Home Organization 101: The Dining Room

Our dining room is the only room in our house that doesn't need to be decluttered.  We don't keep anything extra in here.  Woohoo for an easy week!

Home Organization 101: The Pantry

A few weeks ago, I started the Home Organization challenge.  Since I was late starting, I started from the beginning and the pantry was up next.  We have this huge pantry that becomes a bit like a catch all.

I bought seven of these plastic containers months ago to store each meal's ingredients for a week.  Since we started our once a month cooking, they haven't worked out exactly as I had planned since most of our meals are in the freezer.

After!  I took out our tupperware from the kitchen and stacked them and put the lids in a plastic tub.  This helps us see where the pieces actually are instead of blindly grabbing in that dark cabinet and hoping you get the pieces that fit together.

I condensed all of the food to one wall of the pantry.  It makes me feel like I don't need to run straight to the grocery store because there actually is food in the house.  Our small appliances and medicine cabinet are all up high since they aren't used on a daily basis.  Those plastic tubs were repurposed to hold pasta, vegetables, side dishes, and odd items like peanut butter that don't fit into categories.

Treats and leashes are stored together now instead of three different drawers.  The harnesses and collars are staying in the master closet/storm shelter.  After last year's tornado, I get anxious that my dogs might find themselves outside without identification.  If things get real, I would prefer to have those handy.

I've been on a huge homemade cleaning kick lately.

I think this will be super handy to grab and take out when I'm baking something.

Next up is the office.  Since we don't have one, I think I'd like to tackle the guest bedroom.  I don't think I've ever liked the way that it looks.  I'm excited to take a swing at it.

Home Organization 101: The Garage

Last week I started the Home Organization 101 challenge and tackled our kitchen.  This week's space was the garage.  Hubs and I just emptied the whole thing out in May so it's not terrible.  Since he was at work, I didn't do too much heavy lifting or get into the spooky attic.  Anything with pull down stairs just gives me the creeps and I'm definitely not going up there by myself.

This is kind of the catch all corner.

I believe those blankets have been lying there since the last time that we went to the drive in.  In August.

I feel like the pile of shoes can build up in about three seconds.

After!  

No blankets or shoes!  What a difference.  When we moved in, the builders left these huge scraps of carpet and they've actually been super handy as mega rugs.

I'm surprised all of the junk that spread itself on the floor fit into boxes to be put away.  I was able to close Hubs' tool box for the first time ever.  That pallet is fixed to the wall to store things like baseball bats, shovels, tall umbrellas, and things like that.

Maybe someday I'll buy some pretty boxes to hold everything but for today, my budget is $0 and I'm going to embrace the mismatchy thing going on here.

Another one down!  If Hubs immediately makes a pile of shoes when he gets home from work, he gets to clean it next time.  The next area on the list is the pantry.  I can't wait!

Home Organization 101: The Kitchen

I found this awesome organization challenge on Friday and decided to start at the beginning since my house could really use it.  The first challenge is the kitchen and it couldn't have come at a better time.  We loaded everything into the cabinets when we moved in two years ago and haven't rearranged anything since.

This is a little embarrassing.  We tried the curtain rod thing to hang your cleaning supplies on but ours was too flimsy and it's out of sight most days and forgotten.

I have empty shelves?  Say what?!  I spent $10 on plastic containers to split between the kitchen and the pantry and they've made a huge difference!  

Dachshund photobomb.

The cleaning supply cabinet isn't the messiest section of the house anymore!

I have a short container holding all of our kitchen utensils that aren't pretty enough to be left on the counter full time.  It's a smidge too tall for the silverware drawer so it found a home on the pull out section with the pots and pans.

The things on this pull out shelf were spread out between 3 different cabinets.

I have a baking cabinet.  I love it!

Another of the containers is holding travel mugs because they can take over an entire cabinet if not watched closely.  This cabinet has all of the casserole dishes, mixing bowls, and Christmas tins.

I have all of the spices in one at a decent height to where I can actually reach them.  

This is the mother in law dish cabinet.  The next time we see her, all of these will get to go home where they belong.  I do feed her son.  I promise.

I put down place mats in the fridge for easy cleaning.  I'm just one short so I'll need to go back to Target soon. 

I believe the garage is the next area on the list.  I think I'm going to pull Hubs in on that one and let him go crazy.  I can't wait to do the whole house.  My kitchen is making me so happy right now!

