Inspiration

So I decided that it was time to do a search for some organization inspiration.

My office/craft room is the spot in this house that is bugging me the most at the moment. It is where both DH and I spend a lot of our time, but right now we can't even have the baby in here since he is into everything because most of our crap is on the floor! I realize we need to get rid of a lot of things, and we really need to figure out some storage solutions that work for us. I do scrapbooking and sewing so I have a lot of crafty items, but I feel like I can't work on much of anything because I have no room, because all my flat surfaces are always covered with stuff.

This would be absolute heaven for me:

The Dream Scrapbook Studio from Scrapbooksetc.com

I just imagine having a room surrounded by cabinets and counter tops, like a kitchen but for crafting!

So that is totally not an option right now. We don't have the space, nor is the room we do have set up in any kind of way that would be possible without some major renovations, but we do have a fairly large space with a decent sized closet. Now - to figure out a way to set it up to be useful, pretty, and organized....and CHEAP!

Looking for motivation...

As I posted before I knew we wouldn't get half done of what we planned to this weekend. But in our defense, we did have an unexpected problem with the leaking of our washing machine last week, which still has not been fixed. We did find out the problem, but have yet to work out a solution, but several hours were spent this weekend working on it, therefore taking away from our kitchen project. Not to mention after my husband got the top of the walls painted and ready for the glaze, I put on a little of the glaze and decided I hated it. So Sunday we had to go back to Lowe's so I could pick out another color of paint.

What we did accomplish in the kitchen:
The top half of the walls are now painted.
DH mudded over the paneling on the bottom half under the chair rail.
The bottom half of the walls are now painted.

ummm....surely there has to be more! That sounds like so little!

I did finish a couple of burp cloths. I am hoping to get some more done and start listing them on our Etsy store. I do need to go get a bit more variety of fabric though. I will try to get some pictures of them soon and post them.

So I had been planning to start trying to get up earlier for a little bit of me time, but that's not really working out. Mason has decided this week he is going to start waking up at 7:30 in the morning. Which was about the time I was getting up for my me time. And I just don't think I can go a whole lot earlier than that! I don't do the whole getting up before dawn thing! I need daylight to make me feel alive!

Lucky for me today Mason and my nephew are down for a nap at the same time! Of course until I say that...now Mason will probably soon be awake. And what have I spent my time during their nap doing....nothing! There is so much to do I feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start! I need some motivation! What motivates you?

Kitchen Sneak Peek

I thought I would share a sneak peek of our kitchen. Hopefully I can do a reveal next week. I am hoping to get just about everything done with it this weekend. Except the floor, which will be on hold for a while. This weekend hopefully we will get all the walls painted, the molding up, the new microwave for over the stove, the outlets changed, new light fixtures, and hopefully some new window treatment....but don't count on it! We always plan to get lots done, and we are lucky if we make it halfway!

I will share some before pictures:

And here is a little sneak peek of the open shelf we added. We added another cabinet on the other side of the dishwasher to create a little more counter space (and the extra storage is nice), and this was created to fill the wall above it.
I guess I should add what all we have done so far: painted the cabinets (except for 5 drawers that still need to be done), put in new counter tops, added a cabinet next to dishwasher, built and put up open shelf above new cabinet, ripped out cabinets above stove and put an open shelf to go above our new microwave when we get it, took out old backsplash and put up some new beadboard which we painted and left at the back to our open shelf. I think that's about it.

My kitchen has been in shambles since August and I am SO ready for it to be done. It took a long time to end up coming to the decision to paint the cabinets, but it's a long story and Mason is being squirmy on my lap and making it quite difficult to type, so I will leave that for another day....Time to feed the little one...

Coat closet turned Pantry

I was reading Transforming Home's blog about turning her coat closet into a toy/craft closet and was inspired to post my coat closet turned pantry. We moved into this house at the end of May 2008. It didn't take long to realize that we did not have enough storage in our galley kitchen with no pantry! So I decided to turn our coat closet into a pantry. I would really like to make it more efficient and add better storage, but this is what it looks like for now:

This is a big reason I hate it: there is a step up into the closet that is quite high. Makes it really annoying to have to step in there every time I need to reach something off the back shelf.

If anyone has any great ideas for pantry storage for my coat closet turned pantry, please leave me a comment!

Vacations Over

Not that it was really a "vacation" as there wasn't much relaxing going on around here, but today I am back to babysitting my nephew as it is time for another semester of school to start. He should be here in about 10 minutes, so this will probably be a short post, but I have been slacking here and felt the need to post something.

I actually managed to get out of bed a little before 7:30 this morning. I have decided to start trying to get up earlier to either accomplish something or just have some me time before Mason wakes up and my nephew arrives. So this morning I at least got to eat some breakfast in peace and I picked up all the toys in the living room so that I can vacuum after he wakes up and has breakfast before he goes to play on the floor.

We have been having all sorts of problems with our house this week, mostly involving water leaks of sorts. Biggest problem is the laundry room leak, so as of right now I can't do laundry at home.

