August the month not to spend money.

I have been inspired by other bloggers who have either not spent any money or limited the amount that they spent for either a month or some for a WHOLE YEAR!  Most recently Sarah from Thrifty Décor Chick  used July not to buy anything for her home and instead tackled her stash instead.
So I have decided to try to do the same.  No spending!  I will need to get the kids some stuff for school and we need some car work.  But I am going to go through my stash of stuff first, make a list  and have a plan.
The last time we went out to eat it cost us $86.00 plus a tip!  So that won’t be happening.  I am going to go through my cookbooks and recipes pantry and freezer.  I am going to plan menus and have a list before going to the store.
Of course I am going to keep collecting Swagbucks.  Last month I was able to purchase 6 bottles of  Mrs. Meyer's Clean dish soap for .79 cents, for all 6.  I turned my points in for Amazon gift cards.
So how am I doing here on day three?  Well pretty good.  Saturday is my marketing day, so we are making do with what we have in the house for food.  Last night was spaghetti and ditalini pasta with pizza sauce over it and a can of veggies ( the kids kept asking where the meatballs were).  Tonight was frozen corn dogs, tossed salad (made with the  remnants of veggies in the crisper) and pretzels.  Tomorrow we will have BBQ chicken, rice and frozen corn.
Also to keep my creative juices flowing keep myself from going completely bored I tweaked my kitchen just a little using what I had in the house.

Here is the counter next to the stove before (I wish I had noticed the side of the fridge before, but no).

This vintage canister of which I have a complete set is the inspriation for my kitchen.  So working with these colors I decided to add a little and make this area more me.

So I grabbed this cake stand and played around with my stuff that I use over here.
I knew I wanted to keep my kitchen tools, my sugar bowl, salt and pepper shakers, the vintage scale with the juice glasses, the coffee mugs and cutlery holder.  There was also a green depression glass tray that was there that you could not see.

Other than the cake stand all I added was a little red Pyrex refrigerator dish with my Equal packets that I use everyday.
Next up was to change the ribbon in the cake stand.  So off to my stash I went.

This is only a small portion of that stash.  But I found what I wanted and quit looking!

I though about gluing them together but in the end it worked just fine leaving them separate.

So starting in the back I weaved them in and out.

All done! 

On to the next spot!

My stove area.  The other burner cover was in the sink, we do have two!
Take the stuff off of the shelf.  Reposition the children’s plates and make the black salt and pepper shakers not look so not me.
So after removing everything I decide to tackle the salt and pepper shakers.

I remembered that there was a link to print free Cath Kidston labels.  I love Cath Kidston stuff it has a wonderful vintage feel. and went in search of it.  You can find it here.  There were several to choose from and they have the instructions with them on what to do.  So I picked the one that I liked and saved it to my computer as a Jpeg and was then able to edit it in Piknik. 
You right click and save.



Once you are in Picasa you can then edit in Picnik.  They are both free to download.

In create I picked add text.  Then picked the font I liked. Typed the word and changed the color and size.





I then saved it to Picasa selected print and chose the size I wanted.  I chose wallet size.



I then cut out the images and grabbed the Mod Podge and set out to work.


I liked how they turned out so well I decided to make one for our cinnamon sugar shaker.  The only difference was that I remembered that I had read somewhere to spray clear spray paint on the printed image before using the Mod Podge.  Well I had some so I tried it out and will be redoing these using that method.

I am also going to add a little ribbon to the toothpick holder.

I took some double sided tape and stuck the little plate to the shelf and the bigger one to the stove.  I used the stove tonight and so far so good.


I also took a vintage muffin tin and added some votive candles to it.  Tomorrow I will finish tackling the next counter, and fix the side of the fridge . 
So stay tuned to see how the rest of the month goes.

Linking up to:
Beyond the Picket Fence
The Shabby Chic Cottage
Tales from Bloggeritaville
Somewhat Simple
No Minimalist here.
Designer Garden