Dirty Girl No More

My house is a mess.  I have a newborn, cut me some slack.  Most of the mess is not mine.  Everytime I turn around it seems I'm brushing up somebody's sandwich crumbs, picking up somebody's dirty socks, cleaning somebody's toothpaste out of the sick, or hanging somebody's coat up.  That's my life with three stinky boys in the house (my son's words, not mine...but I won't disagree).

In all this mess, there is one room that is all mine and unfortunately the mess inside of it is all mine too.  Our office.  Really, I don't know why I say "our".  As my husband likes to point out, I have taken over it.  This paper crafting hobby of mine that started when I purchased a single set of stamps on clearance at Barnes & Noble has taken over our "office".  I don't even know why we bother calling it an "office".  Really, it is a craft room, MY craft room.  I'm a crafter and apparently a very messy one at that!

When I'm crafting, I don't like to put stuff away and obviously when I'm done crafting I don't like to put stuff away either but this week I discovered my "carrot".  Buy a really nice new craft toy and tell yourself you can't play with it until all your other toys are picked up.  It works on my five year old son and it turns out it works on me too!

So in a house where there is a newborn and there are days I can't find the time to shower, change out of my PJ's, or brush my hair, I managed to find three whole hours to clean up this mess.  I REALLY wanted to play with my new toy.

Meet Mr. Bond.  Vega Bond.  Mr. Bond is the sexiest, coolest, and most dreamy thing to walk into this house in a long time...well... since last night when my hubby walked through the door (of course).  All the girls want him and he.is.all.mine.  I'm not sharing him.  Don't even dare touch him.  This beauty is worth every penny.  My husband says a good divorce lawyer is too, but that's beside the point.    But seriously, this is the coolest die cutting machine on the market and I'm going to care for him like I care for my own children, "boys, you both ok in there?". I should pause and go check on them, the seven week old didn't answer.

I'm back.  Here is my nice clean craft room:

I even got out the labeler to label my drawers.  Fabric organizers are on my Christmas wish list.  

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I can see my desk!  

And my stamps!

EVEN THE FLOOR!  I haven't seen the floor in years!

Anyway, the point of this story was to show you what a dirty girl I am, how easily I can be manipulated (even by myself), give my sister photo proof that my office can be clean (even if only for one day), and introduce you to Mr. Bond.  Vega Bond.

Here is a peak at the first project Mr. Bond is helping me create:

I have a feeling we're all going to become really great friends.

One Down, Eleven To Go

Well, I can finally check off one item from my list of 2012 New Year's Resolutions.  Drum roll please .....................................................................................................................................................................................

I organized my kitchen cabinets.  Boy, what a mess these were.  I couldn't find anything I needed.  Searching for a specific spice was impossible. Here is the before shot:

With nothing more than a little elbow grease, some scrap wood, and some stacking baskets from Target, I have a well organized pantry.  Here is the after shot:

 

I have plans to buy a laminating machine and label the contents of those baskets, the green containers are dedicated to drinks, one for hot cocoa/coffee, and one for teas.  The white baskets are dedicated to odds-n-ends, one is for baking chips, coconut, marshmallows, etc and the other is for snacky foods like raisins, pudding, popcorn, etc.

All my misc flours (like cake, bread, whole wheat) are in glass containers so they are easy to see.  My spices are organized with a 3 tier "shelf".  It's not really a shelf, I looked at multiple stores and several different versions and decided they just weren't worth the $15-$25 a piece.  I went down into our basement and grabbed some of our left over wood from our kitchen floor remodel from several years ago and stacked them on top of each other until I got the height I liked.  Easy and cheap!

Here are some more before and after pictures of my kitchen cabinets.

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BEFORE: Dishes Cabinet

AFTER: Dishes Cabinet

I can't even explain to you how good it felt to donate this cabinet full of "crap" to goodwill.  I got most of the bags to the car before my hubby had time to dig through them and take half the crap back out.  He did manage to grab a few items that he promises will not make their way back into these cabinets (or he'll hear holly hell from his wife).  
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BEFORE: Storage bag drawer

AFTER: Storage bag drawer

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BEFORE: Junk drawer

AFTER: Junk drawer

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AFTER: Baking Utensils drawer

Now I have no reason to be embarrassed when a guest comes over and digs through my drawers, as a matter of fact, there will probably be no digging needed since everything is nicely organized and has its own place.

Well I'm behind pace if I want to get all twelve of my resolutions done before the end of this year.  I haven't decided what project I'll do next but I promise you, I'll blog all about here once it is finished.  

Hello 2012

 Happy New Year!

There is something so refreshing about this time of the year.  It's a chance to correct all of last year's mistakes and have a big giant "do over".  I'm sure that's why New Year's resolutions are so popular among the general public.

I am no exception to this annual tradition.  Of course the usual suspects make my list like: loss weight, exercise more, and eat healthier.  In addition, there are also the less obvious ones that keep reappearing like:  read more books, be more patient, and spend less money.  Ok, maybe those are not that hard to guess either.

So that brings me to the point of this blog post.  My 2012 New Year's Resolutions.  This year's list has one obvious theme to it:  To Get Organized.  Lucky for you I have plans to not only get organized but to be creative about it in the process.  

I've come up with a list of twelve goals or "projects" that I would like to tackle over the course of this year.  My goal is to finish and highlight a project each month here on my blog for all of you to see. I'm going to share with you my successes and failures along the way, one project at a time.

Here is my list (in no particular order):

Organize Kitchen Cabinets

Start/Finish my son's Birthday Scrapbook

Organize Recipes

Decorate wall above our headboard

Decorate our TV Room

Decorate Kitchen Wall

Organize the back Hallway

Patch 364 holes in our walls (yikes!) & match texture

Organize and Decorate Hallway Up and Down

Organize Crafts

Update my son's bedroom Decor

Clean Basement

Well that is a sneak peak of what I have in store the upcoming year.  I better stop blogging now and get moving instead, it is already January 2nd and I haven't started any of these projects yet! {wink}

Say Hello to Summer.

 Hi Everyone! Sorry, I've been gone so long, it has been a few crazy busy weeks around this household.

Speaking of crazy: our Wisconsin weather! It seems we went from winter straight into summer and forgot about that season in between. During the span of two weeks, we have seen temperatures ranging from 30 degrees to 100 degrees! I was tent camping in the 40 degree weather and stuck without air conditioning in the 100 degree weather.

My garden seems to be doing well despite the fluctuations. I've been eating herbs from the garden for a few weeks now and have even been able to share some with friends.

Oh basil, how I want to eat you! Doesn't it look so pretty?  I'm glad to see it seems to be beating the cold weather it got hit with a couple of weeks ago (I wasn't so sure for a few days).

It seems my peonies love the 100 degree weather we had yesterday.  The buds opened up yesterday and they look so beautiful.  I planted these just a year and a half ago and I'm in love with them, they are so pretty against the brick of our house.  The colors in the photo are so vibrant that the whole thing almost looks fake, you'll have to trust me that it is the real deal!

Even the flowers on my chives look beautiful (they taste delicious too) and they are growing amongst my very healthy oregano plant. 

Each year I plant flowers in pots on the front steps of our house.  This year I went easy, it is hard to take care of these with a little human in the house.  

 
I also planted a few potato vines in my second floor window boxes, I haven't had much of a success with these in the past but I thought I would give it another try again this year.  I really want to see them hang down a couple feet for real drama.

Well I hope to post again real soon a show you all the projects I've been busy with for the last few weeks.  I hope you find some time soon to say hello to summer.