Projects, projects everywhere!

I am actually, truly, seriously working on some stuff. It’s a little ADD at the moment since I don’t have any one project pulled together. I am in super organize mode so there are little spots here and there getting tweaks. Did you know we have 6 people living in a 3 bedroom house? Did I mention said house is a good bit under 2000 sq ft? We are stepping all over each other. Add in baby gear and my crafting/project hoard and you have a house that is insanely out-of-order. After I returned to work, I have not had time to put things in order. And with a complete lack of storage in this place I am having a hard time getting things to flow in our home. We have never been neat freaks, and it’s really hard to keep everyone on board with picking up after themselves. My time at home is so limited during the week. As in, I get home at 6-6:30 and it’s bed time for the kids between 8-9 and I am not too far behind them. So I squeeze in what I can for cleaning, organizing and projects on weekends and spare minutes here and there. I plan to take a day off work in the near future and put things in order – but first I need all the tools at my disposal. I have been scouring Craigslist and Goodwill trying to find the items I need (namely a dresser and some sort of cabinet or bookshelf – and maybe a table for the entry way). NO luck so far, but I know I will come across the perfect pieces.

My project list is growing, but then it has never been small and ever-changing. I come up with a “great” idea and by the time I get to it I have either decided it won’t function well in our home or adapted it a little differently. So as of now, my project list looks like this:

Complete Hannah’s room
Organize and store craft supplies
Organize our mail and general paraphernalia that gets dropped on the bars
Start on the boy’s room
Redo guest bath
Finish master bedroom

I haven’t decided how I will post on Hannah’s room. I will either give you tutorials along the way as I complete them, or churn those out after the reveal. We shall see what time allows me. I have her room started…just getting into it deeper now. The to do list in there is not too bad.

1. New curtains
2. Paint the walls
3. Hang her chandelier
4. hang a TV on the wall
5. New bed
6. Get and makeover a dresser
7. Address storage in her room
8. Possibly a desk
9. Art for all walls
10. Bedding and pillows
11. Closet organization

I have paint for the guest bath and have already primed over the color that was in there. I have ideas and pinned some things for in there. It’s basically needing to be made more grown up and less polka-dotted. I have lots of organizing tools and plans, just need to execute those in the main living areas. I have also decided to rethink how we use our kitchen and bathroom cabinets. So much wasted space!! The boy’s room is the least planned out right now, but I feel like it will come together really easily once I get started.

And of course I can’t have a post without a pic of some sort.. so here is some inspiration I have for the guest bath and organizing.

Awesome bath found HERE
Go and check out the rest of Meredith’s handy work. She just revealed their guest bath remodel. Wow, it looks amazing.

Awesome organizing found HERE

If you haven’t checked out iHeart Organizing, I strongly recommend it. This woman makes organizing look fun, and pretty!! Her site is so motivational.

So I am just going to keep on keeping on. Hopefully that will include some fun blog posts as well!

What I have been up to

It’s been a while since I have been here…it seems that my body has been keeping me busy trying to create a new life along with the many projects I have lined up for myself.  My energy levels in the evenings (when I write my posts) is, well, non-existent.  For some reason I have a little burst of energy tonight so I am going to take advantage of it! 

If you remember, I started putting together ideas for the master bedroom in this post.  I didn’t waste much time getting started.  Since we will be getting the house on the market before the end of March, I need to wrap up the majority of this project A-S-A-P.  I also decided that rather than waiting for all the info, I will post it as I go.  So the first project on the list is the board and batten on the walls.  There are some good tutorials out there, and it really seems like a no-brainer on how to put it up.  And CHEAP!!!  Love that part too. 

 

I got started with some furring strips that Garrett and I sanded down 3 sides to get them nice and smooth.  Then Jeff made all of my cuts for me.  I think the hardest part of this was deciding whether I should take out the baseboards or not.  I did buy the boards to replace them, but then decided that I didn’t want to tackle that.  Instead I am using the boards I purchased as the top part of the batten to make a thick edge to place a ledge on.  Check out these pics of the in process work:

 

First I painted the top half of the wall.

 

Next I put some lines on the wall to keep the top edge straight.

And then I marked the wall on each stud by using a stud finder.  I went ahead and taped up each board so that I could get an idea how they would fall and if I needed to fill any spaces. 

The bottom edge was my biggest concern, and although it does hang over some, I don’t think it will be very noticeable once it’s all painted white.

Here is what the top boards and ledge will be like.

So that’s where I am.  I need to permanently attach those boards with some liquid nails and nails, fill holes, prime them and paint them all white.  That’s on the agenda for this weekend.  I will try and fit that in with the home and garden show that is going to be at the Salem Civic Center on Saturday.

 

I have also been working on the master closet, so I thought I would share my current jewelry situation.  I think I am going to change it up and do some purging.  Here is what  it looks like now.

 

I don’t have any plans for it just yet.  But something on a smaller scale would probably work. 

 

And in case you missed it, I did share some news last week… I am expecting a new little member of the family in November.    We are hoping for a girl I think.

 

What have you guys been up to lately?

Goodwill finds

Anyone like to shop Goodwill? I know my mother-in-law should probably buy stock – er, if it was a publicly traded company of course I have gotten back into my thrifting. I used to do it a lot, but kinda fell out of the practice. It must have been something about having a baby that got my DIY bone to itching, cause it seems that’s all I want to do these days. I have come across some pretty neat things at Goodwill, and I think that I need to start exploring the other locations to see what goodies they may hold. Upon my last trip to the Goodwill, I found 3 things. Please ignore the Scentsy warmer- that’s its home on the bar.

