Pick Your Plum Giveaway!

Have you heard of Pick Your Plum? You can find great deals at their site every day! They have a lot of supplies for all sorts of hobbies and interest.

Check them out, I know you will LOVE all their fabulous products ;)

But wait, there's something I know you will love the most: A GIVEAWAY!!

I've teamed up with an awesome group of bloggers to bring you a $75 Pick Your Plum box Giveaway!  This amazing box is full of crafting, fashion, baking, and home decor swag! We know you are excited about this giveaway, but before giving you more details about it, I want you all to meet the lovely group of bloggers who came up with this.

Cassie @ Southeast by Midwest

Katie @ Clarks Condensed

Tammy @ Yours and Mine ARE Ours

Melissa @ Dancing For Food

Rachel @ {I Love} My Disorganized Life

Mariely @ Sensational Creations

Jessica @ Jessie Kay Graphics and Design

Brenna @ Life After Laundry

Heather @ Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks

All of these women are very dear to me and are kind of like a blogging support group at times. I hope you read their blogs! They are wonderful women!

Take a look at what you could get in the Pick Your Plum box!

Don't miss the chance of getting awesome products from Pick Your Plum! Enter the Rafflecopter below.

Open to legal residents of USA and Canada, who are 18 years or older. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks so much for entering! Good luck!

DIY: Gallery Wall

So I mentioned in this post that I finally got my gallery wall up. I am so proud of us! We have only lived here a year and we finally got some decorations up! I'm happy that I did it the way I wanted, and didn't just throw something up there for the sake of having something.
And today I am going to show you how I did it, which I like to affectionately call The Lazy Way.
It started with the process of me buying frames at the 99 cent store to hang some prints that I had. After that, I spray painted all of my frames (with the exception of the antique ones from my great grandfather, I felt wrong painting those so I didn't. I wish that I had pictures of this process, but you know how to spray paint yes? It is easy. Thin, quick coats.
And then I sat on the floor and laid it all out how I wanted it. And asked the boys how they thought it should be. I didn't want things that looked similar to be right next to each other. 

And of course, I couldn't just leave it laying there until we hung it up, so I took a picture. This picture proved to be very helpful in the process of hanging it up.
After Dakota got home and I told him I would buy him Taco Bell if he helped me (bribery works well in my house) the process went really smoothly.
We didn't do the newspaper thing where you cut out the paper to match frame sizes. Ain't nobody got time for that.  What I did was pull up that picture on my tablet, and had it sitting right next to us, and kinda just go from corner to corner. 
I'll explain. 
For example, I started m the center with the "love" embroidery (courtesy of Nana) and knew that the drawing was right above that, so I centered it up and Dakota hung it. Next, I lined the anchor up with the bottom of the drawing, and left space next to it, and hung it up. Basically it was a lot of lining up. Some of them are off a little bit, but not too bad. And we didn't have any rogue nail holes to worry about.

I think this is a really easy way to hang a gallery wall. It just clicked for me in my mind, because this is how  I design. Lining things up. Lining things up makes me happy.

Okay, so everything isn't lined up perfectly. And some of the paint is messy. But it kinda goes with the theme of our house. Just roll with it.
Not everything ended up getting hung up, because some of the frames didn't have hangers, so I just left them out for now. And I need to add hangers to the letters, too.
But other than that, isn't it awesome?
And here are some close ups.

I love this print that I got of a local eatery here in town. It was actually a card, but I cut the back off, and centered it up in the frame. Frosty King doesn't look like this anymore, an old lady backed into one of the brick benches, and they ended up remodeling. 
I kinda miss the old one.

This is the "Nautical Anchor Print" from After Nine to Five, a really great store with prints. I loved this print because it reminds me of my brother. And the color matched the ivory frame perfectly. I guess there was water on the glass and it messed up the print a little, but I hope no one notices.

I got this at our yearly Fall Festival here in town. I actually snagged it before Abigail bought it. Don't be jealous, Abigail. This is the relationship that I strive to have with Dakota. But let's be honest, he makes it pretty easy. He's pretty adorbs.
I hope my way of explaining how I did this makes sense to you. If not, leave me a comment and I will reply to you. 
My biggest piece of advice: Have someone tall to help hang stuff. Unless you are tall. Then I envy you. 

DIY: 99¢ Store Christmas Table

I don't know if I have told you this before or not, but I am cheap. Don't get me wrong, I love expensive things. But sometimes, I just can't justify spending a lot of money on things like Christmas decorations. I would really love to, but hey, Dakota and I are college students.
But that's no reason to not have Christmas decorations, right?
So I came up with a plan. But first, a little backstory. Dakota and I got a new entertainment center. Thus, we can repurpose our old (but still new) entertainment center! So it has been placed by our front door as an entry table. And once Dakota moved it there, I had the genius idea to decorate it for Christmas! A place for my Christmas village! (Which I don't have yet.. But I want.) 
But the thing is, the money thing.
So I was like, well I need to go to the 99¢ Store today anyway (they carry picture frames that I am going to use for the gallery wall in the kitchen, I'm finally starting it!) so I checked it out. And was I ever amazed what I found.
Here is what the table looked like before, in all of it's cluttered glory. Hey, I'm going for real life stuff here guys. Don't tell me you don't have clutter.
And if you don't, can you tell me your secrets?

And here's the after:

Very simple, but that's how I like it.  And I even kept with my color palette that I like for Christmas. I probably would've got more, except that the store was packed today and I have issues with crowds and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of dodge.
Whatever that means.
Here are some detail shots:

Okay, so I cheated. The pine cones are off of our tree. But that means free, right?!

Our first Christmas card, from Dakota's grandparents. I adore them.

The "Peace" sign is my favorite thing that I bought today, I can't believe I bought it at the 99¢ store!
Isn't that awesome, though? I only spent a grand total of $11 at the 99¢ store, but some of that was other stuff.
In total I bought,
Table Runner - 99¢ "Peace" Sign - 99¢ Glittery trees - (3) at 99¢ each
So I am pretty proud of myself. Just proof you don't have to spend a lot to decorate for the holidays. I will be adding more to this in the future, but for now, especially with a cat that gets into EVERYTHING this is pretty good.
Oh, and by the way, I wasn't sponsored for this post.  I just love that store.