Primitive Crafts....from Dollar Tree? Sure!

Anybody who knows me also knows that I do not like to spend money on my craft supplies. If I am inclined to spend money to make something, it has to be cheap. That is but one reason I love the Dollar Tree and Mighty Dollar. While perusing the web recently, I came upon a blog that had SUCH cute things that the lady had made using Dollar Tree materials. Her blog, called Eyeballs by Day, Crafts by Night (find it HERE), is great and the craft ideas are easy. So....the family and I spent this past wild Friday night getting free Dunkin' Donuts drinks and shopping at Dollar Tree. We are just loose cannons that way, you know.

I love anything old, old-looking, crafty, cozy, shabby, cast-off........whatever. I don't have any one particular style. I just pick what I like. That includes primitive stuff which is so popular right now. Dollar Tree has a really good selection of things that are already nice, but have potential to be better. I love candles, and it seems that we always have one burning, and the other blog had some nice ideas on how to make DT's cheap looking candles match country or primitive decor. In my excitement to get started, I forgot to take a before picture of the products, so I pulled these from the Dollar Tree website. Check out the before:

  

I was only able to find one package of the LED tealights, so they may be seasonal with the ones I found being stragglers left from Christmas. They had plenty of the 8" white jar candles, though. The idea was to "grubby" these things up....make them look old and primitive. The lady in the other blog used something called Texture Fierro to get the grubby, textured look. However, I am always one to substitute and use up things I already have; therefore, I thought I would try mixing up some white glue and used coffee grounds. After mixing into a paste, I spread it onto the jar candle as well as the body of the tealights (bulb was taped with masking tape so as not to mess it up). After that dried (took about 2 1/2 hours with the help of a blow dryer), I squirted on some acrylic craft paint in cinnamon brown, and spread it around gently with a mildly stiff paint brush. Throughout the drying process, the paint / coffee grounds / glue kept trying to run down the sides of the jar. I simply used to brush to dab it back into place. This is a messy craft and I had cardboard on the kitchen counter underneath it, BUT this is how they looked after the paint was about half dry (ignore the clothespins......still working on that project):

And, THIS is how they turned out when complete and after a second coat of paint and a bit of torn fabric for a ribbon (the woman in the other blog calls the ribbon "homespun"):

Cute, huh? That candle is not only cheap, but it is supposed to burn for 80 hours. Also, for those who are allergic to certain scents, it is unscented! Yep - - that's a little bit of Dollar Tree potpourri you see there surrounding the little LED tealight in the cast iron skillet. I am inspired now to make more of these for gifts. I I might even dry brush a little black paint on the next ones I make just to make them a little "grubbier". Acrylic craft paint is cheap, white glue is cheap and used coffee grounds are free. There are only 325 more days until Christmas, our Lord and Savior's birthday, so I hope you're inspired! Making gifts a dollar at a time is not only better for the budget, but you are prepared and stress-free by the time it rolls around.

Have a fun, frugal and fabulous Sunday, from our house to yours!

Oh, fiddlesticks..........er, tobacco sticks!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope everyone's week is off to an awesome start. Need a new and crafty idea to get you going on this chilly winter day? Primitive and rustic country decor is in great abundance wherever you look these days. One popular and sought after accessory that goes quite nicely with such decor is anything made from tobacco sticks. Usually I post on things that I have made, but there are many more creative folks hanging from the branches of my family tree. Today I thought I would share the fruits of the efforts of these fine folks! At one point in time, my family grew tobacco on their farm; however we are now left with the remnants of this page in history in the form of oodles of "baccer" sticks once used to hang freshly cut tobacco in the barn rafters to dry. I have been fortunate enough to have received several pieces of furniture and decor made by my mother and father as well as my sister and brother-in-law. Let me share, shall I?

• Chair. Just look at this little chair made by my Mommy and Daddy. I think it looks so cute, and the bears (given to me by Mommy) think it is super comfy.
• Ladder. My sister and brother-in-law surprised all the ladies in the family at Christmas with homemade tobacco stick ladders, embellished with a cream colored bow and red berries. I thought it was the perfect spot to hang my hay hooks given to me by my Daddy.

• Star. This huge star, made by my Mommy and Daddy, is the perfect size for the gable end of my garage on the front of my house. 

• Tree. Mommy and Daddy made this also. This picture was taken at Christmas, and as you can see, i have it all dolled up with a bead garland, feathers, berries, twigs and greenery. It is great because it is so versatile and can be decorated for each season.

