted.

Here's what our family members made at this crafting activity, so you, too, can get some ideas of things you and your kids can craft together from free materials. Of course, no need to what we're doing, just showing some possibilities.



A made up creature, inspired by elephants, hedgehogs, and who knows what.

Top 35 Dirt Cheap Romantic Ideas for Valentines Day (and Whenever)

Image credit- freedigitalphotos.net- Dan

Romance on your mind, but really don't have the money to spend, so thought you'd have to give this Valentines Day a pass?

Many people think that in order to show how much you love someone, you need to be willing to spend lots of money, showering them with gifts, wooing them with your money. Of course, in some relationships that is the case- if someone doesn't spend money on the other, they feel hurt, because the amount of money spent is equated with how much they actually value or love them and feel they are worth.
Fortunately, in relationships where both parties appreciate frugality, people generally understand that you can romance your partner or spouse without throwing big bucks at them. Here is a list of some frugal, and some insanely frugal ways to romance your partner. Of course, not everyone would appreciate every one of them, but hopefully there will be at least some things on the list that you or your partner would appreciate.

Top 35 Dirt Cheap Romantic Ideas for Valentines Day (and Whenever)

Making Homemade Super Frugal Tab Top Curtains From Imperfect Fabric and Scraps

One of the things I hated most in how my house looked before our super frugal home makeover was our blinds on our window in the living room part of our main room. They were given to us by friends who no longer wanted there, they were a color I hated, and they were half broken. I knew that one thing that absolutely needed to be done in our makeover was getting curtains for this window, pretty curtains that matched our color scheme.

However, I didn't want grey curtains since it would be right above our grey couch, and I thought that that was a bit much. And as much as I like orange, I felt orange curtains would be a little garish and a little too "retro" for my taste. So that left me with blue.

I didn't want the curtains to feel to heavy- I wanted something fresh and lively and light, so when I spotted this light blue fabric at the fabric store, I knew it was perfect. I loved that it was patterned yet not, so a little more interesting than just plain blue fabric, but not too busy looking either. And it was light enough to allow light through, yet thick enough to give us a little bit of privacy. The fabric was discounted- which was a plus, but the reason it was discounted, less so; it was just one yard long, which I thought would be enough... but was not. I mean, when I took it home and measured it, it was the right size to cover my window, but not to reach to the curtain rod a few inches above. On top of that, it also was cut unevenly, so it would need to be hemmed a good few inches shorter to hide the jagged edges.

Testing out the fabric to see... Nope. not long enough.

I had a problem. I could either scratch the idea of making curtains with this fabric, something I really didn't want to do also because I didn't want to have wasted money on this fabric, and also because I really loved it, and it was so perfect, other than its imperfections, that is... or I could try to figure out a solution to use the fabric somehow, so that it would cover the window entirely.

My Eight Year Old Sewed New Pillows, And You Can Too

Lee, super proud of the two pillows he just sewed!

Today was a busy, busy, busy day in my house- the Penniless full home makeover on a budget is well underway and today most of the work and transformation was done. As I was sewing things for the house, my 8 year old, Lee, asked me what I was doing, and why I was doing those, and I explained to him the various steps involved. He wanted to know how a sewing machine works, what the different parts were called, why we needed thread on the top and the bottom, etc...

He saw me pinning down hems, and then ironing, and asked me if he could do those, so I guided him how to do that and he loved it- "Mommy, can I iron things all the time? This is fun!" Haha, I hate ironing.

When the ironing was finished, he wanted to know if he could sew. He'd never sewn before on a machine, and I'm not sure I ever taught him to sew by hand either, but he has good hand eye coordination and a good eye for detail and he's very responsible, so I figured- why not teach him how to use the sewing machine.

One of the simplest projects to make on a sewing machine is a pillow, and just our luck- pillows were some of the things I anyhow wanted to get made today. I tested out Lee to see how he managed to sew on a piece of scrap fabric, if he managed to go at a reasonable pace (and not push down the pedal to the metal) and go in a straight line, and when I saw that he was able to do that very well, I decided to entrust the fabric that I bought to make our new pillows, to him. It was a gamble, letting my son make them, but I was hoping it would pay off. Worst comes to worst, I would just have to buy new fabric if he managed to botch it up really badly.

Homemade "I Spy in a Bottle" Toy

I am a big fan of do it yourself, especially when it comes to toys and other fun games. In addition to that, I also enjoy finding uses for things that would otherwise be thrown out.

Therefore, when I was at my friend Z's house, and saw what she called an "I Spy in a Bottle" game, I thought it was a super cool idea and decided to make one for our family as well.

So, to do this, what you first need to do is get a large plastic bottle with a wide mouth, or a large plastic jar, made from clear plastic. Yes, I said plastic, because this will be a game for kids, and as much as I'd like to think my kids wouldn't break a toy made from glass, I know its inevitable.

Alright- who am I kidding? I'd be the one to break it, since I break all the glass things in my house. Erm...

So, either way- start by getting your plastic jars/bottles. Since most of the things in my house actually don't come in plastic containers- they usually come in glass jars or plastic bags or whatnot, since we're not buying lots of processed foods/condiments, this was actually the part that was the hardest for me to do. I actually got my jar from my friend- it used to contain cookies.

Spring is in the Air: How to Get Your Home Ready for Spring this Year

This post was written by Kelly Martin, stay at home mother of two. When Kelly is not tending to her family, she can be found curled up on the couch with her nose in a good book.

Spring is always welcome after cold nights and wintry weather. The icy temperatures can be rough on your lawn as well as your plants and flowers, making the start of spring a time to spruce things up and welcome warmer days. Even if you can’t work on the outside of your home right away, you can start preparing the interior as the seasons change.

Easy Homemade Pirate Costume

Ike asked me to make him a pirate costume.

Gladly.

I love making costumes.

I could always buy costumes for my kids for dress up and the like, but I have never done that.

Because as much as I love experimenting and creating in the kitchen, I also have so much fun coming up with costume ideas for my kids, putting their ideas into tangible form.

And I knew that a pirate costume would be super easy to do, not to mention super cheap.

Ike in his costume. Sorry for the terrible editing job...

Homemade Plaster of Paris Candle Holders- Without Special Molds

The candle holders we painted at Anneliese's birthday party.
They're really supposed to all be as deep as
 the one on the left, but I ran out of plaster and the stores were closed...

When I was planning Anneliese's birthday party, I decided that I wanted to be decorating candle holders at the party, and I specifically had plaster candle holders in mind. I looked at stores and I looked online, both locally and abroad, to try to find molds to make my own homemade candle holders, but had absolutely no luck finding anything, let alone something inexpensive that I liked...

So I decided to try and figure out how to make my own plaster of Paris candle holders, without any special molds. I'd wing it.

It took me a few tries- I think I trashed 3 versions- before I finally figured out how to make these.
Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and get it right the first time...

I made mine flower shaped because I had flower shaped silicon molds, but you don't need that- if you even have silicon muffin tins or even disposable plastic cups, you can make these. I just wanted to make it "girly" enough for my "girly" so I made them flowered, but just plain round candle holders is fine as well. If you have a loaf pan or other larger molds like other silicon baking pans, you can make candle holders that hold many candles, not just one.

The type of candles that I like to use are tea lights, so I made mine the right size for tea lights. If you like taller tapered candles, for example, you would just need to adjust the size of the holes to account for that.

The kids all loved painting them at the party, and I think they look rather cute, if I may say so myself!