Mrs. McFrugal

So who wants to hear about my wedding and how I kept it on a tight budget? It's been almost a year now...so it's probably time to share the deets. The date we chose for our wedding was December 29th, 2012. (Yes, less than 4 months after the day we got engaged). We chose a date close to Christmas because we thought it might be easier, since the family was already planning on getting together in Tennessee for Christmas anyway--this would save them another trip to Tennessee later. Also, we suspected there might be another family wedding during the summer of 2013--and it turns out we were right! One of my cousins was married in Pittsburgh in August. First, let's get the setting...J and I picked the Belmont Mansion in Nashville for both our ceremony and reception. We had no connection to the university--we just thought it was a beautiful location, reasonably priced, and was available on the date we wanted. They even included tables, chairs, and table linens in the price. Plu

What do giraffes have to do with our basement renovation? Oh just wait...you're about to find out. Last time you saw our basement bedroom, this is what it looked like. We had a mixture of floral wallpaper and sponge painting. Also some pretty terrible carpet. Lovely, right? Needless to say, we could hardly wait to get in there and gut it. We started by ripping out the carpet, and then it was time to attack the wallpaper. After reading a bit about the best way to remove wallpaper, I decided to use the steam method. I have a portable steamer that is used for removing wrinkles from clothes, so I decided to give that a whirl. It worked very well! The wallpaper came off in 2 layers...1st the decorative paper layer, and then the adhesive layer. It was a timely process, but it did work very well. So now, to address the giraffe in the room...this is what we found underneath the wallpaper: Oh.my.goodness. Yes, it really was this hideous in person. No wonder someone wallpape