Thursday, July 24, 2014

A Bipolar Mom and Her Daily Life! : DIY: Bachelorette Favor Bags!

A Bipolar Mom and Her Daily Life! : DIY: Bachelorette Favor Bags!: So when I was put in charge of my friends Bachelorette Party I do not take my job lightly. One of the things I wanted for the party we...

DIY: Bachelorette Favor Bags!



So when I was put in charge of my friends Bachelorette Party I do not take my job lightly. One of the things I wanted for the party were favors for the night! So I decided to make my own little gift baskets for my friends big night! Each gift basket I made cost about $5 dollars to make so they are very budget friendly but depending on your own budget and the items you decide to put in the basket will reflect the overall cost of each favor!

Here is how I made the favors for the Bachelorette Party!

The first thing you will need is to decide is the "basket" that will hold all the goodies. This does not have to be a basket it can be a bowel, cup, jar, bucket, wine glasses, and so on. Be creative almost anything can be used as a basket! I found these bowls at the Dollar Tree they are 4 for $1. I also decided to use the favor bags to help hold the goodies in because I had to haul these favors down to Florida. Now I keep tons of these on hand for bow packing but I also get these at the Dollar Tree in Party Section. They even sell them in them in clear but I liked these for the theme I was going for and had them on hand! You can also buy them at craft stores and party stores but they are more expensive and I cannot tell the difference so if you want more bang for your buck pick them up at the Dollar Tree. 
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The second thing you will need to do is decide is what to put into the "baskets"! Now this is where most of your budget will go. You will also need to decide what type of baskets you are making and what I mean by that is how "adult" themed you are going to make them. If you look up ideas or even look for bachelorette party items you basically can see what I mean by "adult" theme. I decided on my items based on who would likely be coming to the party and did not want to have to tailor the favors to guest. I knew because the first part of the bachelorette party there were going to be two teenagers from the bridal party, the mother of the bride, and none of us were huge drinkers that I did not want to make a  wine/bar themed gift basket. So I decided to go on a pink and spa like basket!!! 

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I was actually to get all of these items at Dollar Tree Store and the dollar sections of stores. Some of the items came in multiples in a package such as nail file, Tylenol, gum, tissue, and hand sanitizer. I do suggest when you are buying goodies for your favors that you buy all at one time to make sure you have enough for the favors. No I do not mean you have buy ALL the goodies for the favors at once if you are on a budget or looking for a specific item. What I mean by that is when you find one item for the basket is buy enough for the entire amount of favors you are making so you are not scrambling  to find matching or similar items. I found by making sure that I have all the same items for favors that you stay on budget.

The next thing you want to do is decide how you want to place things in the basket, if any items need to come out of its package, and if your basket needs filler. I did not take any pictures (sorry) for this part but I did add filler and took the nail polish out it package. 

I placed the bowl inside the favor bag first. I found this made it easier to place and position the goodies.

I then added filler to bowl. I bought two packages of pretty but pain my butt plastic shinny shreds. You can find them at Dollar Tree where I bought mine or you can purchase it party stores or craft stores. They all kinds of filler and if you decide to use one just find the one that will make your basket pop! 

Next add the items to your basket any which way you feel! 

If you used a favor bag or something that is holding everything together make sure it closed. I just simply twisted the favor bag and used the twist ties that came with favor bags. You know the dreaded bread ties! I then added curling ribbon as finishing touch! 

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A view of all the Gift Bags... Sorry on the Book Shelf again (you may actually notice this a lot)... They were going to Florida so there is no fancy table display and it keeps it away from little hands! 

Property of Bipolar Mom and Her Daily Life 

Property of Bipolar Mom and Her Daily Life 


HAVE FUN WITH IT!!! 





Wednesday, July 23, 2014

A Bipolar Mom and Her Daily Life! : Frugal Lifestyle Check In Number One... and Where ...

A Bipolar Mom and Her Daily Life! : Frugal Lifestyle Check In Number One... and Where ...: Well it has been just about two months since my family and I decided to start living a frugal lifestyle. Now I thought about checking in abo...

Frugal Lifestyle Check In Number One... and Where We Go Next

Well it has been just about two months since my family and I decided to start living a frugal lifestyle. Now I thought about checking in about my blog every month but I thought that would be redundant and not very useful of time because the reality of life is nothing happens on a perfect time schedule.

Well what do you do after you make such an announcement? Hubs and I had no idea really expect that we needed to start saving better. I heard the term frugal all the time and understand the concept but really had no idea had to put into action as sad as it sounds. So where did we go from there? Research of course!!! So I have been researching many ideas, theories, and ways in which to be frugal. I found some of these ideas to be interesting, common sense, and in some cases extreme. To say the least not all frugal ideas or lifestyle ideas are for everyone but there are enough ideas and concepts out there that anyone can find tips and areas to be frugal in.

However, with all the research we did put a couple of plans into action. One in which was the 52 week savings plan! This has been very successful and actually been very fun to do! We are currently on week 8 and having fun with saving! You can find out about the 52 weeks saving plan blog post here 52 Week Saving's Challenge .
Still sitting up on my book shelf and added Walter for protection! Picture belongs to A Bipolar Mom and Her Daily Life
We also started making plans on how we wanted to tackle this and really wanted to make an action plan. For example, Christopher realized where the one area that he wanted to explore and that was making bread vs buying bread. For our household we go through a lot of bread and making are own bread offered us a huge amount of savings on our grocery bill. That will be for another blog post.

So we decided each month to focus on applying new frugal tips and techniques to apply for our lifestyle. As I have stated before you must make small changes at a time to accomplish the larger goal in your life! Also my accomplishing the smaller goals you feel empowered to keep moving forward with the change! That is what has exactly happen for us. However, with all goals and challenges there are always high and lows and I think it is only fair that I discuss the high and lows so far that we faced with adjusting this lifestyle.

High: it was first f freeing to admit that we needed to make a change in our lifestyle! Employing some of these changes have been very neat and have been encouraging to move forward and that we are on the right path. The 52 weeks saving plan has been not fruitful but fun! We actually look forward to each Sunday for our deposit and joy when we put more than min deposit in!

Low: just as it was freeing to admit that we needed to make this change it as at the same time very scary for far we need to go to make the improvement we need. When you see this is it hard not to feel defeated and feel bad when you make a slip up (i.e. run through a drive through when you promised not to go out eat).

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: The next areas that we plan to really exploring into a new family budget, groceries, coupons, and cutting back.  We also plan on setting up no spending goals to lead up to are first no spend month!

You can find why we decided to live more frugal blog post here ( Frugal Lifestyle Announcement )