I took this shot first, but as you can see..I had a “helper” who was very intent on helping. And those are fairly heavy glass, so I didn’t want any squished toes.

I found 2 of these “greenhouses” and a pasta container.

Some back story here would be relevant ~
I had actually been oggling this little “greenhouse” that YHL has for sometime

Image found over at younghouselove

Then I saw some for sale over at Zgallerie (my favorite place to peruse these days) and honestly, I had no idea what they were called (I searched that site for quite some time, but to no avail). I shot an email over to YHL to see if they had a name for it. Sure enough, they called it a greenhouse, or a cloche. Yay! A name to google (thanks so much to Sherry!)! Here is what I found when I googled “cloche” images:

Must be a hat thing.. and you know, my son would go crazy if he saw this. He loves him some hats.

So then I googled “glass cloche”. Ahhhh that is what I was looking for.

And.. I had already decided on a great place for one of these to reside. Oh and bonus? I had picked up these cute little faux succulents at Target for 2.50. So total cost on that little deal is 5.45+tax Woot! *note: I am not sure why my pics are all wonky…working on that!

I havent decided what I am going to do with the other one just yet. It’s waiting in the wings for some brilliant idea of some sort. And that pasta container? It is just another purchase in my mission of organizing the pantry. I will tell you that it’s in the works, but it may seriously take a year to complete. I am not a spender and it will take time to accumulate the containers I need to complete it. I could give myself a big old smack to the forehead though, I visited World Market this last weekend for the first time, and they had some super cute larger glass cannister at a very good price. I walked away… ugh. I wish I wasn’t such a penny pincher sometimes.

So has anyone else found some great Goodwill items recently? Or maybe you have some organizing going on behind the scenes? Please share!

**Teaser alert! I just purchased material for our curtains in the living room… I love it! I will be cutting panels and sorting out how I will hang them this weekend hopefully. I will share the deets when I am done! Think – peacock.

A little at a time…

It’s 2012, and I am in full decorate mode. I want to do it ALL – NOW!!! I want to paint the island, paint the kids’ bathroom and vanity, put in some kind of storage in the living room, create a new dining set. I could list all.day.long the ideas I have and what I want to do. But the fact of the matter is…it all takes time, and money. Both of which are running closer to “E” in my daily gas tank. So I have decided the only way that I am going to accomplish anything is to take bite size pieces. I will make a list for each room of what I want to do. Then I can figure out which items will give me the most impact for the least money to start. That should at least quell the raging decor beast inside for a while.

How to begin? I seriously have notebooks full of ideas just scribbled down as I think of them. I attempted to put them in room or project order, but that didn’t always work out. Oh and did I mention that I got a sewing machine for Christmas?? (thanks to my wonderful family!) So now I have even more projects that I need to do! Need.. not want, need. Because I need a home that is beautiful to look at, I need a home that makes me smile when I see it. So let’s start with those areas I see the most: living room, kitchen, dining room.

In no particular order:

window treatments
wall color
furniture (placement and pieces)
rugs
art/picture placement
storage (this is a big one, we hardly have any storage)

I believe that little list of big stuff handles it. I have ideas, and I have some things in the works. Sadly, any furniture work will have to wait for warmer weather since I have nowhere to paint this time of year. But there are lots more changes I can make!

In the meantime, I thought I would share some sites that keep me inspired and reaching for my pocketbook. There are lots of good deals on a variety of home decor and general items! Check them out!

Joss&Main

Open Sky

WUSLU

Groopdealz

One Kings Lane

Does anyone else have a decorating monkey on their back? Or have you started the year out with a new mojo? Maybe you have a project list of your own to tackle?

Where to put it all??

I’m sure my problem is a common problem… I have accumulated 29+(oh yes, I am still holding at 29) years of stuff…a couple of times. Five people live in my home. Funny part is that the younger ones tend to have more stuff than anyone else in the house. I have learned that part of keeping an attractive home is learning to organize all of your junk. Oh, and getting rid of stuff that you just don’t use is key as well. Part of getting my home decorated and turned into a place that we enjoy to look at as well as use is getting organized. I have begun in some areas, but it seems each time I clean out one place, I discover 3 more that are over-loaded, under-utilized and just plain unattractive.

So, operation organize is underway. I am going to troll my home for all of the items and areas that need help. Once I have compiled a list of items/areas I can start scanning Pinterest for ideas. I have already put some ideas I found in place, but I haven’t scratched the surface. I believe once I have a solid list of needed areas of improvement, I can start pulling together ideas. Right now, when I start to think about where and what to organize my mind starts hula hoping all the ideas..and I think it makes me dizzy. Or that could be the caffeine from the coffee my husband made this morning…. who knows. I tried to put together a post of all of the organizing ideas that I had, and quickly realized I was oooohing and aaaaahing like 5 different solutions for one area. Step 1 needs to be pulling it all together before I actually try to pin point a solution to implement. So instead I am going to show you some spaces that just make me feel like I need to put my home on that show Hoarders…

Image found Here

Image found Here

Image found Here

Has anyone else been driven crazy by their unorganized home? Or have any neat organizing tips?