Transforming a House into Our Home: Step 2- Budgeting

It doesn't matter the smallest change you want to do to a house, it will cost you money. The best way to insure you are staying within a budget is to actually have one! I'm guilty as charged to ignoring that step, but that stops now. There is a tons of things that I would love to fix in the house we live in, but we live in a house that we rent and we don't want to spend a whole lot of money doing it. So, solution.... maybe? Time to open your piggy bank for a budget!

Or your house in a way... The number ways to start creating a budget but without actually spending extra money needed to improve your home is to SELL YOUR UNUSED ITEMS. I'm telling you, not only will it de-cluttered your life but make you money!! So, go ahead, clean out your bedrooms, your garage, anything to find gold buried in your home. You will be surprised how many things you have of value that you don't need and don't use. Once you find all items you want to get rid of, it's time to sell! :)

Ways to sell.

• Craigslist (handy website where you can find someone locally to buy your things.)
• Yard Sale (go ahead and gather your friends and neighbors. **remember, the more big ticket items you have, the more successful yard sale you'll have**)
• Ebay (you'd be surprised the amount of money people will bid on just to get an item they want.)

Anyway you sell your items, make sure to set a budget on how much you would need to spend to transform a house into YOUR home. The items that you sold and made money on will help you set the budget on your project and let you know how much money you will need to put down to transform your home. Good luck!

Thanks for reading and happy saving!

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Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap

While browsing through Pinterest, I found a recipe for a "homemade" liquid laundry detergent from the Duggars blog. I was completely AMAZED that you can actually make laundry detergent and work in my HE top-loader washer. I did my research with this recipe to make sure it would be safe to use in my HE washer, since my husband was a little lot hesitant to put anything that wasn't Tide on our 1 year old washer. Anyway, after I found out it would be safe, I convinced him. I was so ecstatic that the next day I rushed to Walmart and bought everything I needed to make it. (Although, I had recently purchased a 1.17 gallon of Tide detergent for $17.97 dollars + taxes, I knew it wouldn't last long. I was right, two months later it was GONE.) It was now time to make my own detergent, but I didn't expect it to be so easy!

I found everything listed in Walmart except for the essential oil, I purchased that on Amazon.com. I found the bar soap, washing soda and borax in the laundry aisle and the five gallon bucket by the paint aisle.

• Fels-Naptha bar soap (1) 1 dollar
• Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (1 cup) 3 dollars
• Borax (1/2 cup) 3 dollars
• Essential Oil (50 drops/optional) 8 dollars
• Five Gallon Bucket (It will make 10 gallons of detergent) 5 dollars

First thing is to grate the bar soap. I used a cheese grater, but I made the mistake of grating it on the thickest part so it took the longest to dissolve. I recommend grating it very finely so it will dissolve faster. It took me about 15 minutes, stirring the whole time.

Next is putting 4 cups of tap water onto a pot and adding the grated soap, stir till all the chucks are dissolved. In the min-time, have the water running if it takes a while for the water from the faucet to heat up and fill only half of the five gallon bucket with hot water first.

Stir in the melted soap to the bucket of hot water, add 1 cup of Super Washing Soda, and 1/2 cup of Borax.

Fill bucket to the top with hot water and stir well. Place lid and let it sit overnight to thicken.

Once it's gelled, add around 50 drops of any essential oil and stir.

Lastly, mix one part of detergent in a container and another one part water. Their is 16 cups in one gallon, so mix 8 cups of detergent and 8 cups of water. I used a giant funnel to help me pour it in the container that has had been cleaned. It should make 10 gallons of detergent.

If you want, decorate an old detergent container and done!

*I use 1/4 cup for my top loader HE washer machine. That makes 640 loads! It wouldn't hurt to experiment around.

I spend about $17.97 before taxes every two months on detergent a year. That means I spend $107.82 a year alone. The crazy thing is I only spent roughly around $20 dollars the first time including the bucket and essential oil to make the homemade liquid laundry soap, next time I run out I will only have to buy the bar for 97 cents in Walmart. Now, THAT's savings in my book. :)

Thanks for reading and happy savings!

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Transforming a House into Our Home: Step 1- Brainstorming

Step 1. Thinking of ways that would not only improve your daily life but also transform from a house to OUR home.

Things in this house that would make it our home:

• Finish wall decor in bedroom
• Update with new shelves and organize our crowded closet.
• Update and make it possible for my son to reach his clothes
• Organize office room and add built in bookshelves and bench
• Create a craft room in office closet
• Create "cave room" for my husband's work and small inside tools.
• Frame plain bathroom mirrors
• Restore all ceramic sinks
• Organize laundry room
• Organize all bathroom cabinets

This is a master closet idea. I love this!

This is a craft room idea for a closet I currently use for storing my holiday items.

This is an idea for my son's room, i will probably only have 3 rods instead of 4.

And my favorite thing I want to built, a storage bench/bookshelf for my office. Except my idea is less bench, no window and more book storage for all my books and my son's toys.  :)

I plan to make this all possible with a relatively small budget that I can afford, I will make a separate post for budgeting which will be Step 2. Stay tuned! Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day.

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Face-lift and New URL Name

Thank you for viewing my new website. Unfortunately, I had to restart a new blog with a different URL and name due to difficulties with my other blog but I love a new fresh start. Again, thanks for visiting and browse away. I will be posting a WHOLE lot of new posts.

In the meantime, here's a preview of what's to come from my instagram @ IssamarSellene.

