pancakes and painting

Well, today was another uneventful day in Tucson. I did start my day off right with some chocolate chip pancakes though :)

I think I ate the entire plate of them....

We put them on a big plate as we were making them. Can you tell I started eating before we even took them off the plate? :) I couldn't help myself they're sooo good!

And thanks to the roomie's nifty coffee machine, I had some yummy coffee in my favorite 'Good Morning' mug :) I don't like having matching mugs! I have 4 different mugs that I got from who knows where and they're all I use. The ones that match my dishes in a set just sit in the cabinet :)

 After breakfast, when the boredom began to set in, I decided to craft some more! I did a post last week about a DIY chalkboard, and this is kind of similar to that. We wanted something to hang on an empty wall right when you walk into the apartment.
So I hit up the craft crate (which you can buy here)

And here's what I came up with.

I hot glued two foam boards together (just because they were smaller than I wanted them to be) and painted them with chalk paint. [I'm still afraid of a hot glue gun because when I was in Germany I dropped a glob on my finger and had a wicked blister from it!]

Then I used this sparkly blue ribbon that I had and glued it around one half of the board. 

We're going to use the framed half as a message board, and the bottom half to put our mail!

 I used a Sharpie paint pen to write 'mail'- not chalk.

All I need to find now is a cute basket to attach to the bottom to hold the actual mail! I'll definitely keep you updated once I finish it :) I'm also thinking about writing 'leave a message...' at the top of the framed half!

So I'm pretty excited about that. I ended my night with a quick workout and a yummy smoothie! I guess it turned out to be a pretty good day :) The only thing that would've made it better would be if my handsome man would've finally gotten his orders! Still waiting to find out when he can come home...not knowing definitely makes it much harder. But I'm keeping my head up! 

my super cheap chalk ideas!

Okay so I've been on a crafting rampage these past couple weeks! I think I've been to Michaels at least ten times in the past two weeks! I've been making all kinds of fun stuff for my new apartment. My theme is coral and grey, so everything's revolving around those colors. Right now I'm obsessed with chalkboards! I love the look and I love the uniqueness and flexibility that decorating with a chalkboard presents. But buying a chalkboard (a  nice one) can be crazy expensive! I'm in love with the ones that are sold at Cost Plus, but I can't afford to spend $80 on a little chalkboard! My mission right  now is to find an old picture with a pretty frame, so I can paint the glass from the picture with chalkboard paint. You get the same look, for much less!

For now though, I decided to make a smaller chalkboard to hang on the wall in my apartment! I love the look, and the best part is that it hardly costs anything!

 So this is what I made! It was so easy! and it looks super cute too! :)

I started with a plain wooden frame from Michaels.  They have tons of designs and all different sizes and the best part.....they're all under $2! Here's what they look like before painting:

I had some left over wall paint in coral, so that's what I used to paint it. But you can use really any kind of paint! The wood is light, so it only takes a few coats and it dries very fast! My frame was 11x14 and I wasn't sure what I was going to put in the middle that I could cover with the chalkboard paint until I found these lightweight 11x14 foam boards at Michaels as well. The chalkboard paint I used is grey since that's one of the colors that I'm using to theme my room, but you can get pretty much any color. I used Rust-o-leum from Home Depot, and it was $13 for a quart of paint.  I just found out, however, they sell chalkboard spray paint! I think I need to take another trip to Home Depot! :) You can also try to make your own if you want to save some more money. 

Once I painted the foam board with the chalkboard paint I used a craft glue to stick it to the frame and voilà! I also recommend checking out this blog on tips for writing in chalk! It's amazing! 

And there you have it!