Easy $11 Halloween decorations

Today I wanted to share I how frugally transformed the interior of our home for Halloween for under $11.

Supplies :

Party City- spider web vinyl window cutouts $1
Dollartree- plastic skull, plastic spider, happy halloween banner $3
Amazon: black construction paper $1.50, black rat cut outs $5.50 (when I bought it was $5.50. price has gone up)

Here is our home after the $11 decorations. 

I hope by sharing this post, parents can feel motivated to decorate their homes and not have to spend a fortune.  Its nothing fancy, very simple but still very fun for the kids.

Media console makeover

Finally after staying at our home for close to three years, I've tackled our most used space in our home, the living room. For some odd reason, I decorate the least used space first and always leave our living room last. Our last home, the living room was one of the last places I decorated before selling it. Today I wanted to share a $200 makeover in our living room. I bought a $35 used dresser on offerup and refinished it with some left over paint in our garage.

Then, I headed to home depot to gather $80 worth of other supplies which included a tv mount and in wall cord management system. I've hung our TV using various mounting systems before but hands down this basic tv mount is the best. It is basic so no special swivel abilities like the costco ones but I give it five stars. I don't think I need my tv to do somersaults. I just need to it look clean, wire free, and hung nicely on the wall. They make it so easy to install. I screwed them directly onto our studs. I believe the kit only comes with screws for wood and brick walls so be prepared to look for studs if you plan to use their screws.

After everything was hung and I hid all the wires behind the wall I headed to walmart to grab and IR extender. I hate the look of exposed wires and cable boxes etc. This device lets you hide all your devices in the drawer. Instructions are pretty straight forward and took me about five minutes to connect to our devices. 

Here are some before and after pictures of our media console area in the living room. 

Simple DIY solar shed lights

Today I wanted to share how I spent $30 to create lighting for our Arrow shed we just assembled.

I ordered two solar lights from Amazon for $25 (Aootek 48 LED solar lights) and headed to Homedepot for $5 worth of scrap wood. I forgot what the size was for the bigger piece but the thinner pieces were 1x2x8 ($1 each). I really like the solar lights because they have three different settings. I use setting B which is on dim at night but when you come close it brightens up. I love that they are solar so I don't have to run any electrical wiring. 

I painted them black with some old exterior black paint I had laying in my garage and chopped them into pieces with my saw. 

I spent about 5 minutes each light to staple them together. I just thought of the design in my head and just improvised as I went. 

First I stapled two boxes. 

I added four shorter pieces and assembled them into a box. 

I added one more thin piece of scrap wood and one thick piece of wood for aesthetics. 

Second coat of black paint went on. The wall light is not perfect but its good enough for me. I didn't want the shed to look so plain in our backyard. 

Finally add the solar light with screws and screw it onto the wall. 

Here they are with our new Arrow shed I just finished assembling on Wednesday. We also added a nice step at the door with some home depot concrete pavers. ($8 total). I used some left over bricks for the bottom and laid the bigger pavers on top. Today I stopped by Costco and picked up two lavender bushes for $12 each. They smell so good and I can't wait to start landscaping my back yard. 

Here is a breakdown for cost of shed project. 

Arrow shed from Lowes with 10% coupon $320

Two DIY solar lights $30

Base/gravel/concrete $70

Two lavender bushes from Costco $24

Pavers $8

Total: $452

Cost for total project was pretty high but a great investment. The shed not only adds storage space but also nice lighting to our otherwise dark yard. We have a pretty big size lot, about 13,000 square feet so free solar lights is a win in my books. Another great feature is less grass to maintain and water. Along that wall I plan to add drought tolerant plants and succulents so it will further help with reducing water costs. It doesn't seem like much savings in water but we have a pool and our water bill always seems high so every little helps. 

Stay tune for more budget friendly backyard projects. I plan on building a built in bbq, diy pavers for our whole backyard, redo our front yard, and new landscaping. 

*** Update: landscaped shed with some left over bricks from previous project and two new fruit trees from Costco. 

Untraditional base for shed

I'm back today to write a post about building a cheap base/foundation for a metal shed. My initial instinct was to pour a small concrete pad but after much debate I figured out a much cheaper alternative. Having a professional pour a small concrete pad would have ran us $600-800. Our shed is going to be 10x8. We purchased the shed for $320 at Lowes with a 10% off coupon. Its called Arrow galvanized steel shed for those who are interested. Its a great price for that size. 

Our previous contractor left two huge beams at our house because he ordered the wrong ones. For the longest time, I didn't know what to do with the beams. They were too big to cut down and throw away and it seemed like such a waste for such good quality beams. We ended up using them as our frame for the base. We split one beam in half lengthwise since we were missing one side. 

I understand not everyone will have huge beams laying around like us but you can easily purchase pressure treated lumber.  It will cost about $20 per a 4x4 12 footer. 

Next instead of using all gravel to fill up the base we used what we had laying around in our yard. When we built our rental addition and sunroom, the contractors pulled up so many red bricks that were used as boarders around the yard. The contractors charged to haul them away so I said leave it in my yard. We will deal with them at a later time. They sat in a pile in our yard until yesterday. 

We put all the bricks inside the frame we built for the base and headed to homedepot for some gravel.  We ended up buying only two bags of gravel for $60. While we were waiting for them to load the gravel my dad noticed some cement mix marked down for 75% off due to exposure to water and some ripped bags. We picked them all up for about $10 and headed home. We used the wheelbarrow to move all the gravel and cement to the back and inside the frame. We sprayed some water on top for the cement to mix and called it a night. We spent about 4 hours total building the frame and hauling gravel to the back. 

The next morning everything was dried and top layer cemented. I don't know if the cement would last but I used some left over garage flooring from my previous project and lined it on top. Having a solid concrete base would have been great and lasted forever but honestly, our shed is only $300. I really didn't want to spend alot of money on the base. The base we built might break down in 10-15 years but i'll still be happy I got my money's worth. 

Total spent for the base of the shed : $70. I am happy that I was able to recycle what I had laying around, cleaned up our yard and saved money at the same time. Without the bricks, I would need 4 tons of gravel to fill up the frame. I'll be building the shed by myself the next few days if it doesn't rain. I can't wait to finish it and started adding flower beds and decorations to our yard. Our yard has been severely neglected ever since we bought  the home.