Let me know what you think of my website. :)

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DIY: Magnetic Menu Planner with Spice Rack and Dry Erase Board

Yes, read right. I set myself a task to create the "mother-load" of all food menu planners I've seen in Pinterest for my kitchen. A menu organizer with spices and a dry erase board in ONE!!! This is my masterpiece. ;)

I was looking for was something that I could plan my meals a week ahead of time, a place to put my most commonly used spices where I could easily get them, and have a dry erase board to be able to write when I run out of something and I would be reminded. To make this menu, I followed the instructions of  ClairsFairytale (mostly), and made it a bit my own.

If you are interested on making a similar menu to mine. These are the things I used to make it possible.

• 11x14 frame
• Spray paint
• Metal sheet
• Scissors (cuts though thin metal)
• (2) 12x12 of same decorative scrap paper
• (2) 12x12 of different decorative scrap paper that goes with your color theme
• 12 plastic jars (I got 24 of these from ebay for 22.99)
• Mod Podge
• Foam brush
• (2) Clothespins
• Business cards
• (2) 16 ct crayon Cra-Z-Art boxes
• Magnet buttons (found them in the craft section of walmart)
• Hot glue gun
• Dry erase marker

FRAME: The first thing I did was sand and used primer, after it dried I spray painted the color I wanted my frame to be, I used Krylon's (yellow) Bright Idea color and let it dry. Next, I used the glass from the frame to measure the metal sheet, used a sharpie to trace where I would need to cut and used scissors that can cut through thin metal.

METAL SHEET: Cover the entire metal sheet with scrap paper, you will need two 12x12's. You will use the one entirely and the other one you will only used a couple of inches to be able to cover the entire thing. Spread a thin coat of Mod Podge all around the edges of the metal sheet and make sure it has no bubbles or lines. Let dry, then use a different scrap paper to cut a straight to cover where the scrap paper overlapped. After dried, place the metal sheet behind the frame glass and close.

CRAYON BOXES: Cut the boxes until you can see the business cards. I cut roughly around 1/2 an inch. When you have cut to your preferred size, use Mod Podge and cover with scrap paper.

CLOTHESPINS: Cover with scrap paper and use a sharpie to write "Today" and "Week".

SPICE JARS: I used 12 plastic jars for this project and filled them up with my most commonly used spices. You can make your own labels like mine or just a sharpie and write the names of the spices on the lid. Turn them upside down and hot glue magnet buttons on to the jars (I used 3 for each jar). Put on frame.

BUSINESS CARDS: Using a pen or using the instructions from your business cards, on the front of the card. The name of the dinner and sides that you will be paring with the dinner. On the back of the cards write all the ingredients for when you are getting ready to plan your meals, you'll have a list of what you need to have in your fridge.

These inspired me the most. By MakeandTakes and ClairsFairytale!

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will try to answer them as best as I can. Thanks for reading!

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DIY: Tinted Pink Mason Jars

This project was so easy, I was shocked! I have been wanting to tint my mason jars as decoration for my bathroom and one day of insomnia, I finally did it.

Things I used.

• Mod Podge (One of the tutorials said to use gloss only, but I used Matte because that's all I have and it worked for me!)
• Red liquid food coloring (I read that gel works better, but liquid worked great for me!!)
• Disposable cup
• Stick to stir
• Newspaper or paper towels
• Decorative ribbon

First, roughly measure 2 Tablespoons of water and pour it in the cup. Then, put about 8-10 drops of food coloring in cup. If you want the tint to be light, you might want to put less drops, about 5 drops. Next, put 1/2 a cup of Mod Podge on cup and stir.

Preset your oven to "Warm".


Fill the mason jar and cover it completely and let it drain for a couple of minutes on the newspapers.

Clean the edges of the jars and place them in the oven for 20 minutes, add more time if needed.

If the color is what you wanted, then take out and cool. If you want a darker color, let cool, and repeat the process. When cool, wrap ribbon for added cuteness, and that is it!! I LOVE IT! :))

These pictures are from my Instagram. Follow me if you want @ IssamarSellene. :)

Inspired by: It's Overflowing

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DIY: 79 cent Book Cover and Bookmark

I wanted to post a super easy diy that I did in a little over 10 minutes. It takes almost nothing to do this and super cheap too!

Things I used to make this diy happen.

• Mod Podge(5 to 6 dollars at Walmart)
• paint brush (less than a dollar!)
• scrap paper (59 cents at Hobby Lobby)
• cutting pen or scissors
• hard-book cover (10 cents at a yard sale)
• bookmark (came with book!)
• unused broken necklace (optional)
• hole punch

First thing I did was to make sure I had enough scrap paper for this project. I made sure the paper would wrap around the entire book, once it did, I cut off the paper that was hanging off (DO NOT TOSS!! I used the leftover paper for the bookmark). Next, I applied a thin coat of Mod Podge to the front of the cover.

I placed one end of the paper onto the front of the cover and let it dry for a minute, then I applied Mod Podge around the side of the book and to the back. Make sure to get as wrinkle-free as possible. Let dry and start on bookmark.

Trace and cut the paper that you didn't use. Again, apply thin line of Mod Podge to the top of the bookmark, let dry and to the same for the back. After it dries, punch a hole and tie the rope that came with the bookmark or use a ribbon. I hot glued a part of a necklace that fell apart to the rope and wrote with a pencil "P.S. I love you" on the book and "xoxo" on the bookmark, both parts are optional.

I have the book sitting on top of my vanity mirror as a decoration. This cost me a little over 79 cents since I already had everything in hand except for the book, bookmark and scrap paper. Thanks for reading!

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