Bedroom Project on the Cheap

I've had a crush on the whole pallet as home decor trend that has been all over Pinterest.  I was able to bring home a slightly beaten up pallet from work and gave it a nice stain coating.  A few nails and boom.  Finished.  I like the instant shelves to get the photos into a more visible position  My husband mentioned that we wouldn't be able to put a television in our bedroom now which was the plan entirely a total coincidence.

Total time for the project? 20 minutes plus overtime drying time.

Total cost?  Around $5 for wood stain.

One of my favorite frames in this group is the one with every ticket stub from our first date to our wedding day.  My purse feels so much lighter now that these bad boys aren't all in my wallet or floating at the bottom of the bag anymore.

Have you jumped on the pallet decorative piece bandwagon?  Tell me about it!

Happy 4th of July!

The only thing we lit up this year was the grill.  We've never spent an Independence Day at home and we weren't disappointed.  We counted 11 firework shows that we could see from our back porch.  We fall in love with that big open field behind the house more and more every day.

I hope you had a very safe and happy holiday!

Photo Block Project

This project was so easy that we can't believe it's completely done.  It only took about two hours total.  Hubs cut the boards for me and we spray painted them last night.  We decided to go for a textured paint that would be pretty neutral with the photos.

The photos were 8"x8" and a smidge too wide for the boards.  We trimmed about 3/4 of an inch off and used spray adhesive to put the whole thing together.

We only glued one photo on before we figured out that we needed to drill a hole in the back to be able to hang them on the wall.  After that little duh moment, we were in business.  We let them dry for about 30 minutes.  

Every time we hang something, I swear that I'm going to buy my husband a level.  He gets so intense when it's thisclose to being level but he feels the need to fix it.  If it looks kind of right to me, we're good.  I guess we balance each other out that way.

I'm happy with the texture on the blocks.  You can still see a little bit of wood grain but I kind of like it.

Oh hey mom!  We saw you were getting ready to take a picture.

Finished!  I've decided that we're never moving because there are simply too many nail holes to fill in now.

What do you think?

Wedding Pictures, Finally!

Ooh.  New project!  Since we were thinking about getting some canvases of our wedding for our first anniversary, we did some pricing and it was in the $300-450 range for what we were thinking of doing.

On to a Plan B!

We saw this fun blog post about how to make photo blocks.  We ordered a handful of 8x8 photos from our wedding and the day after session we did in Las Vegas on our honeymoon.   We searched for all of the other pieces at Lowe's.  At this point we're just waiting to borrow a saw from Corey's folks so we can get this project going.  I have no idea how it's going to turn out but we have high hopes.

The whole project should cost around $50 which is much more in line with where we are right now.  I'll let you know how it turns out!

Flower Tower

I saw the cutest landscaping piece on Pinterest some time ago and have never had the time to actually build it.  I've had all of the pieces for ages but haven't managed to put them together.  

Inspiration:

Via: GardenFreshLiving.com

Awesome, right?  This is what my version looked like for about two months.  Not exactly the same thing.  I had picked up the flower pots at Dollar General last fall on clearance and we picked up the rebar at Lowes in March.  For my birthday, we managed to pick up some flowers and finish the project.

Tada!  The finished product.  The total cost is around $20 for the whole project.  It was extremely easy to put together but I'm not sure about the type of flowers that we put into the pots.  I think they might too tall and the weight of the blooms will eventually pull down and hurt the flowers.  Time will tell on this one.

25 Years Already

I was lucky enough to celebrate my 25th birthday on Sunday.  I have had rotten luck with birthdays in the past so I begged Corey for an extremely low key birthday.  With that in mind, we had a 2 day garage sale, a boudoir party for the studio, and ran non stop on my actual birthday.  My definition of low key and his are vastly different but anyhow, I loved it.  He bought me this sweet ladder for the house.  There is so much potential that I don't even know where to start with it.

We went to Steak 'N Shake for lunch and got this sweet milkshake.  

Corey writes me a letter on every holiday that we get to share together in a book so I can keep them all together.  I wasn't sure if he would remember since my book has been kept in my closet for safekeeping but he surprised me and added to it.  I didn't even have to sneakily lay it out for him.  He's so good.

I know I don't say it enough but life is good and I am totally content.