I am so proud of my creative family and the things they turn out. I can't wait to see what they make next (hint, hint Mommy, Daddy, Tammy and Damon.....).

So, you don't have access to tobacco sticks, you say? Well, almost anybody can come up with some sticks that could be whipped up into something fantastic. Take a look at this cute little willow twig table I spotted while surfing the internet:

You can read more about it HERE on the Woodworkers Workshop website. Maybe you will get some inspiration. It's not too early to get started on Christmas gifts, you know! These primitive pieces and pieces like them are all wonderfully frugal as well as fab gift ideas.

Have a fun, frugal and fabulous day from our house to yours!

Free Fun with Phone Books

I can honestly say that I have never lived in a place where more telephone directories are distributed than in Somerset, Kentucky. It seems as if my driveway becomes home to a bagged phone book, tossed haphazardly from a speeding car at least three or four times a year. As evidenced by my collection of glass jars, plastic grocery sacks, bread ties and straws, I just don't feel right about the thought of tossing the poor phone book into the trash. For one, it has already suffered so much in its short life, narrowly escaping serious injury in the midst of a rough landing on the surface of my concrete driveway. But also, much like a bright eyed child, it has SO much potential! So what do I do? I rescue it and give it new life! Just so you know we're not getting all hoarder crazy here, I only keep a couple of phone books at a time. I actually do put excess ones in the recycle bin (but don't tell their friends).

IDEA #1:  One big advantage of saving a phone book from the trash is the fact that it is essentially FREE craft material! Consider this wreath I made from phone book pages, a pizza box and a wire clothes hanger. For this thrifty wreath, the only things I had to actually purchase were the letters. The letters were less than a dollar each at Hobby Lobby, and I already had the ribbon on hand. I used probably 25 cents worth of ribbon overall. I just love the little areas of yellow peeking out from the rolled pages, don't you? To make this, I taped the lid shut on a clean (yet used) pizza box. I then cut the pages from a phone book, rolled them and hot glued them to the box. For the hanger, I used duct tape to secure it to the back of the wreath, and then hot glued ribbon to the front to conceal it. If you want a totally free wreath, just omit the letters and ribbon!

IDEA #2:  Use as gift wrap! At one time, this may have been considered really cheap and tacky. However, I have been noticing more and more printed scrapbook paper and decorative items that have newspaper and similar print. It has become fashionable to wrap gifts with newspaper and book pages tied up with a pretty burlap or jute bow! Or, you could also cut a pretty flower out of the pages and tape to the top. This is awesome if you are caught suddenly in need of gift wrap and have none OR just want something different and cute.

IDEA #3:  Tissue paper or gift basket filler. You probably saw the gift bags I made using recycled calendars. Instead of the traditional tissue paper, I stuffed these gift bags with phone book pages. They turned out cute and helped to reduce trash can waste created by more and more store-bought tissue paper

IDEA #4: Have you ever gotten caught out someplace and needed to make a call but didn't have the number? If so, you probably called somebody in your family, had them find a phone book, look up the number and wasted several minutes of your day. Why not use one of those extra or old phone books to carry in your vehicle? My husband actually gave me this bright idea a few weeks ago when he asked for one of the phone books from my "craft stash" to keep in his truck. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the extra phone books could be used as...............................phone books!

I hope you have a blast using some of my ideas or your own awesome ideas for your old phone books. One thing I REALLY want to do next is to figure out how to make paper from old phone books. I'll keep you informed of the results. Have a fun, frugal and fabulous evening from our house to yours!

Calendars: Where to Get Free Ones and Stuff to Do With Old Ones

Once January rolls around, I always have a few calendars that I hate to toss out to make way for the new year. So, I don't! But, it is impractical to just keep things lying around, all hoarder-style (though I do like those TV shows.....), simply because you hate to get rid of things. The goal is to make use of the resources you have before you for your benefit and the benefit of others, NOT to make life harder by living in the midst of clutter and junk, right? I have received the most beautiful Joyce Meyer Ministries calendar three years in a row. The 2012 calendar had such nice photography on it that I didn't want to stick it in good ol' File 13, so let me will show you what I did with it!

Wall Art 

This is the most obvious option as well as the easiest way to reuse a calendar. The images on the calendar were so bright and inspirational that I decided to choose four of them to hang in groups on each side of my bed, directly above the bedside tables. They look blurry in my photographs (I have told you that I am not a good photographer, haha), but they actually look quite nice in person. The best part is that I can recycle them or even toss them when I want to change decor.

