Winner winner chicken dinner! The concert ticket winners are...

Congrats to #14 LESLIE JENSEN and #2 STEPHANIE PARTRIDGE for winning the Eclipse Singers concert ticket giveaway! I will email you the information. Thanks for entering the quick giveaway, enjoy the show! -Jordan Thanks to random.org for choosing our winners.

Summer Giveaway! Win tickets to a concert for THIS Saturday. Better hurry and enter!

I'm super excited for this giveaway!

My friends over at Eclipse Singers decided they wanted to treat a few of my lovely readers to some FREE tickets to their concert, coming up this Saturday (July 21) in Sandy, UT. See below for details!

Eclipse @ Sandy Amphitheater THIS Saturday (July 21) @ 8pm 

 The acappella group Eclipse has a show this Saturday, July 21st, at the Sandy Amphitheater in Sandy, UT. You may have seen them on YouTube, but Eclipse continues to perform around the world, enjoying their 10th anniversary since performing in the 2002 Olympic Opening and Closing ceremonies. With two recent album releases, "It's Christmas Time" in December and "Got It Covered" in June of this year, Eclipse has new trending pop hits to debut live for the first time. 
Tickets are available HERE.


If you haven't heard of Eclipse, check out a music video or two HERE:  

It's amazing what they do with just their voices. Six guys, Six mics, Summer night, Something not to miss! 

I don't know about you, but I am SUPER excited for their concert. They are so talented! (and not bad on the eyes either, eh?). The best part is that it's good entertainment for adults, but it's also family-friendly for the kids. Basically a win-win, especially for the summer time!

To enter:
(Each option is good for ONE entry. Feel free to complete as many options as you'd like, total of 4 possibly entries available. Please leave a comment for each entry you complete. Winner will be drawn on Friday, tomorrow! Better hurry and enter!)


1. LIKE Eclipse Singers on Facebook
2. Leave a comment on one of their Youtube videos
3. LIKE FCF on Facebook
4. PIN something from FCF to Pinterest. HERE is a good page with lots of options.

TWO winners will be drawn. Each winner will receive TWO general admission tickets. Talk about a great date night!

Remember, the concert is THIS Saturday! The good news? It's a Utah-specific contest and it's only running for 24 hours....so let me give you a hint...your odds of winning are REALLY GOOD! :)

Good luck! May the force be with you.
Jordan

FCF needs a makeover! Anyone interested?

Ok folks...
I've been ignoring a BLARING fact for a while now...

My.

Site.

Is.

Ugly.

I'm more of a CONTENT girl than a FRILLS girl, so I've really had little motivation to take the time to clean up my site and make it cute.

So I need help!

source

I'm offering an opportunity for one of you (or maybe someone you know?) to potentially redesign my site! This is an amazing portfolio-builder. I get nearly 1/2 a million hits a month (and growing), and have no doubt that this would be a great opportunity for you blogger design gurus!

SO...if interested:

Email me (funcheaporfree at gmail dot com) and let's talk! 

I will be taking design ideas for a few weeks then will choose my new designer. You will get featured on the site and introduced as my new designer, will get permanent advertising, and will get opportunities to get your name thrust head-first out into the digital world.

So email me, and I'm excited to talk to you!

-Jordan

Have you missed me lately?

In case you haven't noticed, I've been a bit MIA lately. There are a few reasons for that...

My boot camp (which was a blast!),

a big social media conference I went to,

my son's near-fatal accident (inspired me to kick the computer habit for a bit),

sick kids,

vacations,

friends in town,

family in town,

family reunions,

parties and get-togethers,

holidays and fun outings,

and simply the fact that it's summer and I would rather play outside!

Oh yeah, and not to mention that I'm newly pregnant (yay!) and sick as a dog (boo).

So, please bear with me. I'm not leaving you. 

(I promise)

I'm just on a little mini summer sabbatical, if you will :)

source

I will still pop in occasionally with new posts and tips, and they will be the best of the best since I'm being choosy this summer! 

While I am enjoying the good weather and time with family, I can only hope that you do the same! In the meantime, have fun going back through old posts. Click HERE some of my most popular posts.

I have a lot of exciting things in store for when I come back full-time at the end of the summer so stay tuned!...you won't want to miss it :)

Love you all,

-Jordan

DIY project: Framed Guitars

I've been dabbling in a few random projects here and there over the last 6 months or so, but I haven't taken the time to post about them! Shame on me.

