My First Blog Award!

Wow, I am so excited I got my first blog award! A big thank you to JBranagan at http://adventuresofawifeandmommy.blogspot.com/ for nominating me!

I am supposed to pass it on to 12 others, so here we go:

1. Justin ~ http://thefabulousvoicemailofjustinduncan.blogspot.com/ My wonderful husband's blog where he posts about his crafts that we sell in our Etsy store!

2. Suzie ~ http://kiddosavings.blogspot.com/ My fellow May Momma who shares a ton of great deals!

3. mscstephens ~ http://scrap-happy-mommy.blogspot.com/ Another from my birth board who is also an awesome digital scrapbooker!

4. Danielle ~ http://transforminghome.blogspot.com/ Danielle has probably received many awards, but her blog is very inspiring for me to make my house feel more like a home!

5. Gwen ~ http://flashbulbspurpleirises.wordpress.com/ A fellow scrapbooker who is also a great photographer!

6. Kath ~ http://findingthecalminthechaos.blogspot.com/ Another blogger on a journey to organization!

7. Brooke ~ http://organisedandclean.blogspot.com/ And another blogger sharing her journey to organization!

8. Krista ~ http://organizedin15.blogspot.com/ And yet another blogger sharing in the organizing challenge!

(You can see the trend, I spend much more time reading about organizing than actually getting any done! LOL)

9. Penny Saver ~ http://thesavedquarter.wordpress.com/ A great blog about saving money for an emergency fund!

10. Amy ~ http://www.raisingarrows.net/ Another blogger who has probably received many awards, but I really enjoy reading her blog!

11. Nancy ~ http://homesclscrapper.blogspot.com/ An awesome scrapbooker, who shares lots of great projects!

12. Cheryl ~ http://www.aprettycoollife.com/ One more blogger who has probably received lots of awards, but many of her awesome projects are on my to-do list!

Thanks again so much for the award! It is definitely an encouragement to keep blogging!

Organizing Update

Less than one week left to get my office organized! I have made some progress with the help of my hubby. He put up some shelves for me this weekend, and made me an awesome gift wrap holder!

I am not posting many pictures of what we have done yet, since there is only a week left, I want to leave a lot of it for the big reveal, but here are a few things that got done this weekend!

In this picture, you can see the 3 pink shelves in the corner, well we exchanged those for 2 nice new shelves. The ones in this picture were plywood, and I much prefer the smooth laminate finish.
Here is the new shelf where I keep my office books and photo albums:

And now to my gift wrap organizer:
Each thing rotates for easy access, and I can store 8 rolls of wrapping paper!
And here is the wall in the closet that it is on, along with my door signs (I like to change them with the seasons) and my quilting mat.
Sorry, that's it for now, time for the little one to have a bottle and go to bed!

Menu Plan Monday - Feb 22

We decided to make Friday our "Eat Out" night. We pretty much always eat out one night on the weekend. A local restaurant we like has live music on Friday nights and the past couple weeks we have went and we have decided that we go there most Fridays to enjoy the live music and have dinner. Since we both enjoy live music, but rarely get to attend any kind of concerts or anything, this is a good compromise. Music is free and the food is good, and it would be likely that we would eat there over the weekend anyway.

For the rest the week:
Monday ~ French Bread Pizza
Tuesday ~ Tater Tot Casserole
Wednesday ~ Chicken Strips with Mashed Potatoes
Thursday ~ Pork Chops with left over Mashed Potatoes
Friday ~ Eat Out
Saturday ~ Lasagna
Sunday ~ Leftovers

Shoes - Minus 10!

This past weekend in the process of cleaning our master bedroom, I spent a bit of time trying on clothes and getting rid of things that don't fit and things I never wear to make my closet a bit more organized and have a bit more room.

Well worse than having too many clothes, I have a very big addiction to shoes!

This is what my shoes in my closet looked like before:

yes, there is another shoe rack hidden back there!

Minus 10 pairs of shoes! :( yes I counted my slipper socks as shoes! I did get a new purple pair last Christmas that I have been wearing so I said goodbye to my worn out penguin pair (I also LOVE penguins!). You may also tell that I really like flip flops! If it was up to me, I would have a pair in every color! Goodbye shoes...