Gift Bags

The first photo illustrates the size box I used to fold the paper to create the gift box. The box doesn't become part of the finished gift bag; it just serves as something to fold the bag and tape it over to get the correct size. After I folded and taped the bags together, I slipped the box out. So, simply fold the bag the way you would wrap a present on the side and one end and tape, and THEN slip out the box. At this point, you can punch holes and insert ribbon, jute or yarn for handles if you want. Notice that I used the pages of an old phone book for tissue paper. This is just one more idea that goes along with the "use what God has provided you" philosophy. I thought they turned out cute despite the fact that I made one of them upside down. Oops!

Kitchen Tool Canister

This project also goes along with a post from the other day about things to do with old jars. Below is simply a pickle jar, some paint and a calendar page. I had admired the look of mercury glass jars and other accessories such as those offered by Pottery Barn and Anthropologie, but I wasn't willing to pay the prices they commanded. So, with a can of silver spray paint in hand I went to work. Once it was dry, I chose a calendar page and trimmed the edges with scrap booking scissors. I secured the edges with tape and decoupaged it so that it can be cleaned easier. 

Now that you are armed with some ideas, just where can you get calendars (without buying them, of course)? Unfortunately, Joyce Meyer Ministries is all out, as is Betty Crocker and the West VA Dept of Tourism. These are some of the prettiest ones. HOWEVER - - I was able to locate more sources that still have calendars on hand, but you must act quickly:

1. Ontario Outdoor Adventures 2014. Go here to request this calendar, filled with "stunning photography from across the province" of Ontario, Canada: http://www.ontariotravel.net/TCISSegmentsWeb/gn/travelGuides/outdoor.xhtml?_nfpb=true&_nfls=false&language=en&WT.ac=BA:Calendar
2. Farnam Horse Calendar. If you like horses, it looks like this one has some nice photography. http://go.farnamhorse.com/Calendar?source=apha 
   
3. The Calendar of Mathematical Imagery from the American Mathematical Society. I actually received mine in the mail this very day, and it included "albums of mathematically inspired works in a variety of media--computer-generated fractals, quilts, origami, sculpture, painting, and more". The pages were actually quite nice. Request it by email here: http://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/fmail/fmail.cgi?emailto=52616e646f6d4956ccb23a27f6aa46e261e30b517a3caeae1562eec714a6cbe36ed52b88a62eef16&name=AMS%20Public%20Awareness%20Office#  In the box that says "body", tell them you would like a free calendar of mathematical imagery, and then tell them your address. Mine arrived in one week!
   
4. The HR Green Annual Calendar. From their website:  "Each year, HR Green creates a calendar that highlights our clients' projects across our business lines. Featuring projects around the United States, the 12 month calendar also includes major holidays, lunar cycles, and seasonal dates. A colorful and functional tool for any office, sign up to receive your copy today, FREE of charge. Simply select the 'receive FREE calendar' option below and include your contact information." I have never ordered this before, but, hey - - -it's free. If it's really ugly, you could use it to start a campfire, line the botton of your kitchen trash can with it so it doesn't get dirty OR toss it! The picture beside the request form is of some green grasses and the edge of a pond, though. It might be nice, so here's the link: http://www.hrgreen.com/aboutus/contactUs_HRGreenCalendar.aspx

To get a beautiful Joyce Meyer ministries calendar or one of the others that is no longer available, be on the lookout around October or November before supplies are exhausted. Stay abreast of available freebies by reading one of the blogs I mentioned the other day: freestufftimes.com, freestufffinder.com, free-product-samples.blogspot.com or hip2save.com. I get no compensation (or even thanks) from mentioning these other blogs. I just want to share with everyone what resources are available to them just by taking a couple of minutes to ask for them. Like I said before, be creative and make use of what God gives you. It's fun! From our house to yours, have a fun, frugal and fabulous day!

Save Cash-ola on Birthdays: Make the Cake Yourself!

I had plans to have a leisurely evening. I had made enough chicken and dumplings, mashed potatoes, green beans and homemade biscuits last night that I didn't think I would have to visit the kitchen this evening other than to warm up some grub in the microwave. Wrong! Okay.......I DID make some sugar cookies when I got home from work (will share the yummy recipe in another post). Anyhow, the cookies were well underway and my son had already eaten the complete first dozen when my husband arrived home from work armed with a Kroger bag and a special request. He asked me to make a Tasmanian Devil cake for a friend. Hmmmm.....a challenge.

