What Do You Do With a Huge White Wall?

Living in base housing sometimes presents itself with decorating dilemmas.
If you paint, you always have to remember that you will be moving in the near future and will have to repaint everything you do to the white wall it was.  Also, you psych yourself out of doing too much work and putting too much of your heart into the decor because you will eventually leave it.
So, instead of doing a creative paint job on a huge white wall in our dining room, I went a different route.  With the brainstorming of my mother and the convenience of Michael's arts and crafts store (which is inconveniently about 1 1/2 hours away), we came up with personalized bulletin boards. 
Massive bulletin boards.
Here is what 2 years of adding pictures, projects, cards, etc.  looks like to home decor in a military house.  We are thinking of moving the 2 over a bit and adding a 3rd one.  Time will tell.

Baby Jesus Ornament

This month I'm blessed with doing the Christmas crafts for the kids in Sunday school at church.  Christmas Crafts-YES!!!
This past week we made super simple baby Jesus tree ornaments. 
Here's what you'll need to make one:
A small paper plate
Stapler
Simple drawing of a face (resembling a baby as much as you can artistically accomplish)
Christmas Bible verse sticker, or you can write the verse on the front or back of the ornament (We used Isaiah 9:6)
Hole puncher
String/yarn

Directions:
~Punch a hole in the top of the plate with your hole puncher.
~Fold the bottom of the paper plate about 1/3 of the way up. 
~Fold both sides in and staple the folded sides down.
~Glue the baby Jesus' face near the top of the plate so that Jesus looks tucked in swaddled clothes.
~Pull your yarn/string through the hole punched into the top of the plate and tie at the top.
~Place your Bible verse sticker on the ornament or write the Bible verse on the back of the ornament

I got to make this ornament with my son and had a blast with him and all the other children.  I was delighted when my daughter also got to make one in her class during Sunday school.  My heart melted when she came running out of the class carrying her ornament saying "Wook, Baby Jesus!"

Home Made Calendar

I got tired of looking at my calendar that seemed to take up a ton of room on our wall beside the computer.  The calendar's corners were starting to curve and it wasn't laying flat against the wall anymore. 

So, I went looking online for inspiration.  I found quite a few DIY dry erase calendars that were super cute. 

Here are two of my favorite:

DIY dry erase calendar   &   personalized erasable calendar

Inspired, I went to my local 'Dollar General' store in town and bought myself a $3 black picture frame and some $1 dry erase markers.  I went on Microsoft Word and made a month template and printed it up on light blue card stock (to match my kitchen decor where the calendar is going to hang). 
I started to print up and design monthly headers but then decided to cut some corners to complete the project before the kids woke up from nap time. (Patience is not my virtue).  Instead, I chose some coordinating card stock for a header and left it blank.  I can then write the month in dry erase marker on the header without having to change it out every month.   I may, in the future, make some cute headers for each month.
I love it and it works out great for what I need.  A few years ago my mother gave me a flat backed bucket that I hung beside my new DIY dry erase calendar to hold an appointment book and some pens.  It only cost me $4!

Love my new calendar station and it looks much more nice and neat than my regular hanging paper calendar that started to look cluttered.

Fall Front Door Decor

(ignore that my front mat is not centered:)

Happy Fall Everyone! 

I absolutely love the crispness in the air and the undeniable urge to light my apple cinnamon candles in the house.

I recently browsed around Pinterest and found alot of inspiration for fall decorating ideas.  Last year I couldn't find my fall wreath and then we had our pumpkins stolen off our front porch for Halloween, so I lacked inspiration last year for decorating for Thanksgiving and such. 

But, ta-da!  This year I was inspired by many of my other blogger friends and pinterest. 

Wanting to save on money while decorating I visited our local 'dollar general' and 'dollar store' in town (yes, I said town...we live in the country and it takes me about 30 minutes to get to town where the main attraction is the super Walmart).  I hit up the after summer decor sale at 'dollar general' and scored on some urns.  Got them for $3 each.  Then I hit up the 'dollar store', which usually has lots more arts and craft items than 'dollar general'.  I purchased some moss (sheets and then bushels) and some super cute green wired ribbon.  All in all, I spent about $10 at both stores. I had just gotten some gourds for $5 a piece at the local grocery store that matched our house perfectly.   I filled the urns with paper grocery bags for filler and then topped with the moss. I made sure that the moss layer was a little below the top edge of the urn so that the wind would not carry away my dollar store moss.  I then placed my gorgeous gourds in the middle.  I found my fall decor box in the garage filled with my fall wreath and some scarecrows from another fall decoration a couple of years ago and vuala!

I loved how it turned out and feel super festive!

Total Cost=$20.