(you can also see a pile of clothes that is going in the sell/donate box also)

And now for the final results:


I know I should really get rid of some more, and I am going to try to convince myself to...but I need a little break after getting rid of 10 pairs at once!

Master Bedroom Organizing progress

Yes, I'm working on 2 rooms at once! I know I should be focusing on the office, but recently DH and I have made a habit of going to bed a bit earlier so we can spend half an hour or so reading our books before going to sleep. It really helps me to be able to relax a bit because it usually takes me so long to go to sleep because my list of things to do is so long and it keeps going through my head! So we decided we should make our bedroom more relaxing by trying to clear some clutter!

It isn't done yet, but it looks a whole lot better!

My night stand Before:
After:

My Side of the room Before:
After:
Still work to do...the sack of clothes I still have to go through. The other 2 piles need to go in storage boxes, one is maternity clothes the other are pre-pregnancy clothes I am hoping to fit in again by the end of summer. And the top of the dresser still needs a lot of work.

This is the top of the armoire, my husband uses it as dumping grounds for whatever comes out of his pockets. There is a basket on the dresser that he was "supposed" to use, but that obviously didn't work out. He did work on cleaning it off some so here is what he accomplished.
Before:
After:

I did do some work in the office, but since we are taking out a bunch of the stuff from the closet there isn't much to show that has been finished yet. But I did decided that I will only keep as many magazines (not including my Wilton Yearbooks) as I have holders for. I have 10 magazine holders seen here:
And this is the stack that I got rid of to make my magazines fit in the holders. I still need to go through those though and get rid of more so that I can have room to grow!

Hopefully this week we will be cracking down on the office since there are only 2 weeks left for the challenge and I am guessing that our family that is supposed to be making a trip up here soon will probably be here the last bit of February, so I am really hoping to accomplish a lot this week!

Menu Plan Monday - Feb 15th

Monday: Leftovers - Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans

Tuesday: Tacos

Wednesday: Spaghetti

Thursday: Crock Pot Chicken and Rice

Friday: Leftovers

Saturday: Eat out

Sunday: Grilled cheese and noodles

Budget Kit Giveaway

I wanted to share a giveaway that is being hosted at The Saved Quarter for the book The Budget Kit by Judy Lawrence.

Budgeting is something that I really want to work on. I have never really "had" to budget, but by not budgeting money, we end up spending way more and not saving! So I am hoping to learn how to budget and this book looks like it would be a great help for me to get started!

Baby steps

I was really hoping to post a lot more progress on the office/craft room organization challenge, but haven't made as much progress as I hoped. However, I am making baby steps!

Here is one small thing I accomplished this past weekend:
Before:
After:
And here is a couple toss piles that came out of the office:
I also filled a small box and working on a big box of things to sell/donate. Unfortunately we have so much stuff it seems like we haven't even made a dent! Hopefully this weekend will be full of productivity. I designed a shelf that I am hoping maybe we can build this weekend to store some of my scrapbooking items.

I am also looking for some ideas for storage for our closet.

I found this image from Country Living:
I am thinking about making a gift wrap storage similar to this on a wall in the closet.

I am also going to make a coupon binder for organizing my coupons, if I can find some trading card pages. I got a binder that zips up and some dividers, and hope to get some trading cards pages in the next couple days. So hopefully I will have some pictures of that to post up soon also.

Menu Plan Monday - Feb 8th

So I said a while back that I wanted to start doing Menu Plan Monday, but I haven't ever gotten around to it. So today I decided I am going to make a menu for this week. I am not sure if I will stick to it, but since I am planning to grocery shop for it today, hopefully it means we will at least have something in the house to eat this week!

Monday: Chicken Spaghetti

Tuesday: Country Style Pork Ribs BBQed in oven with baked potatoes

Wednesday: Leftovers

Thursday: Grilled Cheese and noodles of some kind

Friday: Turkey chili for frito pies

Saturday: frozen pizza

Sunday: Meatloaf with mashed potatoes (a V-day meal for DH since it is his favorite)

Feeling guilty...