I must admit that it is past my bedtime, so I will be brief tonight! I just finished the Taz cake, and I am satisfied with the results. Of course, it is not TLC Cake Boss quality, but it will work. While I'm at it, I might as well go ahead and show you some of my other cakes too! I don't always take a picture of them, but I think I'm gonna start so that I have something to look at if I ever want to make the same cake twice.

WARNING: I AM NO PROFESSIONAL NOR AM I A PHOTOGRAPHER...LOOK AT YOUR OWN RISK.

"Dukes of Hazzard" Cake made for a friend. It was so hard to get the red that deep, but I finally achieved it by adding a 10 cent package of Kroger brand drink mix to the white icing. It colored it AND flavored it cherry, which complemented the chocolate cake.

Litterbox Cake made for the Halloween Yuck Fest at my son's school a couple of years ago. This pic is a little old, but I thought I'd included it anyway. It is just a chocolate cake with chocolate icing, covered in crushed cookies (the kind you get like 50 in a pack for a dollar, LOL) garnished with broken up large Tootsie Rolls and finished off with a brand new washed cat litter scoop. YUCK!

And HERE is the Taz Cake. He isn't perfect, but I think he turned out pretty cute. I free-handed the whole thing, first with a tube of black icing. Then, I filled in the rest, using a toothpick for a bunch of it to fill in the spaces. It was fun because, in a way, I felt like I was in first grade again finishing a coloring sheet and trying to stay in the lines. I finished it off by piping brown stars around the edges.

A UK Wildcat cake made for a friend. From this angle, it kinda looks crooked, but it didn't look that way in person...hmmm.  Basically just one store brand cake mix and a can of icing here. And, of course, a little bit of homemade white and blue icing I made with confectioner's sugar, margarine and a few drops of blue food coloring in some of the white icing.

All these cakes certain things in common: store brand cake mix that cost about $1.00 - $1.25 and store brand icing for around $1.00 - $1.50 a can (don't forget to save the can!!). I used a very simple plastic decorating bag with tips that I purchased at my local Mighty Dollar for $1.00, and the round containers you see were salvaged from certain death by trash can by my sister, Tammy at a workplace function she attended. I noticed the other day that Dollar Tree now sells food coloring. I was thrilled by that discovery!! 

So, why continue to give your hard earned cash to the deli for a cake that has been frozen, thawed, decorated from a five gallon bucket of icing, and set in a display case for days all for about $15 - $20 for a cake this size (which is considered to be a 1/4 sheet cake). You can save some green and make your own for about $5.00, more or less, AND get the chance to create edible art yourself!

Have a fun, frugal and fabulous evening, from our house to yours!

Throwing away that empty salsa jar? STOP AND READ FIRST!

Remember the December post about Redneck Travel Kits? Well, as I mentioned, I have an obsession with jars - - big, little, short, tall, skinny.....glass and even plastic. I like 'em all. I die a little inside when I am at someone's house and see such useful articles discarded, tossed away in the garbage can like an old shoe. Hmm....an old shoe (an old L.L. Bean boot in particular) MIGHT make a cute container for a marigold on the porch in the summertime....but I digress! Back to the jars. I rounded up a few recycled jars that are just plain fun, frugal and fabulous. Indeed, I (and my sister) saw the potential for that which is typically trashed.

Here's a reminder of the results of a year's worth of jar-saving and freebie-requesting. I think it is a super great way to reuse and recycle an old jar:

BUT, that's not the only cool thing you can do with a jar. Check this out:

What a lineup......let's talk about 'em, left to right:

