Pinspiring Friday!

     I have two projects to show off today. The first is a project I found on Pinterest before Christmas and wanted to make. It's a commemorative plate for Christmas decorated with a baby's feet or hands. Tim and I found a place in Spokane where we could paint our own pottery so we went there a few weekends before Christmas to make plates for Owen's first Christmas. We also had dinner with Tim's aunt and uncle who live in Spokane while we were up there. They were also nice enough to go pick up our finished plates a week later for us and we got them when we were up there in Spokane to fly out of the airport there when we went to Georgia. 
   Here is our inspiration for the plates. 

     These are the ones that we made. It was actually pretty difficult because you have to paint several coats of the paint to get it to be the bright color so it took a long time. And trying to entertain Owen while also painting was hard. Overall though, it was fun and we had a great time.

Each plate started with some cute baby footprints.

My husband is surprisingly artistic.

Owen hung out in his stroller and generally acted cute for all the passers by.

We made a Christmas tree out of Owen's feet and then I decided to add some Christmas lights around the rim of the plate. 

Tim did a lot of this plate himself, including the super pretty puffy paint snowflakes.

I love the raised texture.

I think they turned out really great!

    The other project that we did was to create a bill paying binder and a budget binder. I am also toying with the idea of making one of those home management binders and have found several ideas on Pinterest for those, including some great free printables to contain the information.
    Anyway, Tim and I didn't really make New Year's resolutions this year, but we did figure that January 1st was a great day to start working on taking charge of our finances and being more organized with paying our bills and sticking to a budget. And after having to buy a new washer and dryer recently, money is going to be a little tighter for a while. It is just me or does stuff always have to break in January right after the holidays? 
     Anyway, when I was visiting my mom last month, I noticed that she had a new bill paying folder and I thought it would be a great idea for us to use. So I looked on Pinterest and found a few different ideas for inspiration and then took a little from one and a little from another to make one that will hopefully work for us.

     Anyway, here is some of the inspiration that I found on Pinterest for billpaying notebooks.

This idea on Pinterest was the closest to what we ended up doing for our bill paying notebook.

    And here are our completed notebooks. One is just for billpaying and the other is for keeping track of our receipts and budget. I may combine the two at some point, but I'm not sure. 

This binder has our receipts and our budget. We haven't filled out our budget yet because we are going to wait and check our receipts to see how much we spend on certain things and then adjust our budget based on areas where we could spend a little less. We'll start trying to stick to a budget in February.

This is our bill-paying notebook. In the front I included a pencil pouch with a calculator, black and red pens, and a pencil.

The first page has our bills listed down the side and a chart so we can check them off as we pay them each month.

The notebook is divided by month, not by the type of bill because we thought that would work best for us. Then the first page under each month is a calendar where I fill in the days our bills are due and pay days (yay!).

A plastic page protector holds the bills that we haven't paid yet. And behind it, once we've paid the bills, I take them out of the envelope and punch holes in them and put them in the binder for future reference.

    And there you have it! Next week I will have pictures of a project that I am doing to store all of the cards we got from Owen's baby shower and right after he was born. I'm really excited about it. And if it turns out good, I will probably do the same for all of our wedding cards. And just for fun, here is a cute picture of Owen that I took last night. He has started pulling up on everything. So last night when I was unloading the dishwasher, I turned around to find that I had a little helper.

Here Mom, let me give you a hand with those dishes.

And then he tried to eat them. P.S. David and Katie, these are the pajamas that you bought him before he was born. They are sized 0-3 months, but they still fit! Go Dawgs!