So I created this blog as a way to hopefully keep myself accountable for actually getting some organizing done around here. Well I did get a tiny bit done today, and I did take pictures, but have not loaded them onto the computer yet, so will save them for tomorrow and will hopefully have much more progress to post along with it.

I enjoy reading blogs about organizing/crafts/decorating/whatever it is, but where also you feel like you get to know a bit about the person writing the blog. So tonight I will share a bit about how I have been feeling lately, and maybe some other moms can relate.

I have been feeling really guilty lately because I have baby fever already. My son is not even a year old, but I am already thinking about having another baby (we are planning on waiting a while before trying again). I think it has been creeping up on me as the months go by since my son's birth, but has hit me even more since the beginning of January when my baby boy started crawling! I say everyday how much I miss my tiny baby. I miss him curling up and cuddling on mommy and I even miss my big belly and feeling him kick before he was born. I think this is why I am so anxious for another, but yet I know it won't cure anything, because #1 my Mason will still be growing up at a rate that is much too fast for Mommy, and #2 it will happen all over again as baby #2 grows up. I know that I really do want to wait before trying again. I want to spend this time enjoying Mason as baby and focusing on him, and it makes me feel so guilty to be already wanting another one like it's not fair to Mason. I really do enjoy watching him grow up and seeing his personality develop and his smiles and giggles and all his milestones, but I will forever miss holding the tiny baby boy I brought home from the hospital.

This evening Mason actually laid on me and fell asleep which is a very rare occurrence since he has learned to crawl, because now he just wants to go everywhere and as long as someone is holding him he is more likely to fight sleep even when he is really tired. I can't believe at 8 months old, how independent my baby boy is already becoming. I miss my cuddly boy that I could pick up and cuddle him to sleep whenever and where ever. It made me very happy to have that moment with him tonight, I really needed it.

Mommy and Mason:
One week old:


one month old:
January 16, nearly 8 months old:

Organization Progress!

I decided to start out the 28-day challenge with my desk! This is where I try to keep my calendar and where all my bills and such go and it stresses me out to have to go searching for bills or paperwork needed for something or other, so last night I decided to get started with my desk...now let's see if I can keep it this way!

I have 4 paper trays that I have just always stuck stuff on. I have now decided to label them (will hopefully be done this evening if my husband brings me a label maker from work) so that they will have specific purposes and I can no longer just put throw things on it.

The top tray is for incoming, so if DH brings in the mail, or brings me receipts he can put them on the top tray. The 2nd tray will be for outgoing, things that need to go in the mail. The 3rd tray is the "to do" tray, such as bills that need to be paid, paper for filing taxes, etc. The bottom tray is the "to file" tray so I can put things in there and hopefully I will make time at least once a week to file everything from the bottom tray.

Before:
After:
And now this is what my craft table looks like after clearing everything off my desk:

28 Day Organization Challenge

One month down already, and I haven't gotten much accomplished towards my goal of getting and staying organized. Orgjunkie.com is hosting a 28-day organizing challenge and I am thinking that this is just the motivation I need to actually accomplish some things this month.

I have so many places to choose from, but my office/craft room is the area frustrating me most at the moment. I always feel like I am forgetting something because I have so much stuff piled on my desk I am afraid I will lose a bill or something. It is also frustrating when I want to work on sewing or scrapbooking and have to do so much moving things around just to find a space to work. So I am hoping posting some "before" pictures will make me accountable for actually getting this room organized this month.

Here is a picture of my desk:

This is my husband's area:
This sink cabinet was here when we bought the house...this is that area:
This is my craft areas, a table and a work bench. These pictures were taken in January in preparation for this challenge they have been cleaned up just a little since these pictures were taken so that I could work on a sewing project:
I am also including our office closet in my challenge of organizing this room, as that is were a lot of the stuff in the room will have to go. We previously took out the shelving that was in it and put in different shelves, but I don't really feel that it is very useful this way either, so likely it will all be ripped apart and redone yet again. It is very hard to get the camera to take good pics since it is very long and skinny with 2 doors, but here is a college of a couple pics from it so you can get an idea of what it looks like:

I will try to post some progress pictures as I accomplish things this month and hope that I have a completely transformed room to show you in 27 days!