1. The first jar with the cute grasshopper is actually not a glass jar, but a plastic jar that began life holding stinky (yet dee-lish) pickled bologna. My parents gave me some cool old books, some of which included a paperback song book. I decided it wouldn't be too awful to sacrifice just a few pages to decoupage onto a couple of jars, so decoupage I did! To finish the top a bit, I simply wrapped some off-white yarn around the jar and glued the ends.
2. This short little jar was a glass salsa jar. I wanted another one to match the taller one, so this was perfect! Big brother and little brother. Or father and son.
3. This little cutie was made by my sister and was given to me for Christmas. She scrubbed it up, cleaned off the gooey label and painted the lid a cool chalkboard black followed by my initial in white. Then she filled it with some yummy smelling potpourri. What an elegant yet simple project!
4. Mr. Barilla pasta sauce jar is still humbly working full time behind the scenes in the food storage industry. However, in his retirement, he serves as a container for rice instead of pungent spaghetti sauce. This suits me and my kitchen cabinets perfectly. You see, Mr. Barilla is akin to a bad liar. You can see right through him and his other jar friends. This makes it oh so easy for me to keep tabs on my rice and dry goods inventory!
5. If you read about how to make sweet tea the other day, then you've already seen the last suspect in the lineup. This was a little relish jar that was just the right size to sit perched on a candlestick from Dollar Tree. I am sorry to say, but I don't really remember what brand of adhesive I used to attach the top and bottom. BUT, hot glue does NOT work, FYI. Most adhesives will list on the back if they are appropriate for adhering glass, so just read up on it. Also FYI, there is a very similar looking drinking vessel (they called it a Redneck Wine Glass) on walmart.com right now priced at $19.95 for a set of four. With tax, that's a little over 5 bucks for each glass. Now why would you do that when you can make a set of four with four free jars that you've saved, $4 worth of candlesticks and MAYBE a $3 - $4 tube of adhesive?!?

Well, whadda ya say? Are you inspired yet? Make your garbageman happier with less heavy trash bags and keep those jars! You've got craftin' to do. Have a fun, frugal and fabulous week, from our house to yours!

Sweet tea, anybody?

You know, you just can't beat a good cold glass of sweet tea. This is probably not news at all to any of you, but up until recently, I didn't really realize I could make my own at home easily.  Other than with those powdered "kool-aid"-style drink mixes, anyway - - and I don't like those. They taste nothing like actual tea. Anyhow, I had been buying sweet tea by the gallon at Kroger and never paying more than about $1.50 a gallon.  Cheap enough, right? For most people, yes. But I am one of those people who enjoys the PROCESS of making things as well as enjoying the end result of the fruits of my labor. So one day my husband bought a box of teas bags at the store. I reluctantly followed the directions on the package, added some sweetnin' and...........hmm......it was surprisingly good! This began my love of making my own tea, and I would like to share my process with you. I learned some tricks that made it easier when making more than just a cup - like making a whole GALLON jug.

I have told you I like to save anything that might be of use to me later on. A well rinsed and cleaned plastic milk jug fits the bill perfectly as a vessel for homemade sweet tea. I mean, that's what they sell it in anyway at the store! Starting with a clean plastic gallon jug, fill it with water. Pour the water into a four quart pot and turn the heat on high until it starts to boil. Here's one trick I learned that made life easier if you use tagless bags: set a metal colander right into the water to hold the tea bags. Once it's time to take them out, all you have to do is lift out the colander and toss the bags into the trash.  Also, if any of the little tea leaves try to escape, the colander sorta helps to hold them in place instead of having yucky floating stuff all in your tea.

Okay, back to the boiling water..... Once it comes to a boil, I just turn off the stove and place 14 tea bags in. Now the kind I get comes as a tagless double package, so I actually only put in 7 double bags. Let that sit (or is the word "steep"? I dunno.....) for about 15 minutes.

While your tea is sitting - or steeping or sleeping or whatever you wanna call it, you can go ahead and add your sugar to the empty gallon jug. I love to use old aluminum kitchen tools, so I use my little metal funnel and measuring cup to make the process easier. You know what a grainy sticky mess sugar can be if it is spilled! I add 1 1/2 to 2 cups of sugar, depending on what I have available.

Remove the colander full of tea bags and allow the tea to cool for probably 30 minutes before you try to transfer it to the jug. The easiest way I have found to transfer the tasty, newly brewed tea is with a glass measuring cup with a spout.

Now, time to clean up your mess while you wait for the tea to cool a little more! After you've cleaned it all up, here's your reward:

I mentioned the cost of a store bought gallon of tea earlier, so what does my tea cost? Here's a rough breakdown:

The tea in the photo is from Dollar General.  I am NOT brand loyal to anything unless something just tastes bad. I am all about value. This box of 100 Smart & Simple tagless teabags cost about $1.25. like I said, I use 14 bags (7 double bags) per gallon. That works out to roughly 7 gallons at a cost of about 18 cents each. Now for the sugar. I usually get a 4 pound bag of Kroger Value brand sugar for around $2.15 on sale. There are about 9 cups of sugar in a 4 pound bag, so that puts each cup at about 24 cents per cup. Since I add 1 1/2 to 2 cups, it costs 48 cents at the most to sweeten my gallon of tea. Cost of container is FREE, of course. 

