Thrifty Tips- Cleaning House

Oh housecleaning. While we wish we could just call a cleaning service or have a robot-maid ala The Jetsons, it's just not in the cards at Tiny Wallet Headquarters. So, we're doing the dirty work all by our lonesome.

The problem is, I'm slightly addicted to cleaning products (I blame my mom- hi Mom!). I buy anything with a brightly colored label that promises to make my job as easy as possible. Now, I know it's all marketing, but I'm a sucker. So, one of my new year's resolutions last year was to green our clean. Cut out the chemically heavy (and expensive!!!) cleaning products and figure out how to do it ourselves to save some bucks and live more green! Here's how our little experiment went down in 2010.

Tiny Holidays: Cheapy Cheap Gift Wrapping

Howdy! We have just returned from the Arctic Tundra known as central Maine. We celebrated Christmas a little early with Mike's extended family in their beautiful home (hi Keefs!!) and then stayed the night in the gorgeous lake house of his second-cousin (hi Martha and Ron!). Anyway, we did quite a bit of gift giving and we thought we would share some of our favorite cost-effective gift wrapping ideas that deliver a big WOW for a little dough.

Add lots of texture for a big impact! Here we used some raffia, a little leftover 1-inch wide ribbon and a strip of kraft paper to create visual and textural impact. And guess what? Our gift was picked first for the Yankee swap! So there! Guess what we gave?

A cute coffee mug, a pound of java and some homemade snickerdoodles! Definitely a crowd pleaser, and less than $10! We found the mug at Marshall's for $3.99!

The family tradition at this particular party is to bring a little stocking stuffer for all of the kids. This is a tall order for a couple on a budget, so we tried to come up with bargain gifts that the kids would still love. For the little guys, we gave them a set of crayons and markers wrapped up in a plastic treat bag from the baking aisle at A.C. Moore. We jazzed it up with a bit of raffia and a homemade gift tag!



The 7-year old girl cousins got some sweet little nail polishes and a girly Hello Kitty notebook, both from the dollar section at Target. They older boy cousins got a puzzle and an art project. For gifts for 6 kiddos, we spent under $10!

Speaking of  homemade gift tags...

Did you check out Mike's post about making custom gift wrap?? Cheapy cheap and SO cute!

We made these geometric gift tags with leftover cardboard cut into a 2"x2" square topped with a colorful circle made with our 1" circle punch. Easy and fun!

Here are some fun gift wrapping ideas that we've seen round the Interwebs:

Sweet and unexpected wrapping ideas from Real Simple. Love this peacock feather!

Sweet wine labels from Better Homes and Gardens. If you follow the link, there is a how-to! This could really jazz up a bottle of wine for gift giving!

Super cute and FREE downloadable gift tags from Design*Sponge! These would look so cute with plain, brown kraft paper. Make sure you check out Julia Rothman, the artist's, website!

Let us know your favorite inexpensive ways to jazz up a Christmas gift in the comments!!!!

Tiny Holidays: Typographical Wrapping

So I was browsing around ManMade when I spotted a great and cheap way to wrap and personalize holiday gifts. Using simple mailing paper and a page from any old book, you end up with an extremely simple but amazing wrapping for any present. Here is the tinywalletstyle method of making Typographical Gift Wrap

Tiny Holidays: Repurpose What You Have!

Howdy from the holiday decorating department here at Tiny Wallet Style. We l-o-v-e decorating for Christmas, so much so that Mike has to implement arbitrary rules as to when the decorating can commence. If these rules are not in effect, Ally might just bust out the Christmas boxes mid-summer.

Tiny Holidays: Turkey Day Decor

We did some last-minute crafting in preparation for our Thanksgiving dinner with Mike's family. I thought since we are not eating at home, we could make a few fall-ish crafts that would inject our personality into the meal. Also- I really wanted to make a banner, so I did! This could be easily adapted to any holiday/occasion with different papers, and it cost just a few cents to make! We bought the scrap booking paper on sale at A.C. Moore, and we had the white card stock, so it was really cheapy cheap.

First up, a Thanksgiving banner reminding us to Give Thanks for our many blessings. I look forward to hanging this up again next fall in our own home.

We started with some cardstock (we used size A2 flat cards from Papersource which measure approximately 4"x5"). I cut down some scrap book paper in a fun, sunny yellow pattern to size with scallop scissors. Note- I didn't measure at all for this project. If your banner is a little lopsided I promise you that the world will not end as a result. Glue to backing card stock- we use a glue stick and it works fine.

Tiny Re-Do: Operation Awesome

Here is a story of transformation.  It is the story of how our old (ugly) bookshelves and coffee table, became our new TV Bench with storage.

Shall we begin.

It all started with this

How-To: Spices, Spices Everywhere

At the grocery store, I bought a new container of cinnamon. I came home, attempted to put the cinnamon into the drawer where we keep our spices and was greeted with...this:

How-to: Cover An Unsightly Something or Another

The apartment that we call home has lots of...quirks. Perhaps the quirkiest of these quirks is our air-conditioner opening built so thoughtfully right into our bedroom wall. Great idea, bad execution. Other than the fact that we don't even use an air conditioner, there are three main problems with this:

The Goods- Festive Fall Decor

So Mike didn't really want his birthday celebration to scream "birthday" and nixed the usual streamers and balloons. Instead, we went with a festive fall upgrade to our dinner table which usually looks like this:



(To be fair- this was  right after we got home from grocery shopping! It doesn't usually look this terrifyingly disorganized.)

With a few cheapy cheapy additions, it ended up looking like this:

A Tiny History

A little history lesson about us here at Tiny Wallet Style!

We are renters who are so close to owning their own home (but thanks to the cautionary tale that was the 2008-present economy, we are entering the housing market armed with research and a sound budget). Renting means that we have very little power to change our digs- sticking us with dropped ceilings, lots of linoleum and....sponge painting! (Did I just hear someone faint?)