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!