New dress a day for only $1.00

I enjoyed looking at the site"New Dress a day". Thought you may like it too. 

  Every day for 365 days Marisa Lynch takes a frumpy dress that she only pays $1.00 for at a flea markets, vintage stores, garage  sales and thrift shops and turns it into something she would wear in public. She was inspired by the movie Julie Julia. She can only spend $1.00 a day.

I like how the sweater turned out in this one.

The King and Queen

A Evening with wine and beer sitting by the pond.

We just sat out for 2 hours on our front porch  just enjoying the evening. How many evenings have passed by this summer and we did not take advantage of just enjoying our surroundings. We work so hard to have the home, landscape, ponds, flowers, etc... and how much time do we really enjoy the fruits of our labor.

  I had  a  glass of wine and my husband had his favorite beer , lit our favorite scented candles.  We just talked and enjoyed simple things like the pond with the fish and the flowers and plants around us.

The sounds of the last part of the warm Season. A nice cool breeze. We both had a very enjoyable evening.

Autumn decorating and a square pumpkin

With autumn just about here I thought you may like Manuela's decorating ideas . Please check out her website 

The Pleasure of homemaking for creative decorating ideas. 

She is so talented and inspiring.

      Some more great ideas from Manuela. A new season is just like a chance to start fresh and bring a new energy into the home.

You might also like:

Black & White Pumpkins Plus A Winner

It's Fall! (I hope!)

Welcome To Fall Decorating

Autumn Harvest

Autumn is almost here. Fall decorating ideas.

These are some decorating Pumpkin ideas one of  Manuela's fan Karen created. Please check out Manuela's  website 

The Pleasure of homemaking for more creative decorating ideas. 

Hi everyone! I wish I had more than one Susan Branch book to give away! But I don't...so the winner is........ KAREN @ Some Days Are Diamonds. Congratulations! I will be having another book give away next month (actually two books that I feel compliment each other).Thank you to everyone that entered! I'm slowly making my way to everyone that left a comment!

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You can grow a square pumpkin.

I feel that you can make pumpkins look however you want, whatever fits into your decor. Orange doesn't work for everyone! If your house is pastels you might want to just go with the white pumpkins. But you can also spray paint them any color you want. Pink, grey, purple, glitter them, rhinestone them - anything goes as far as I'm concerned! I painted a few red this year! Above are some things that I used to makeover some white pumpkins (some were orange originally and spray painted them white).

I made one polka dot pumpkin. It just makes me smile to look at it! I already had small colored dots leftover from when we had a garage sale and I just filled those in with a black sharpie. So very hi tech of me right!~smile. I also bought a package of Martha Stewart dots from Michaels and filled those in with a black sharpie too. You can cut circles out of black construction paper and glue them on a pumpkin if you don't have any of those sticky dots. All the photos will enlarge if you click on them.

This pumpkin topiary is made from one medium and one small pumpkin. The design on the front is from a rub on I found at Hobby Lobby. I made this one last year.

Aren't these cute! I love fleur's so when I found a little package of fleur stickers I knew I had to find a way to use them!

These two are my favorites! They're just stickers from the scrapbook aisle!

Go to the scrapbook section and have a look around. There are so many cute stickers you can use. There's no reason why you can't do a pumpkin with baseball stickers on it or a pink pumpkin with a ballerina on it. Use paint pens and do more than just draw a face - draw designs on it. Use your imagination and do what will work for your home!

You can paint real pumpkins but for the price of a real pumpkin I can get a faux one that will last forever. I bought two last year at the end of the season when they were very inexpensive. That's how I shop. This year for next year!

I hope I've given you some ideas! Have fun with your pumpkins! They're easy to work with (except when using a stencil-I find those hard to manipulate). Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great weekend!
 Thank you Manuela from
The Pleasure of homemaking

Frugal Funn

Frugal Funn

I have read the comments posted and responded as Mareolle. Please comment on your thoughts too.

Shop Talk

Business writer Doris Hajewski follows developments in the local retail industry

Milwaukee number one in coupon use

By Doris Hajewski of the Journal Sentinel

Aug. 26, 2010 |(27) Comments

Frugal Milwaukee maintains that reputation by ranking first in coupon use in the U.S., according to a new survey from Scarborough Research.
About 45% of households in the ten-county area clip or download coupons for groceries; 20% use them for non-grocery purchases. Nationally, 32% use grocery coupons every week; 13% use non-grocery coupons at least once a week.
Philadelphia ranks second in grocery coupon use, with 41% of households redeeming them at least once a week; Rochester is third with 40%, followed by Hartford/New Haven in Connecticut and the Harrisburg/Lancaster/Lebanon/York area in Pennsylvania.
Nationally and locally, coupon use has risen during this recession.

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