Another Guest Bathroom: Guest Amenities

I hope you all enjoyed the reveal of E's guest bathroom earlier in the week!  It's just in the nick of time, too, because UGA football season (starting today!!) brings all sorts of guests to E's house.  She pretty much has a revolving door every fall (we also run our own bed and breakfast during football season).  :-)  With that in mind, we worked some guest amenities into E's guest bathroom.

Psst... in case you're curious, the font I used is "Channel" on PicMonkey.

The 12th of July

...or, if I had posted this when I intended, the 4th of July!  I thought I'd share our Independence Day decorations in case you're looking for future inspiration.  I actually plan to keep these up for most of the summer since I'm enjoying them so much.  The only money I spent on any of this decor was $2.50 for the little flags (which we intended to take to our local fireworks but forgot at home!).  Other than that, I didn't spend a dime on this project.  I just walked around the house collecting anything that fit the look I was going for.  In this case:  red, white, and blue.

First up, our cookout table setting.  We had a few folks over to eat brats (totally un-American, I know), corn on the cob, and apple pie (definitely American), among other tasty things. 

Stuff We've Tried

I had hoped to have a final post about the guest bathroom up today, but life got busy.  So instead, I thought I'd start a new series of posts about things we've tried from around the interwebs.  Enjoy!

We're on a pretty tight budget around our house, so I love to find cheap recipes that are easy and tasty.  These three things don't always happen together, so it takes some searching to get good recipes.

Fancy Ramen Noodles.  I read about these noodles from Ashley and Greg over at 7th House on the Left (recipe here), and we quickly got addicted.  The recipe takes barely any ingredients, and we usually have all of them on hand.  The perfect combination!  I usually double the recipe and use less Sriracha sauce (aka "rooster sauce" around here) than suggested.  Maybe we're just pansies.  I pinned this recipe here.

Source: 7thhouseontheleft.com via Mrs. Great on Pinterest

Lusting over our Reclaimed Barnwood Table

As you saw in this post, we went from a pile of old barn lumber to a beautiful table, effectively replacing this awkward four-seater...

...with this eight- (even ten if we try hard enough) top.  It's amazing how an appropriately-sized table makes the dining room feel bigger.

Our Reclaimed Barnwood Table

As I talked about during the dining room stop of the house tour, I've been dreaming of a bigger dining room table for years now.  Our first table only held four people, and we regularly have six people over for dinner. We all had to smoosh together around a too-small table, and our food had to be set up buffet-style on the kitchen counters, which then left no room to cook anything...  And God forbid we want to invite more than six people over to eat, because then we'd probably be better off eating on the floor.  It was about time we changed that.

So for Christmas, Mr. Great Indoors built me my very own beautiful table.  Of course, I took plenty of pictures through the process and thought I'd share them in two separate posts:  one dedicated to the building of our beautiful table and one just for all the tasty pictures.  Mmmmm.

I'm choosing not to call this one a "do it yourself" project because we had specialized furniture equipment at our disposal.  Mr. GI's family owns a furniture store, and they also have a shop full of equipment for manufacturing their own pieces.  They were kind enough to let us use their lumber and tools for a few days.  You could certainly do a good portion with your own sander, table saw, etc., but it would probably take longer than the three days Mr. GI took to build ours.

DIY Week: Fall Bunting

I was itching to make something festive that would last the entire fall season.  I've seen so many fun buntings around the interwebs recently.  The one that got my attention first, of course, was from Young House Love's bunting for Clara's first birthday.  (Hilarious post title, by the way, and one of my favorite "okay, we're human, too" posts from YHL.)

My only stipulation for this craft was that I couldn't spend a dime on it.  I knew I wanted it to be fall-colored, so I set out in search of fall colored fabrics already in the house.  I ended up with a t-shirt of mine (purple), two old t-shirts of Mr. Great Indoor's (tan and orange), and a few pieces of fabric my mom gave me a while ago (red and yellow).  And the strip at the top was canvas used for the camp bags I'm posting about tomorrow.  Forgive the flash, but it was the only way to capture the true-to-life colors of the fabrics.

DIY Week: A (Basically) Free Wine Rack

Mr. Great Indoors built us a wine rack within a month of moving into the house.  He didn't have a lot of tools at that point, so he didn't build it to be very complicated. Here's a picture of the old rack from the day of our housewarming party a few years ago.  Boy, don't things look different!  Unpainted cabinets, old sliding glass door, old dishwasher... we don't really miss any of those things these days.

Hosting an Awesome Party

We entertain on a regular basis by rotating weekly dinners with a group of close friends.  But there's nothing like having a party, and you can pick whatever occasion you like.  We've had two housewarming parties (one at our current house, and one at our old apartment), a New Year's celebration, an engagement party, a bridal shower, a few birthday parties, a fish fry, and even a pumpkin carving party.  And trust me when I say we'll be throwing many more parties in our lives.  So here are a few of my tips for throwing a good one.

Invite some people!
I've tried a few different forms of inviting, and I've found that the handiest is Evite.  Such cute invitations and incredibly customizable.  You can have people RSVP online (either by sending them an email or a Facebook message) and even sign up to bring things!

One of my favorite Evite invitations.  You can find the template here.