DIY Life

I had some wooden planters just sitting around empty, so I decided to go to my local Pamida and get some flowers. Samantha loved marigolds so I got some of those to plant in her memory. One of my favorite flowers is a pansy, so I bought those too, then spent the afternoon planting them with my youngest daughter.

Now that one planter is full of potting soil and pansies, I can't move it. It's too heavy. I suppose I could transplant the flowers into smaller planters, but, simply put, I don't want to. Next year, I will make sure that I build a planter dolly before I decide to fill the heavy planter with flowers.

Weddings are so fun, but for the bride and groom, getting prepared for their special day can be a hassle. It is quite a feat to pull off a wedding without a hitch.

Although it is exhilarating to pick out flowers, the hall, the chapel, and those you've chosen to be in your wedding party, it can get a little frustrating to agree on all aspects of the day.

You can take the hassle out of choosing your wedding invitations with an awesome instructable that teaches how to print and assemble multi-layered wedding invitations.

I have a fascination with pretty paper, but I balk at buying it. I just don't send out enough correspondence to cover the cost, since I prefer to use my cell phone or email to keep in contact with my loved ones. Besides, my love of pretty paper has resulted in a drawer full of lonely, unused stationery.

For those that prefer to use snail mail, but also balk at buying notebooks, lined or graph paper, I have the perfect solution for you. Printable Paper has hundreds of papers styles that you can download and print for free, including graph paper, lined paper, financial paper, music paper, and letter paper. The site also has stationery, cash receipts, fax cover sheets and even business cards for you to download and print out. For a small fee, you can print out matching envelopes for your gorgeous stationery.

Now, you no longer have to worry about running out of any kind of paper. Just pop over to the site and print out what you need. I was truly amazed at the pretty stationery. Not bad for free. If you don't want to pay for the matching envelope, download it for free by checking out this post by M.E. Williams. If you have your own image in mind and want to create your own stationery template, check out this post by Debra McDuffee.

via: Lifehacker

I have a love / hate relationship with word processing programs. On the one hand, it completely excites me that they are so technologically advanced that I can use them for almost anything I need -- from creating business cards and labels to inserting photos to make flyers and even scrapbook pages.

The hate part comes in when I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do what I want to do. No little dog or paper clip on the sidelines offers me the help that I need.

eHow has a simple tutorial on how to create a stationery template in Microsoft Word. Did you know that MSWord comes with templates you can just fill in? Or, you can choose to create your own from scratch. eHow has easy, to-the-point instructions on how to do both.

What will I do with my new-found word processing skill? For starters, I think I'll make a personal stationery header for quick notes, thank-yous, and the like. Now that I know how to do it, the possibilities are endless.

Along with Spring comes the flurry of kids' birthday parties, concerts in the park, and festivals of every sort. Face painting is part of so many of these festivities. If you think you might get dragged into face painting this spring or summer, you'd better get prepared. Knowing what you're doing will make the difference between a kid who runs to the bathroom in embarrassment, scrubbing his poorly-painted face, and one who doesn't wash their face for a week.

The two most important elements (along with a steady hand and a comfy seat) are the paints and the designs. After the break, I'll tell you what you need to know about each.

How many times have you hurt your back dragging around a piece of furniture because you thought it would look perfect there, only to discover it doesn't look so perfect where you placed it for the umpteenth time?

Lay-It-Out furniture design templates will save your back, temper, and your patience. Kevin Kelly writes up a fabulous review for the furniture templates that I think anyone who has ever had to move in their lifetime can relate to. Placing furniture in the exact desired position is really a serious pain in the butt, so using the paper templates is ingenious, in my humble opinion. At $15-$40, the templates are a steal, considering your sanity and your floors are in question here.

Of course, using gigantic pieces of brown wrapping paper, or even ordinary 8x11 pieces is also an excellent idea. Draw your desired furniture placement on the paper, and you can avoid dragging the piece of furniture around the room. If you don't have the time, talent, or the patience to draw your desired design, the check out Lay-It-Out, and save your sanity in time for Christmas.

This project is the perfect way to add a little Halloween decor to your front porch and make sure that your friends can find your house on Halloween night. This creative and functional use for jack-o-lanters is brought to us by Michaels Crafts. It's super simple and looks great.

You'll carve out each number on a medium size craft pumpkin, and top it off with a small jack-o-lantern. You can find the templates here, or you can use any font for the numbers by just printing them out and transferring them to the pumpkin. The pumpkins are held together with a wooden dowel, and placed in a decorated terracotta pot.

They look like they are just barely balancing which is part of the effect, but you'll still need to be careful and they are best kept away from children. While you may have some materials on hand, everything is available at Michaels, and the instruction page walks you through the whole project. The entire project will take about 2 hours.

Everybody will take a second look at your pumpkin house numbers. It is among the most innovative and useful Halloween decorations I've seen this season.

[via: Adventures on Firethorn]

You've set the date, time and location for your special day. You've debated over and have finally chosen the wedding theme that suits your personality. Now what about the invitations? Being the frugal DIY'er that you are, you can make your own memorable and much more personal wedding invitations that can save you quite a bit of money.

You can do something unique that won't look like the same invite that everyone else is doing. Homemade invitations can symbolize the special love that you and your soon-to-be spouse share. If you get stumped, there are many articles on how to make your own. wikiHow gives a great article with steps and tips on how to make cheap homemade wedding invitations. If you need help coming up with more ideas, enter 2n-invite.com. They have a free printable wedding template for you and free, printable unique wedding invitations, wording ideas, and hints on how to come up with a unique verse.

Making your own wedding invitations certainly does not mean you are being cheap. I think it is sweet and romantic. Plus, there is the advantage on how much money you will save. If you think it will be too much of a hassle and too time consuming to make your own invites, just think of that little fact. Money. You could splurge on something else for your special day with the money you save when you create your own special invitations that people will be sure to remember for years to come.

Have you ever been on your way to a party, then realized that you didn't have a card or a gift box for the gift you'd planned to take? Are you getting married, and want to make your own invitations? As long as you have printer-ready card stock, a craft knife, and a bone scorer/folder around the house, you're covered.

Ruth Ann Zaroff's Mirkwood Designs is a site that was once known for its excellent hand-carved rubber stamps (no longer made), but is currently known for its wide variety of printable card, box, and envelope templates.

Among the 50+ templates you'll find: the center-tie card shown above, a heart card, a butterfly card, a paper doll, a trapezoid box, a library card book pocket, faux postage, a milk carton box, a take-out box, a mug card, and much more. Instructions for using each template are included. Most projects can be completed in under half an hour.

Does an arrangement like this make you flee, for fear of your wall crumbling around the multitudes of nails used to hang all of the pictures?

It used to make me run too, especially in our first house, an antique with the original plaster walls. It took us years to work up the courage to hang anything up, and even then, we did crumble some of the walls a bit.

Using this trick will save your walls and make it easy to hang pictures without mistakes and a bunch of nail holes.

It's easy:

1. Make a kraft paper template of each picture you wish to hang.
2. Use blue painter's tape to attach the kraft template and figure out where you want the picture to go.
3. Put picture hanging hardware on walls, directly through the paper.

The pictures will be exactly where you want them, the walls won't crumble and everyone will be happy.

This technique works much better than the ol' masking tape trick, so give it a try.