I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, crafter, and blogger living in rural New England. As seen in Martha Stewart Living, Food Network Magazine, and more! | Tutorials, DIY, crafts, parenting tips, recipes, money saving tips, product reviews, local product features, New England living, intentional living, and more! |
Our friends Seagate Studio have been very involved with the Travis Roy Foundation for years, and we're honored to donate a set of three Hand-Etched Birch Snowflake Ornaments for their upcoming Instagram Auction to benefit this very worthy cause.
“The Travis Roy Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to enhancing the life of spinal cord injury survivors and their families by providing special adaptive equipment grants and funding research.
It is an organization that is near and dear to my heart and one that I have been heavily involved with for over 10 years. Travis Roy (a native Mainer), is my husband’s cousin and also my close friend. In 1995, Travis was a highly recruited Division I hockey player starting his collegiate career at Boston University. Eleven seconds into his first shift of his first game playing for the BU Terriers, he slid head first, awkwardly into the boards, cracking his 4th and 5th vertebra and leaving him a quadriplegic. His story could have stopped right there, but instead he has dedicated his life to helping other spinal cord injury survivors and inspiring all who meet him through his motivational speaking career. He graduated from Boston University, taking just an extra year and started the Travis Roy Foundation while he was still a student. Since its inception, the TRF has raised over $9 million, consistently raising over $1 million per year in its most recent years.
The biggest fundraiser event for the TRF is not some glamorous gala that only the elite can afford to attend, but rather a summer back yard Wiffle Ball tournament that takes place every year up in rural Jericho, Vermont. This tournament which hosts over 24 teams from across New England is played on 3 fields that are modeled after major league ball parks and a field from a popular baseball movie, aptly named Little Wrigley, Little Fenway, and Little Field of Dreams. It is an incredibly moving and magical weekend and by far my favorite of the whole year. And THIS is what I am fundraising for.”
— Samantha from Seagate Studio
The Auction will take place on Seagate Studio's Instagram (@seagate.studio) from July 31st - August 3rd, 2017. Please check their feed frequently during this time and consider bidding on one of the many great items that have been donated.
If you would like to learn more about the Travis Roy Foundation or donate directly, please see their webpage HERE.
You might remember a previous post where I reused a repaired coffee mug as an herb planter in the kitchen. Well this year I decided to transform that mug one more time into a little bird feeder for a focal point in the flower garden.
Supplies & How-to:
The supply list really couldn't be more simple - all you need is a mug, bowl, or plate, a wooden dowel, a rubber cap, and some super glue! That's it!
I had my husband paint the wooden dowel with a couple coats of white outdoor paint first (normally I would have painted it, but the outdoor paint isn't recommended to be used by pregnant women). I wanted it painted to give a bit more of a finished look and to help make sure the dowel lasts longer outdoors.
Then with a little bit of Super Glue, I attached the rubber cap to the bottom of the ceramic mug.
By having the mug be removable from the dowel, you can easily pound the dowel sturdily into the ground with a small mallet or hammer then add the feeder once the dowel is in place. It also makes it easy to clean out the feeder regularly.
Since we've had bears frequent our neighborhood lately, I will just be filling the mug with water for now for birds and butterflies to drink from. Once the bears go into hibernation again I will be able to safely fill it with bird seed for our feathered friends.
Overall I'm happy with how this simple project came out - it adds the perfect touch to our flower bed!
Amazon Prime Day deals start tonight at 9PM! I'll be sharing some of my favorite deals here over on Facebook so stay tuned! Prime Day is a great time to get ahead on Christmas and birthday shopping and to finally get that something special for yourself too.
Not a Prime Member? Sign up for a FREE 30-day trial
HERE (affiliate link) and take advantage of all the sales over the next two days.
With baby #2 coming, we've been more mindful than ever about where our money is going and working hard to stay on-budget. By closely keeping track of everything we're getting a better idea on where everything is going and where we can shave off a few dollars. With only one income and a lot of expenses (both expected and unexpected) it can make it very challenging to stay on-budget each month. | This post contains affiliate links. |
Here I've shared a more simplified version of the spreadsheet we use (since we're self-employed we also need to set aside money for quarterly taxes and other expenses). You can change the Expense titles in the left hand column to fit your needs, but I've tried to include all the basic expenses that most young adults will have.
Next replace the monthly Income in the example with your own monthly income (I had to put in a number here as an example so the formulas wouldn't result in error). Then go down the Budget column and fill in what you expect or budget your bills to be. As your bills come in, put in these figures in the Actual Spent column. All of the percentages and totals will auto-update as you fill in the chart.
Over the course of the next few months, you'll see how your expectations (Budget) line up with reality (Actual Spent) and will be able to identify trends. Maybe you spend more for Gas than you thought you did.. or maybe you realize that you spend too much on Entertainment and should put some of that towards other bills...? Keeping track of where everything is going is very eye-opening and will help you stay ahead. The most important thing is writing everything down and sticking to it!
In the event the doing an Excel spreadsheet isn't your thing, there are also many great paper-based Budget Planners/Trackers you can buy out there! I haven't used it myself (yet), but I have heard great things in particular about this highly rated Budget Planner Notebook.
Amazon Prime Day has been announced for July 11th! | This post contains affiliate links |
If you're not a Prime Member yet, sign up now so you don't miss all the very best deals and perks. During Prime Day (which is actually 30 hours long), Amazon will be having super sales and flash deals on tons of items from every category.
Prime Day is a great time to get a jump start on Christmas shopping, buy presents ahead of upcoming birthdays, and to get a great deal on something you've been wanting for yourself too of course. Besides the amazing deals on Prime Day, your Prime Membership entitles you to FREE 2-day shipping on most items, a great selection of free streaming movies and tv shows, and more every single day of the year.
We've been Prime Members for years and take advantage of the free shipping and streaming tv constantly. Living out in the boonies, Amazon has really become a necessity for us. We especially love Prime Day because it gives us a chance to get a jump start on gifts for the rest of the year without having to make the long trek out to the Outlets and hunt around for a deal.
Our toddler loves flash cards... well, loves dumping them all over the living room mostly. After getting tired of constantly picking them up I decided it was time to do something about it.
After buying some $1 packs of flashcards from Target Dollar Spot (love Dollar Spot!), I punched a hole in each one and reinforced them with hole reinforcement stickers before stringing them together with binder rings. If you don't have binder rings, you could also use a piece of ribbon or string.
And that was it - easy-as-can-be! Now I don't have a couple hundred flashcards thrown all over the living room, and they're super-easy to pack for car trips and travel!
I've been saying for awhile that signs are coming to the Etsy shop, and by golly they will be!
It's been slow going, especially since I can't use most of the paints and stains I would like to right now (being pregnant limits what I'm allowed to use), but slowly over the summer I'll start releasing some limited New England-inspired signs with more to come later this fall after I recuperate.
"Hey, what happened to the "Handmade Goods" in your logo?" you may ask. Well, since the blog and my social accounts talk about more than just my crafts, I was worried the logo was a bit confusing especially to new followers. In addition to my crafts I often share about product reviews, DIY, mom topics, and New England lifestyle and wanted the logo to be more encompassing of those things too.
Don't worry folks, my Etsy shop will still use the original logo and is still going strong - lately I've been working on expanding what we will carry (but more on that later).
Just wanted to let you know that nothing about Birch Landing Home is changing - other than a small tweak to the logo on the blog/social accounts :) Thanks so much for following along!
