Decorating on a Budget

I have a problem..... I can not pay full price for anything. I love going to thrift store and garage sales. It is like a treasure hunt for me. I love to find great deals, make something new out of something old, or on occasion pay next to nothing for something and then turn around and make money for it on ebay or amazon. Well, I believe my family feels I have finally went over the top. Remember Miguel and I started a pretty tight budget? Now I have to get creative. So I saw a really cool idea on http://www.fullofgreatideas.com/. If you go to this blog she also links you up to other blogs that have done this idea with different patterns. Please do NOT compare mine to hers!!!!!! This was my first attempt and it is not near as perfect as some of these other way more talented than I ladies.

<~~~~~~~~~~~So I asked my family to start saving me these

And these were cut in strips and became this.....

Adaliah grapped my camera while I was cutting the strips and snapped this before I even knew what she was doing. Not bad for a 2 year old! lol Notice how intensely I am concentrating on cutting the tp rolls. Serious stuff people. (Laughing at self)

And after much patience, super glued fingers, and several coats of spray paint, this is the end result. I think I am going to do another coat of spray paint but you can get the general idea. I have started another one with a different pattern. I will let you know how it turns out.

Who knew you could use tp rolls and make wall art. I am seriously having fun doing this! It warms my thrifty heart to use something I would have tossed into the burn pile to make something unique and interesting. Anyone else done anything crafty lately? I would love to hear about it! Enjoy your day and God bless you!!

Gatlinburg

Well...this is going to be a long over due post. Miguel had been talking about going to Gatlinburg for a while. Well, back in October he received a profit sharing check from work that we were not totally expecting. We decided to use it to take our first real family vacation. We had such a great time and it was amazingly beautiful. Adaliah was such a great traveler for the whole 7 hours it took us to get there.

Our cabin......

The view across the street from our cabin.

One of the things we did was visit the aquarium. It was spectacular and Addie loved the "fishies" very much! Here she is looking at an iguana.

This was the cutest thing. This penguin was minding it's own business when it spied Adaliah up there looking at all the penguin. So, it preceded to waddled over right up to the the glass and just stood there looking back at Adaliah.Downtown Gatlinburg was really neat. It had some of the most unique shops I have ever seen. This picture was taken in a courtyard of shops that was called "The Village". It was beautifully laid out, but we couldn't afford a single thing there. =) It was fun to browse though. We took a tram up 1000's of feet to the top of a mountain. Miguel wanted to take the open tram that was like a ski lift. I told him I would probably have heart failure taking a not quite 2 year old up 1000's of feet in one of those. So, we compromised and went in an enclosed one. At the top of the mountain it was kind of like a carnival with rides and games and shops. They also had a little zoo of sorts that showed animals native to the TN area. One of those animals has now become one of Adaliah's favorite animals.

This was some of the view going up the mountain. The white house at the top left was designed to look like Barbie's dream house. Some of these houses also belong to celebrities but for privacy sake they could not say who's houses they were.

One afternoon we went and listen to a presentation on time shares. They didn't sell us on it but we did get $75 cash and a $50 gift card to a steak house that we ate at that evening. Overall it was a neat experience that we got some cool perks out of. This is the view from the balcony of one of the cabins. The resort itself takes up an entire mountain.

We also did a bit of hiking. Not as much as we would have liked but our time was limited. We left early Monday so we arrived in TN in the late afternoon and we left at around 11 on Wed. Also it would have been too hard on Adaliah to do a lot of hiking. What we did was beautiful though and we hope to go back when she is older and can appreciate the scenery more. It was such a great first family vacation for us! Adaliah was awesome the whole time and we can not wait to do it again.

Miguel and I truly thought that the Gatlinburg was one of the most beautiful places we both have ever seen and we would love to have a second home there. (Hey...like my mom says "Dreams are free!") But for now it was nice to come home.....