We did however manage to get our new backsplash up and painted and my new open shelves that go above our added on cabinet. Thanks to my hubby for doing that!

I have been going through my closet a little at a time too, when you have an 8 month old it is hard to find time to do it all at once, but I have gotten rid of some clothes, and my clothes are not quite as squished in the closet anymore! I will still be getting rid of more as I get some more time to work on it, but for now at least it's a little better.

Well I better go since my nephew should arrive any minute now. Hopefully I will be able to keep him entertained!

Confession...

I still have not unpacked all of our suitcases from our trip over Christmas!

So this is my goal for today for sure. Get all unpacked and the suitcases put away!

Other than that I have not accomplished a whole lot of anythings, just little things here and there, and then they get messed up again in no time!

Right now our kitchen is in shambles, we are trying to get our new shelf and backsplash up this week. We actually have a lot to do because I have to get the kitchen child-proofed since my nephew will be back next week and we took the gates down since one of them was broken and fell apart everytime I used it. So we have to get child locks on all the lower cabinets and get our project to a point that I don't have stuff covering my kitchen table!

I also need to make a grocery list today and plan meals for the week. I am going to try to start doing Menu Plan Monday. We will see how that goes...hopefully I get my first one up this evening.

I will also make time to do a sewing project this week....I hope...

Organized Baby Cabinet

Well I got one goal completed. Yesterday I got the baby cabinet organized:

Maybe not great, but its much better than it was.

Now I have to find a place to store my storage bowls, but hopefully DH will be building me some open shelves this weekend to go over our new base cabinet we added to extend our countertops when we put new ones in. Then I can store some of my nicer glasses on the open shelves which will allow me to reorganize the cabinets to find space for my storage bowls.

I didn't have time to do a lot today between Mason wanting attention, me tutoring, and me just being plain lazy...LOL. I did get 3 loads of laundry folded, and most of it put away.

I got my new external hard drive tonight, so I may be spending free time tomorrow organizing photos so that I can have them all backed up and nicely organized. I also really need to edit all the pictures from Christmas. I will definitely feel a little relief when I have all my pictures backed up because right now I am absolutely terrified of losing them!

Last night we also went grocery shopping and I came home and listed everything in an excel spreadsheet. I am hoping to keep much better tabs on how much we are spending on what this year so I can try to get a good idea of common prices so I know when there is a good price, and also see what categories we can cut back in. It is all very overwhelming right now, I really hope I will be able to stick to it and actually feel more in control of our money and know where it is going instead of asking where it went. I also made a weekly budget for this week and put cash into envelopes for each. It will take a lot of tweaking, but hoping to try this system and see how it goes.

Weekend Assessment...FAIL

Ok, so this weekend was bad. I did not reach all my goals. But it is a new week, so I will try, try again.

Friday I spent the afternoon at the mall with my sister. We rarely get to hang out with out the little ones, so I'm ok I spent the afternoon out instead of home cleaning/organizing.

While we were out I purchased the book The Coupon Mom's Guide to Cutting You Grocery Bill in Half. My sister had a 40% off coupon for the book and she let me use it. I figure that is ok, since it is inline with my goals of organizing our finances.

Friday evening I did manage to get our Christmas decor taken down and stored into boxes, now I just have to convince my husband to take it up to the attack.

I also managed to clean off my scrapbook table, although now it is covered in bills that I need to pay and coupons I was clipping last night.

I need a system for organizing my coupons...what do you use?

The kitchen was also looking a lot better thanks to my wonderful husband for doing the dishes, but then he decided to organize the "baby" cabinet where we store all Mason's food/bottles/cups/etc, so now my counters are once again covered in stuff because he started taking things out and never got around to putting them back...so that may be my goal for today.

I also would love to get my whole office/scraproom cleaned and organized so that I can start working on some sewing projects. I also soon will need to start my projects for Mason's first birthday party. Even though his birthday is 4.5 months away, I am planning on making his invitations by hand, I guess we'll see how that goes. I may have to make digital ones and have them printed. Though I still want to make him a happy birthday banner with my animal kingdom cricut cartridge that needs some use.

I didn't get my household notebook ready for the new year either, though realy the biggest thing I have to do is take out 2009 bills and ditch the 2009 calendar. I never really used it for much other than a place to put bills...would like to do more with it this year, but I'm not really sure where to start.

Well the little guy is begging for some attention, and after some play time, and probably after lunch I think I will try to tackle the organization of the "baby" cabinet.

Happy New Year

Well today is the first day of the new year, and I really need to get some motivation to get to work.

I am setting a few goals for this weekend as it is easier for me to set goals for the weekend than for each day individually.

My goals for this weekend:
1. Put all the Christmas decorations away.
2. Clean off my scrapbook table in my office.
3. Clean the kitchen.
4. Get my 2010 household notebook ready for the new year.

Now I really hope to accomplish a whole lot more than this, but I figured I should start small with my list of goals.

So far it is noon today and I haven't accomplished much however I did use my elliptical for a few minutes and read a print out on how to save on groceries.

Hopefully some motivation will come to me after lunch and I can get started on my list of to-dos.