A Homemade Life

This week just seemed to fly by, and I didn’t do much homemade other than the usual stuff--cooking and baking. I made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies on Wednesday, and then we made homemade peanut butter cup ice cream on Thursday. We ran out of bread today, so I’m in the process of making pumpkin rolls (using this recipe, but making them into sandwich rolls instead of dinner rolls). All of us love these, especially Jim and Sam. Last time I made them, Sam said, “Mommy, this is the best bread I have EVER had!” :) So I guess that means I should make them more often! I also need to make granola sometime today.

And here is my update on the craft project I mentioned. This is my new coupon box!
My inspiration came from this post on The Homespun Heart (a new-to-me blog that I am loving!). I loved her coupon box idea and I especially loved the Martha Stewart recipe box that she used (I'd want one in blue, like the one I linked to!). However, we are trying to be extra frugal right now since work is very slow for Jim, and there was no way I could spend the money on something just because it was cute, since it wasn't actually a need. So, I thought about it, and poked around online, and decided to challenge myself to create a coupon box using things I already had on hand. I found this tutorial on Instructables, on how to make a box from, well, boxes. :) I used recycled cereal boxes, pasta boxes, etc., until I had enough cardboard to create my box. It was time consuming, messy, and something I definitely wouldn't do every day, but it was satisfying at the same time!
After I got the box glued together (and reinforced a bit with packaging tape, just in case!), I covered it with scrapbook paper, lined it with more paper, and embellished the front with a strip of paper and red rickrack. I made dividers from cardstock and trimmed them with strips of various patterned papers, and divider tabs. One funny/interesting thing: as I was looking over Monica's post again to get her list of coupon categories, I noticed that the scrapbook paper she used for her dividers was from the same set as the paper I used. I got this huge pack of it at Hobby Lobby when we were in Ohio, and I love it! It's so fun and cheerful. Anyway, that was my project from the past couple days--I know it's nothing super exciting, but it was fun to do and I'm very happy with the results. And hopefully it'll help inspire me to really get into couponing more and more this year! :)

If you've never used a Mister Linky, here's how it works: In the first space, type your first name, and if you'd like to specify what your post is about, you can add that in parentheses. In the second space, copy and paste the URL of the blog post you want to link to. Mister Linky will automatically ask you to leave a comment on my post, but you don't need to, unless you want to. :) Anyway, it's fairly simple and hopefully will be fun for everyone.