My Budget Book

I'm a big fan of the Envelope Budgeting System. Where you use cash and have envelopes for each of the line items in your budget and keep the cash for each item, in each envelopes. I used the system for about 6 months last year and it was amazing how on budget I was each week.

Then life got busy and just like my workout intentions everything goes out the door around July when life kicks into high gear.

Well, I'm ready to get back into it, which is why learned how to make my own envelopes last week, so I could make a book of envelopes. (Sort of like Megan did, though I went about mine a little different.)

Here is what I started with:

Materials:

• 6 Envelopes, 1 each for groceries week 1, groceries week 2, Target, date night, "bonus*" and receipts. (These are the items I pay cash for in a 2 week pay period.)
• Pretty fabric
• Pretty paper
• Chip board 
• Glue
• Straight edge
• Box cutter
• Letter stickers to mark the purpose of your envelope
• 2 pieces of ribbon, cut to 6-8 inches

You don't need to make your own envelopes as I did, that was just me being a freak... well, because I'm a freak. And please, there are other tutorials for this online, which are likely better than mine, but I couldn't find some of the supplies that Martha Steward called for... my AC Moore doesn't carry book binding tape. So this is how I did it, feel free to look to someone else, or make your own way.

1st step - Cut strips of fabric about 1.5" inches wide by the height of your envelopes.

Step 2 - Take 2 of your envelopes and place them side, one facing up, the other facing down.

Step 3 - Coat one of the strips of fabric with glue, first I used regular white glue, that took forever to dry. So then I moved onto a quick drying craft glue from 3M that I really ended up liking.

 

Step 4 - Apply the glued strip to the envelopes butting them very close together.

Repeat step 4 until you have all the envelopes bound together. I first bound 3 sets of 2 together, letting them dry. And then bound the 3 sets together...

Step 5 - Cut 2 pieces of chip board .5" taller than your envelopes and .25" wider. Then cut a strip of chip board that is equal in height to the other 2 and the same width as your bound envelope. (No picture of this step, but you'll see in steps 6 and 7 what they look like)

Step 6 - Lay your pieces of card board down on your fabric and coat the chip board with glue. Note the slight .125" gap between the front and back covers and the spine of the book. This is important to allow your binding space to bend.

 

(Brush the glue, don't just leave it swirly like my picture... you couldn't really see the glue once I'd brushed it in so I took the picture while it was swirly like.)

Step 7 - With all 3 pieces of chip board glued to the fabric, slip the fabric up to the corners of the chip board

Step 8 - And then glue and fold in your fabric.

 

  

Step 9 - Time to bind the envelopes into the binding. Using 2 more strips of fabric, attach the last envelope to the back cover and the 1st envelope to the front.

 

Step 10 - Cut 2 lengths of ribbon to 6-8" inches, and 2 pieces of paper to .25" smaller than your front and back covers.

Step 11 - Glue the ribbon half way down the outside edge of the back cover.

 

Step 12 - Glue the pretty paper to the inside back cover of the book.

 

Repeat steps 11 & 12 for the front cover.

Step 13 - Label each of your envelopes... I decided just to use the initials for each of my categories. And I also labeled them on the front and back... just because I could.

And here is my finished budget book.

 

 

And of course, use of these isn't limited to a budget book, I can see making these to hold any variety of things. Favorite cards from the holidays, pictures, treasures from special trips... all kinds of wonderful things.

I'm thinking of coating the outside of my book with a bit of mod podge, not sure about it though.

Coloring Book Holders

We've got a lot of coloring/activity books in this house. I've found that if left uncontained these little suckers will multiply and fall to pieces. It isn't pretty.

A little while back I found this solution at Beach Brights and have been wanting to do it but I never, ever make it anywhere to pick up mail boxes. Well as luck would have it I was cleaning out our front hall closet where I used to store materials for a little business I used to have... Years ago, I had a kids craft business. I would purchase kids crafts in bulk, and repackage them for parents in monthly kits with a project for each week.

And what did I find... 5 kits in the back of the closet, all packaged up in priority mail boxes. Perfect!!! I wasn't going to be sending them out, the business has been closed for 3 and a half years. Felt good to recycle something from that long ago. (And now I've got a BUNCH of crafts for Bug and Baby bear... bonus!)

So, here is how I did it...

