It’s time we put a small line item in the budget for craft supplies. Not that we need to be spending $50 a month on this stuff, the whole idea of DIY is to do it on the cheap/free – but some of the things I’d love to do for my home, with our kids and for fun need just a few necessities. How do you guys do it? Are you already crafters with a closet full of supplies? Former Creative Memories/Scrapbookers with all the gadgets and left over paper? Where do you fall?

I actually used to sell Creative Memories and after my daughter’s first 2 books went unfinished I decided there was no way I was going to keep up with it for the rest of her life and possible siblings so I cleaned house. Craigslist and ebay unloaded ALL my scrapbooking stuff for me.

After we sold our house of six years last July and had a great big garage sale before moving everything into our current apartment with the leftovers moved in to a storage unit. {This might be confusing, but if you’ve been following this journey for long you might know that our plans changed and then changed again and we started building a house to move in to before the end of 2010, only half way through building that house it sold as well. Read up on that here and here.}

Point is, I sold or gave away all of my craft supplies, including my fabric and put my things in storage for when we had more room.

That was almost 7 months ago and I’m ITCHING to create and craft, build and beautify our space.

Starting with this Board and Batten wall for one of the very blank, very white walls in our apartment. Our lease is only until this spring but that’s a whole lot of days spent looking at those walls. I’m finally ok with spending a few dollars to make it a home and not a landing pad.

With Valentines coming up I love these Sucker Flowers as an alternative to all the Spree candies and pink card-stock that’s generally passed out.

A fun Cherry Blossom art project for something other than finger painting.

Fold away side table! I think I like to build things. In fact we got a few tools for Christmas and I’ve gotten more joy out of using them than almost anything (ok, I did get an enamel dutch oven which was AWESOME.) But really. I love to build things. Maybe I should be an architect?

Succulent planter after we get back from Oklahoma I plan to pot a few plants and herbs for an indoor garden of sorts. I can’t wait to start growing something again, aside from our Aloe plant. These brick planters are just charming.

Another wall change, chair rail a different version of sprucing up a wall space. I think I like the Board and Batten wall a bit better for our space but I swoon over these tutorials … so easy! And such AMAZING results.

Upstage your chandelier. Part of me wishes we had some awful light fixture I could try this with but the lights in the apartment are retro and kind of fun – or just functional and not changeable. I’ll file this one away.

Valentines window garland so pretty. So so so pretty. Some pom-poms and fishing wire and my daughter will be tickled pink with her ability to transform our windows.

Write more love letters – I for one l-o-v-e getting letters from my loved ones. I keep them all. ALL of them. My little keepsake box is overflowing and if you have no other ideas for a gift for me, your words addressed to me will mean more than 1,000 gifts. I’d like to make those same people feel that way too.

Bath salts, make your own these DIY’s always appeal to me because I would not ever pay the price for them in a store but I’m drawn to the idea of being girlie in this way. I’d actually like to improve my routine for hygiene. Go a little further than brushing teeth and wearing deodorant. A little something extra, a glow … always helps.

Paper Dolls! I’ll never tire of these.

Jonah and the Whale, a cut out printable I love whales. This story was my daughters FAVORITE story for the longest time when she was a toddler. We still have the very worn book she requested over and over and over again and I can’t wait to give it to her babies one day with all those memories inside it’s pages.

Burlap Wreath is stunning. I’ll add burlap to my list of things to stock up on 🙂