It's time to catch up!

This project I'm particularly excited to share with you. Now, if you remember...
1) I am NOT crafty, and borderline hate crafty things.
2) I'm cheap, house-poor, and can't really spend much on my home decor.
3) My husband...bless his little heart...is about the least handy person on the planet, nor does he desire to be. He has many talents, but building/fixing things is not one of them.

That being said...

If I can do this, YOU can do this.

I promise.

Here you go!

DIY Framed Guitar

We moved to a new home in Dec (a short sale that needed a bit of TLC). My husband plays guitar and I play piano. He always hated that we never played our instruments in our town home, and he attributed it to the fact that all our instruments were tucked away in closets and the garage. He said that he really wanted to display our instruments in our new house so we would be more inclined to pick them up and play them.

I didn't want a bunch of guitars lying around, so we came up with this idea! It's super easy.

We went to Home Depot and bought some moulding. It's SUPER cheap, like $0.55/ft or something like that. We wanted it to look like the moulding that was already on the walls in our room:

We pre-measured our squares and cut it right there at Home Depot. Unfortunately they didn't have the angled saw we needed so we actually had to saw each piece by hand. UGH. Oh well, it wasn't too bad luckily.  

We painted the wood. Even though it was already white, it needed a new coat. A few strokes with a brush and they were good to go. We had them dry in the garage.

Once dried, we created a mock-up of the squares on the floor to make sure they would align properly once on the wall.

My husband used his measuring tape and level to make sure they were straight and properly lined up on the wall before nailing them down. We used a pencil to mark where they needed to go.

We used tiny finishing nails to nail them down. A few nails later, voila!

We ordered some cheap but sturdy guitar hooks online and hung our babies. We could instantly see that it didn't look right, it needed something. 

I went to Deseret Industries (our local thrift store chain) and tried to find some sheet music. I couldn't find what I wanted and almost gave up...then I noticed these babies:

A whole set of OLD sheet music books. They couldn't have been more perfect! I bought two books at $3 each and took them home.

How cool are these books?!

As my husband and I started tearing out pages he said, "wow, these pages feel REALLY old." We searched through the books to find a copyright date...and found one.

1918? Are you kidding me? We were tearing pages out of a book that is almost 100 years old. 

Oops.

We chose a handful of our favorite ornate, unique, and artistic music. We weren't sure how to stick it to the wall. I almost ran to Michaels and bought something, then my husband found this in a random pile of stuff the previous owners left behind:

bingo.

We started spraying and sticking. 

Before long, it was finished...and we couldn't be happier with the results!

It's been a few months, and we now are wondering if we need to mod-podge the music. Some of the corners have started to un-stick because of the wind (we leave our windows and doors open A LOT). 

Our room is ALMOST complete. We need curtains, a piano bench, and a bold rug. There are a lot of neutrals so I want a rug that POPS. However, we are out of money for this room so we will have to wait until we build up our "decorating fund" again.

The "fireplace" is actually a space heater surrounded by a solid wood mantel. We bought it from Costco about 5 years ago for around $500. It looks real, and heats up a room really well. We used it nearly every day in the winter in our town home, and think it really adds some depth to this room.

The mirror was $30 from Ross. The vase and silk willows were a set from Costco, $7 I believe.

The chairs we are IN LOVE with. We had been shopping around for accent chairs for months. We wanted to stay under $300 for a pair of chairs, and were having no luck. Every chair we found was TINY! An adult could hardly sit on it comfortably!

I found these awesome chairs on Overstock and knew they were perfect...

but they were out of stock.

I called Overstock to see when they would get more in, they had no idea if they ever would. I almost impulsively bought my second-favorite chairs for $350 EACH...but stopped myself.

(Self-control comes in handy, sometimes!)

A week later I got an email that the chairs were back in stock. 

ALLELUIA.

We got the two of them for right around $300. 

The music books we now use as decor, sans the pages that are now glued to our walls.

This metal decorative tin and the decorative balls inside I got at a yard sale, $5 for everything I believe. The candle was also a yard sale find.

We absolutely love the room. It's the first thing you see when you walk in, and it's always filled with the sound of music. People can hardly help themselves when they see the guitars hanging there, they always sit and play for a while! It's great!

We will soon be displaying my flute, Bubba's Ukulele from Brazil, and we hope to get an african drum of some kind someday to add to our collection.

So there you have it!
With a little creativity you can dress up YOUR music room too.
Happy crafting :)