SO - - the total cost of a gallon of refreshing, homemade sweet tea is a whopping 66 cents! 

Hmm, that DOES beat $1.50 - - by 84 cents, actually. It saved me enough to buy a nice candy bar to enjoy with my sweet tea..........or a pack of gum..........or a small bag of chips.

Have a wonderful and blessed day from our house to yours!

What in the World's a "Redneck Travel Kit?!?"

You may have read that I don't like to throw things away if I believe they have more life left in them. Glass jars are certainly no exception. I buy many things that are contained within glass jars: spaghetti sauce, jelly, pickles, salsa, etc. It always seemed such a shame to toss these sturdy vessels as if they were yesterday's news when there is so much potential for reuse! I mean, people intentionally BUY those cute little "Mason jar" drinking glasses with the lids and straws nowadays. I will get into all the possibilities for glass jars in another post, but for now I'd like to share with you one way that I recycled many of my glass jars into something useful and pretty darn cute - - or so I thought . Enter: the Redneck Travel Kit!

You may have ALSO read in my introductory post that I love sprinting out to the mailbox to rob it of its bounty AKA free samples and other super exciting free stuff! I get a lot of free samples in the mail (again, that will be material for another post when I share my sources with you!). It kinda softens the blow of the wretched bills that inevitably accompany the free stuff, you know? With an ever-expanding shoebox chock full of travel sized shampoo, conditioner, feminine hygiene products, toothpaste, antacids, vitamins, mouthwash........whewww......you name it - - AND a closet shelf brimming with my impressive glass jar collection salvaged from a life of broken (literally) dreams, what is a girl to do? Much like the Brady Bunch, I "knew that it was much more than a hunch, that this group must somehow form a family"....

I'll let you in on a little secret. My parents keep me perpetually stocked with an array of awesome "stuff" ranging from antiques to clothing to odds-n-ends.  One of my most favorite things they have given me was a gallon jug of Goof Off. This stuff is lethal, let me tell ya......it will remove the funky, gunky, sticky, icky from ANYTHING! But one word of advice - - VENTILATE. Anyhow, I got to work on the messy, sticky labels on my jars with my trusty Goof Off, a pair of latex gloves and an old washcloth. They came out gleaming following Goof Off and a bath in the dishwasher. My next step was to spray paint the lids, outside of course. Now, you don't have to do this. I suppose you could always cut out a pretty little square of cloth to cover it, but I wanted the recipient to be able to use the jar for something else (cotton swabs in the bathroom, rubber bands on a desk?) after the contents were removed without having to look at KROGER VALUE HAMBURGER SLICES all the time. That's not cool.

Once the jars were cleaned and the lids painted and dried, the fun part began! I did this a couple of weeks ago in mid-December with an array of samples that I had requested from various websites, collected and saved all throughout the year. I had enough to fill nearly a dozen jars, with each one having a nice variety of things. Now I must confess that I did this same thing last year, but I had named them "Spa in a Jar" and had attached a bath puff to the lid of the jar. I wanted to do something a little different, so the hubster suggested "Redneck Travel Kit". Sounded good to me!

Any good Redneck Travel kit needs attractive packaging, doesn't it? My local Dollar Tree sells packs of clear cellophane treat sacks at 20 for a dollar, so I went with these. The jars fit very nicely in these with room to tie the bag off at the top. Again, I could have left it like this, but I wanted to embellish it a bit more. I am blessed to own a Cricut paper cutting machine given to me by my husband's grandmother. I'll tell ya, it's nifty! I had saved several of the thin pieces of cardboard that come in things liked packaged t-shirts because I knew I would use this to make adorable little tags on my Cricut, but you could EASILY just hand cut some cute tags. After making my tags and labeling them, I tied them to the kits. However, they still looked like they needed something. My thoughts then went to the impossibly wrinkled and mis-sized pajamas that my nephew could no longer wear. They were a perfect burgundy and navy plaid and would match my blue jar lids. I got those and went to work tearing strips. These strips became rustic little ribbons for the travel kits.

Now, this idea could be modified and the contents could be changed for any occasion. You could put in candy for Valentine's Day or Easter. A jar could be filled with paper clips, rubber bands, a few pens, etc. for a "Redneck Office Supplies" jar. Or, you could fill it with potpourri and paint the recipients initial on the lid for a cute and elegant little gift. My sister made several potpourri jars this Christmas. I will do another post on her and her husband's craftiness later on!

So, have I inspired you yet?? Have a fun, frugal and fabulous day from our house to yours!