I grew tired of the curtains we’ve had up for a while. I really wanted striped curtains for so long but every time I found them, they were ridiculously expensive. We bought merete curtains from IKEA and decided to get over my fear and paint them. I’ve seen so many pictures on Pinterest of people painting their curtains so I figured what could go wrong? It’s $24.99 if I mess up.

I came across a blogger who did this and I really liked the size of her stripes so I decided to follow her measurements. I forgot the grey color we chose from Home Depot but we used flat paint.

This turned out to be an evening project of taping, painting and doing touch ups. We decided to hang the rod up higher with the new curtains.

I love how they look now! So much better and I love how cheap this project was. There’s no way I was going to spend $200+ on striped curtains from Crate & Barrel.

I’m sooo good at keeping up with my blog, right? It’s been a long month for both Tyler and I.

At the beginning of February, Tyler was laid off from work. I took the news harder than he did. Tyler’s a happy boy and will always think positive regarding the situation he’s in which is why I had to do all the worrying! I started freaking out and lost my appetite to spend money on food and everything else. Tyler asked me not to tell anyone about him being laid off

We immediately went over our finances and worked on a new budget that same day he got laid off. We were so fortunate that he was able to receive another paycheck for his unused vacation days. Also it helped that I have an extra income with Yellow & Savvy Design. But I hated feeling totally responsible for both of us, our animals, our home and everything that we own.

Tyler started applying for jobs every day and after a few days he had interviews lined up. He was trying to go in a different direction since he was in the pest control industry before and no longer wanted to do that. There was a veterinary compounding pharmacy only minutes away from our house that Tyler applied to before he got laid off. He had an interview and it went well. He didn’t hear back in a few days so he kept following up by calling and going back to the office. After a while, the supervisor told him that they couldn’t hire until next month since they were expanding their offices. Tyler wasn’t going to give up so 3 weeks later- he went back in the office with donuts this time. The supervisor finally called Tyler back that same day and thanked him for bringing in donuts and that he really admired his motivation for wanting to work there. He finally hired him! So yeah, we think the donuts got him the job. ;)

We are really grateful for this new job since the schedule is better and he has the weekends off now finally. Plus I get to see my man in scrubs!

We learned a lot through this experience and why having savings is really important because we didn’t have money saved for this kind of situation we were in. With our new budget, we were saving A LOT of money. I couldn’t believe it….we were always overspending on everything before. It’s stupid. Now we know better and will continue to stick to our new budget now that Tyler is working again.

Finally my new office / girl cave is done! I decided to go with a really light blue/green-ish color (sorry, I cannot remember the name! We used up the whole can so we don’t have it anymore) since the office is small and I wanted to keep it bright & fresh.

Check out the mustache on the wall! We bought scrap of wood from Home Depot and printed a silhouette of a mustache and taped it on so the mustache part would still remain unpainted. A friend of mine didn’t want the mirror anymore so she gave it to me. I was more than happy to use it for the office!

We put two lack tables together which we were inspired by Young House Love’s new book!
I also bought a new Alex drawer unit with 9 drawers from IKEA for all of my supplies.

Expedit shelf from IKEA & the white chalkboard frame was purchased from the vintage market here in Phoenix a few months ago.

Life is a Beautiful Ride poster from Etsy.

Moose & owl hooks from the vintage market. Aren’t these cute?!

I was inspired by Made By Girl’s paintings and decided to do paint over an old canvas.
It’s not perfect but who cares, it looks great in the office!