In an effort to challenge my contentment meter and stay within a budget,
I have $50 per month to spend on Decor & DIY projects for around the house.
On the first Tuesday of every month I'll show you how I spent it.
Here is the monthly break down for January...
Starting Balance = $30.37 (you can check out here to see what was spent in December.)
Income: January $50 + Starting Balance = $80.37 left to spend
In January I posted about a HUGE DIY project that we recently finished...our main level bathroom. I still have a hard time believing that this is the same bathroom!
While that was definitely considered a "DIY project" it wasn't exactly something that I could save up my monthly decor & DIY budget to pay for. It was a project that Sam and I thought long and hard about and decided to do it outside of this monthly budgeted money that I use. Since we always use cash we made a few big decisions that enabled us to do the project. 
In fact, in the coming weeks I'll be sharing exactly what we did to fund that bathroom. Sorry to keep you in suspense. ;-)
When it came to organizing the bathroom I was able to use supplies that I shopped around the house for. By using things like a serving tray that hardly got used I was able to create a new tray for cleaning supplies and didn't spend a penny!
I shared about our winter mantel which was filled with things around the house, a map I received for Christmas and a jumbo mason jar that I had recently purchased from World Market. I was intending to use the mason jar to store our homemade laundry detergent in, but since the container didn't work for that it became a "decoration." I paid $17.99 for it after using a 10% off coupon.
Finally, this month I shared how to create free custom art for your home. Seriously you have to try this...so many possibilities! I purchased a new frame from IKEA that was on sale for $7.99 to update a previous frame to match our bathroom.
My projects for February are in full force...the other day our living room was even turned into a temporary workshop so that we could cut some wood and install some fun new things for the kids. I can't wait to show you the end results!
Final Breakdown...
Beginning Balance $80.37 - ($25.98 January purchases) = $54.39
Have you been working on any projects this month?
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