Coffeemaker Breakfast in Nine Easy Steps!

Step One: Fill the glasses with hot water from the faucet- as hot as you can get it. This is a very important step! (Just like prepping a teapot.)

Step Two: While your glasses are preheating, use the coffeemaker to heat water.

Step Three: Pour out preheating water from the glasses.

Step Four: Add oatmeal. (We used seven plastic spoonfuls.)

Step Five: Add a bit of hot faucet water.

Step Six: Pour hot water from coffee maker over the oatmeal until it looks right.

Step Seven: Add packets of sugar from complementary coffee condiment packet.

Step Eight: Stir.

Step Nine: Eat. We also ate a spoonful of peanut butter each, just for an extra protein boost. Don't forget to wash out the glasses before the oatmeal remnants dry!

We don't buy instant oatmeal- the cardboard tube things works just as well and is a lot cheaper! :) Bring a gallon sized zip lock bag to put the tube in, just in case it gets crushed in your luggage.

Feeling Shabby: Dining Room Chair Makeover

We bought our table from a college student who was moving out of state. She was the roommate of a friend of a friend who we were picking up for an event. Standing in their dining room, I looked at the table and said "I like your table." Her response: "Oh, do you want it? I'm going to gradate school out East and am selling it." Before we left, we'd bought the table and chairs, a TV stand, a bookcase, and a printer table, all of which we're still using 6 years later.

The table is starting to look a bit worn, and the chairs are in desperate need of attention. The white covers and hopelessly stained, and the fabric is starting to tear on a couple of the chairs, revealing a lovely lime green pad. It's depressing to look at.
Luckily, recovering chairs is not as hard as it seems. You'll need fabric, a staple gun, and a screwdriver. I got this brown upholstery fabric off a clearance table at a local fabric store for $6.50. I did not even take off the old fabric or pad. I just stapled the new stuff right over it.

Not new- but still much better! Now if I could just talk my husband into letting me paint the table!

What makeovers have been going on in your home?

Feeling Shabby?

I'm feeling a bit shabby these days.

Our yard sale/dumpster dived/gifted furniture is really starting to show its age, and our budget for new items is pretty much nonexistent.

When I feel dissatisfied with what I have, the solution is not heading to the nearest furniture outlet for all new things. While I'd love to go pick out all new furniture, it is not our financial priority right now. Today, I have to make do with what I have.

That does not mean I have to live in shabby surroundings. Just because you have limited resources does not mean you have to look like it!

I'm going to spend the next few weeks giving my home a much needed lift, and plan to share it all with you! :)

Works for Me Wednesday: Saving a Trip to the Store With Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

Edited to add: It worked great! I went ahead and added the vinegar, since we do have hard water in my area.

One of my pitfalls to buying stuff on super sale is that I stock up so much, sometimes I forget that it is actually possible to run out! This is how I found myself with a dishwasher of dirty dishes and no dishwasher detergent. Opps! I was not about to run out to the store to fight the crowds and pay full price after working all day, so I took this as an opportunity to try making homemade dishwasher detergent! The load is running right now, so I can't comment about how well it works yet, but it got some good reviews on Meredith's blog, so I'm holding on to hope. In the meantime, it should work until I can get some of the sweet stuff for pennies on the dollar by combining sales and coupons. Hey, works for me!

Kitchen Improvement

I am on a roll with the home stuff! There's a few things I want done before I (temporarily) join the rat race. Today I painted the kitchen. I only painted one wall and I really like the effect. The paint was free- the last owners left it in the basement. I have no idea what they used it for before, as there is nothing yellow in the house that I've noticed. I really like the splash of color- not too bright, but enough to say "Hello! Welcome to my kitchen!"

Photographic Evidence

Bathroom Makeover: Upstairs Bathroom Version

I finally got around to redoing our upstairs bathroom. It cost a little more than our downstairs bathroom redo, but I went a little more wild with new hardware upstairs. Overall, it cost $55, which is not too bad. I picked colors that went with our current shower curtain and decorations, so that saved us some money right there. Clearance sales, oops paint racks, and using what you have already can go a long way!

Here's some before shots. The people who owned our house before us loved their frogs. The entire bathroom was painted a lovely blue, and it would have been just fine, had it not been for the frog theme. The frog wallpaper was cute, but not me.More frogs! And the top of the wooden medicine cabinet. And a wood toilet seat.

Most of my time was spent scraping down the wallpaper. It took FOREVER. It just did not want to come down, so some of my budget had to be spent on that special wallpaper remover stuff. I don't think it worked much better than water and scraping to be perfectly honest.

We painted the walls a lovely purple shade that I got off the oops paint rack at Lowe's for five dollars.

Most of my budget was spent on new hardware. Here's one of our new towel racks. I just did not like the wooden ones that they had, and although I was just going to repaint them, I saw these Simply Shabby Chic ones on clearance at Target and could not resist.

I was not able to scrape off the wooden frogs, so I replaced the faceplate with the one I took down from the roommate's bathroom when I redid it.

I hated that wooden toilet seat, so I replaced it with this one. I also bought a new toilet paper holder to match the towel racks.

My sink area...not much new going on here. I do want to replace the boring mirror someday with something more fun, but so far the ones I've liked have been INSANELY expensive, so I'm waiting for a better deal.

Another view of the shower curtain, new paint, and new towel bar.
This picture used to be in our bedroom, but I thought it looked really good in the bathroom, so we moved it. I'm thinking of painting the frame to match the newly painted cabinet.
Here's the cabinet. I painted it a pale yellow with a small pot of paint that I got on the oops rack for .50 cents. Fifty. Cents. That's good even for oops rack prices! The little drawer thing is something that I picked up at Goodwill not long after we married. It's been many things, but now it is painted and holds my husband's electric razor and assorted odd and ends.

Failed Yogurt

Sometimes the yogurt just does not turn out how you want it. It's not thick enough, or it's too tart, or maybe it is the first time you made yogurt and...well, you just don't like it. Or maybe you LOVE it, but made so much that you will not be able to finish it before it goes bad. It happens. When this happens to me, I use it in place of milk in things like pancakes, breads, and mixes. It gives it a bit of a tart flavor, but it is still very good. I made a loaf of cheese bread using slightly runny yogurt in place of milk, and the result was a wonderful bread with a very, very slight sourdough taste. If you use sour milk in your pancakes, failed/abundant yogurt can make a wonderful substitute!