Guest Posting at Crazy Ever After

I'm in love with a fellow Minneapolis blogger’s blog.  Lauren of Crazy Ever After is hilarious, energetic, completely honest, and seriously sweet.  We’ve been emailing back and forth for the past week about home-buying in the area, and she has been a huge help to Mr. Converse Sneaker and me!  She generously asked if I’d take part in her “De-Clutter the Crap Initiative” which are posts designed to help us busy people stay organized.  I jumped on board in a second!

 

I’m rambling today over at Crazy Ever After about how we keep our tiny and poorly-designed rental kitchen neat and far from chaotic.

 

Please join me over there and take a look around Lauren’s blog!

A Fall Tablescape on a Frugal Dollar

I’ve been really sick of sitting at this beat up $7 Goodwill table with only two chairs (because we are still too frugal and lazy to buy new desk chairs, so the dining chairs are being used for now leaving us with only two in the kitchen).  It’s looked like this for too long:



I like having our salt and pepper and napkins on the little tray so we can easily move them off the table when we have to use it for crafting or to surf the web, but because the kitchen has barely been decorated, this tray looks lifeless and boring.  It was time to put my thinking cap on and get to work at changing that!



I wanted something with more height that I could easily change up from season to season or when we have a themed dinner night.  I found this hurricane vase tutorial and knew it was perfect.  I stopped by the local Dollar Tree and Goodwill and came home with five vases and three candle holders (the three vases are just resting on the candlesticks so I could envision the final product).



I soaked the glass pieces in the sink and very easily removed the labels.  When they were dry, I added Gorilla Glue to the candle holders and planted them firmly on the bottom of each vase.  Then I put some books on them to act as a clamp so they would dry correctly.  I will admit, this was my first time using Gorilla Glue, so I put way too much glue on that I had to scrape off.  I may or may not have cut a slice of my finger off with an exacto blade . . .  Just be careful not to put too much glue and then you won’t need to use any kind of blade.



I used the leftover candy corn from my wreath project, some pinecone vase filler from Target (that I can use in fall and winter), and a cheap IKEA candle.

Much better!



I am so happy to have some versatile pieces I will be able to use forever, and all on a frugal dollar!

What inexpensive fall decorating have you been doing?

How to Cure A Lonely Fridge

I’ve been married to my husband, Mr. Converse Sneakers, for 9 days now.  I can still count the days on two hands, and already I am tackling wifely things like what the heck to do with the weird space on the side of our fridge.  You see, we live in a townhouse apartment, so we can’t do anything but make minor changes to any of the rooms, and for some strange reason, the builders installed a standard size fridge but an extra long skinny cabinet above the fridge, so we are left with an overhang.  Case in point:

I’m not sure whether it makes matter worse or not, but the cabinet is flanked by two windows.  It’s great for letting light in, but not so great because it makes the long cabinet even more awkward.  In order to fix this, I sat on my butt staring at it for a long time, did a few one-hair whisker rubs (c’mon, I can’t be the only lady with a one-hair beard going on on my chin . . . I digress . . .), and then I did a little poking around in our storage room and came up with a neat little solution.  Mr. Converse Sneakers had a little kitchen cart he used in his old apartment.  He got it from Craigslist (gotta love a man that loves to hunt for treasures as much as I do).  I spiffed it up and this is what I came up with:

The cart helps balance the extremely wonky cabinet above because it adds a little width to the fridge.  The fridge no longer looks so lonely!  And, not only is the cart kind of cute (in an I-have-an-apartment-and-can’t-do-any-major-fixings-but-have-to-be-resourceful kind of way), but it is functional as well.  I also “bling”-ed it out with a little of my favorite vintage girly things.  I told Mr. CS that every woman needs a little spot of feminine cuteness, and this is mine.  See?

I found the vintage fruit crate at an estate sale a year ago, and it was used to hold the programs at our wedding ceremony (pictures are coming once we get them back).  I love repurposing things!  I sure had to get rid of a lot of stuff after the wedding (and I have plenty more where there came from), but being able to incorporate the memories into our daily decorating makes me smile.  So do the recipes hanging above the cart – grilled corn and pizza!

The blue pedastal bowl I found at a garage sale a few years ago and it is one of my most prized possessions.  Guests love it too, but that’s because it holds our dwindling supply of crappy candy (of course we keep the good stuff in our pantry . . .), so maybe the guests don’t love it so much, but we just got married and haven’t had any major guests over yet for entertaining purposes.   The flowers are fake.  Sorry!  If I had any money, I’d buy the real thing, but I also am a flower-killer, so that will have to wait until another day.

I may just have to frame the above photo.  Sigh . . . I said this is one of my most prized possessions, right?  I’m Sarah, or Mrs. Ruffled Flats to you, and I have an addiction to turquoise pedestal bowls.

The rest of the cart holds our growing supply of cookbooks (Mr. Converse Sneakers is a banquet chef at a nice hotel and is moving his way up in the culinary field) as well as a huge bowl full of aprons.  Life is sweet!

Did you like my genius, okay free, idea for tackling this kitchen cabinet nightmare?  What would you have done differently?