Materials:

• Mail box (Recycled priority mail boxes or recycled FedEx boxes are perfect for this.)
• Spray adhesive
• Nail polish remover (to unstick your fingers after you over spray and touch too much adhesive.)
• Box cutter 
• Fabric, contact paper or scrapbook paper to cover the boxes (using contact paper will eliminate the need for the spray adhesive and nail polish remover.)
• Straight edge

Step 1: Mark on the box where you want to cut, if you plan ahead, you can actually get 2 coloring book holders per single box, which is what I did. One ended up shorter than the other, but that was perfect for the smaller books we had.

 

(Look how old these boxes are??? They've completely changed the branding to flat rate boxes now... that is what happens when you don't clean out your closet for over 3 years.)

Step 2: Cut the boxes along the lines with a straight edge and a box cutter.

Step 3: Lay the box on top of your fabric/paper and cut around the box leaving about 2" around the edges. (You'll also note, that because my fabric was light, I had to spray paint the box with a bit of lighter paint to knock down the contrast, otherwise the blue would have shown through...)  If you have a patterned fabric like I did, you might want to plan a little when cutting in step 3 so that you get the portion of the pattern you want, on the face of the box.

Step 4: Fold the ends of the fabric in and secure with adhesive so that when you wrap the box, much like you would a present, a toile photo box or cream and black box top...you'll have nice finished edges all the way around.

 

Step 5: Wrap the box like a present.

Step 6: Use a credit card or other smoothing tool to make sure you've got all the wrinkles out and make sure everything is secure. Especially important if your boxes, like mine, are going to be used by kids.

And there you have it... I was able to make 7 finished coloring book boxes out of 4 recycled priority mail boxes. All I had to pay for out of pocket was 2 yards each of 2 types of fabric. For me, black and cream toile ($8 and this is now my 3rd project with that same fabric) and black linen ($6 for 2 yards with coupon.

 

  

$14 for 7 coloring book holders - I'm thrilled. 

Toile Photo Boxes

While I'm still working on my amazing bookcase*, I'm also working on a few things to go along with it. The main purpose of the bookcase is to house the millions of children's books we have, but lets face it, not all children's books fit nicely into a regular bookcase. That has left me looking for a couple of other solutions to store books in on the bookcase.

I stopped off at JoAnn's the other day to pick up materials for an entirely different, yet to be started project and saw black photo boxes for 50% off. They were a perfect solution for the smaller board books that though Baby Bear is on the verge of outgrowing, I feel the need to keep in bulk. Then I found the PERFECT fabric to give them just a little more custom detail... black and cream toile!!! The bookcase is being painted black and cream!!! And I love toile and don't get to use it enough...

So here are the materials:

 

• Photo storage box, or any box for that matter
• Fabric
• Spray adhesive 
• Scissors
• Something to cover your surface if your yard is covered in 26" of snow and you can't use the spray adhesive outside.

First, lets take a close up look at that toile...

 

Thankfully - I've got more than one use for this fabric, it deserves more than one use...

Decide what part of the box you are covering, for me, it was just the top. Then I cut the fabric to the width & height of the top plus about 2" to allow it to wrap around.

 

Apply spray adhesive to the top of the box and the back of the fabric.

 

 Then lay the box top down on the fabric and turn it over to smooth out any bubbles or wrinkles. 

 

(And in case my Mother-in-Law has found my blog, my wedding ring is fine, I just don't wear it when I'm crafting.)

Next clip the corners of the fabric at a 45° angle from the corner of the fabric to the corner of the box, and then wrap the long sides of the box up and around. Then turn the box and fold the fabric in so that when you wrap the short side you have a finished edge at the corners. (You will likely need to spay the box and fabric every so often to get it sticky enough.)

And that is it...

Pop the top on the box and enjoy.

 

  

This was such a quick and easy project. It took me all of 5 minutes per box and think they look amazing. You could also add other embellishments or wrap the bottom in a coordinating fabric... the options are endless. (And yes, I'm so temped to hit JoAnn's tomorrow to see if these suckers are on sale and if they have anymore... but as I mentioned above, we've got 26 inches of snow, I don't think I'm going anywhere.) 

Linking up to Saturday Nite Special at Funky Junk Interiors. 

* Oh, before I forget, the amazing bookcase is taking a bit longer than I thought, BUT it is coming out so well. We're thrilled and hope to have it completed in the next couple of days. It is entirely assembled, we're just painting, sanding, painting, sanding, filling, sanding, painting... ugh.

Office Holiday Cheer

The social committee for the Association I work at had the great idea to have a door decorating contest to help get us all in the holiday spirit. I never really thought of doing something like this at home but maybe next year the kids can decorate their doors, or we can do something more fun than a typical wreath on our front door.

Here were some of my favorite doors:

 

 

And here is my door: (Inspired and featuring by my daughters penguin drawing)