Happy 4th of July!

The best fireworks show I ever saw was the one that was put on 150 feet away, we could feel the ash raining down on us, but it was so worth it!

Foot-Five Deals 6-29-11

Caution: The deals and samples I am about to expose are shockingly frugal, the author of this post cannot be held responsible for shortness of breath, light-headedness or the syncope that will follow!

Today was a great day for deals! My #1 blog for authentic samples and deals has been MoneySavingMom! I  check the site almost daily for free samples and weekly deals.  Crystal, the author, is a young mom/wife who lives on a budget and whose values are closely aligned to my own. If you love saving money and haven’t checked her blog out yet, you should!

Staples was having a sale on Charmin (16 double rolls) for $4.99 (regular price 8.99). I used a 15% off coupon which brought the price down to $4.25! I was careful to print the ad along with the coupon in case the Staples didn’t have the Charmin marked $4.99 on the shelf!

Staples-stickies (post it notes) for $1 with coupon (regular price $5). I am so happy to found these at such a good price since my new job (I start on Friday) will require tedious amounts of paperwork and I’ll need several thousand sticky-notes to stay organized!

My final purchase at Staples was a container of 40 small binder clips for $1 with coupon (regular price $4.29).  I am excited to also put these to good use upon starting my new job. I even picked up the colored lot (blue, pink, green, and purple) instead of the boring plan ones (little things make me happy)!

I saved a total of $17 on these 3 items! Woohoo for savings!

Here are some of the samples/free items I recently acquired. 

All 3 suave products I got free with 3 free product coupons that suave sent me for playing a guessing game (salon or suave) about their products online! The Cottonelle wipes were also purchased with a free product coupon Cottonelle gave away to promote their new product.

Within the last week these are some of the items that were slipped into my mailbox.

The Osteo-bi-flex was a free 1 week sample (I love vitamins). Just yesterday I sat down and enjoyed looking through this Better Homes and Gardens magazine, bet you can’t guess why I enjoyed it so much. Ok maybe you can . . . yes, I got a free one year subscription! Oh’ and just to clarify I don’t get every magazine subscription that is free (like TV there are a lot of crap filled magazines) but I am a 

sucker for good home or fashion magazines!

Finally, you see that small coupon lying on top of the pile? It is something I was surprised yet excited to receive! One day about a month ago, when I had a day off, I waited nearly 2 hours for the release of Bounty’s $5 of coupons via Facebook! Since the coupon was said to release between a 2 hour time span I should not have been as shocked as I was to find out they waited until they had a bazillion more Facebook fans before they released the coupon (insert Bounty laughing at us saying. . . suckers)! Anyhow, when the coupon finally released I had trouble filling out the address form and submitting it due to the overwhelming traffic on their page! After several error messages I gave up and thought “I wouldn’t have minded the wait if I would have gotten a coupon!”  Alas my effort was not in vain for as I proudly hold this $5 off coupon I cannot help but think I have won this Facebook war against Bounty!

Can I get a Foot-Five for this weeks deals!!!!????

Frank Roop DIY floating Shelves/Boxes

I was searching for a good bookshelf option for our office and I knew I had to build something like it when I found this picture of Frank Roop's shelves.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I loved the illusion they gave of not having any support!

Time to start the DIY!

Jon taught me how to use the table saw and after cutting, gluing, screwing and nailing the 6 boxes were ready to paint!

I set up a little workshop in our unfurnished/un-finished guest bedroom and primed with some drywall paint then put 3 coats of Behr Ultra Pure White Premium Plus, Hi-gloss enamel interior/exterior paint.

 I was a little disappointed with the Behr paint because after 3 coats and drying for over 5 weeks they still felt sticky.  I had to touch up once after setting the shelves on a stack of papers and have ink from a brochure come off on the shelf that had been drying for weeks!! I contacted Behr and they told me they would refund my money but that I should try and wipe them down with soap and water. I did what they suggested but it didn’t decrease the stickiness (sad face). I thought I would have to recoat them with something else like a polyacrylic but Jon suggested we test to see if simply putting objects on the shelves caused any damage. So far no ink has come off on the shelves so we decided that as long as the books were not lying down in huge stacks we should be okay!

In order to hide they way the boxes are supported on the wall we purchased some luan and painted it the same color as the office walls (when I say we here I mean my husband Jon).

We even added some laquer to each one to give is more of a shine but really, you can’t even tell we did that. I wanted to have the acrylic glossy look like Frank Roop but with acrylic costing close to $100 bucks a sheet it was defiantly out of the running. O’ well we got as close to Frank Roop’s look as we could!

Here are some pictures of the hanging process. Sorry for the messy desk and window sill!

After measuring and leveling each box was hung by the 1x2’s into 2 studs each.

We then took the painted luan and attached it to the 1x2’s with brad nails (now you can't see how they are mounted)! Here is the finished product!

 So the luan didn’t fit as perfectly into the boxes as I had hoped but the boxes weren’t perfect either. I loved how they looked regardless of the flaws so away Jon and I flew to pull out our box of books and start shelving! 

Jon and I love books and we are so happy to finally have shelves to put them on!