The Beginning

Today was the beginning. The beginning of back to work for me and the beginning of back to daycare for Brooke. Brooke was not ready to go back today. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I had meetings all day today. Tomorrow I will be working on my classroom and getting ready for the kids. I hope I can get everything done tomorrow that I need, but I don't know. At least I hope I get all of the kids things finished and make it look like everything else is finished, which is more probable. The kids start Wednesday. I really hope . . . no I know I will have a really good class this year.

I am still taking Cake Decorating classes. I am in the middle of Course 2. I haven't much of a chance to practice, but I will be making Brooke's birthday cake for her party on Sunday. Which reminds me, I need to make the cake and figure out how I am decorating it.

Soccer has started for Melodye. Three days of practice this week and the first game is Sunday right after Brooke's party. Soccer doesn't start for Brooke for a few weeks. We still need to find time to sell the raffle tickets. I keep forgetting about them.

Melodye goes back to school for third grade on Monday. Brooke goes back to preschool on Tuesday. At least then we can come up with a routine and stick with it.

Last night we took Mel to the store to get gym shoes for school. The girl is wearing a size 5. She just turned 8, how can she be wearing a 5. When we found that out, she was excited but I apologized in advance to her that she got her big feet from me ( size 12).

***I tried to add a picture to this post but I kept getting an internal error message. Oh well, some other day.

Loads of Fun

Tonight I had fun making different Manga Avatars for my family. I found the link through this blog.


So without further ado, here I am in all of my glory.


This is my dear husband, Tommy.

Then of course we have Melodye with her new glasses on that she picked up today.

And we cannot forget cute Brooke with her favorite thing . . . a skull.

Closet organization Pictures . . . . . Finally

The coloring may be off in these. I used overhead lighting and the flash.

Here is the view of Melodye's bedroom as you walk in there. The picture above her bed was bought at Shipshewana on the Road. The Picture to the left of that Mel drew in Kindergarten. The bedding is from Bed Bath and Beyond two years ago. The curtains are from Ikea last year.

This is the view from the corner where the bed is. The bedroom furniture is from Harlem Furniture: The Room Place. The laundry hamper is about five years old. The clock is a "my Melody" clock. Mel has plenty of drawer space left to grow.
This is a view of the bookcase. The top three shelves are webkinz that have been put into categories. The next shelf has books and I Dogs, ICats, and Icy the Penguin. The bottom two shelvers has books.
Here is her desk with Webkinz on top. The shelf has things sorted according to what Melodye decided. The hutch has a bulletin board built in. On top of the desk are two bulletin board waiting to be hung up.The desk chair is from Ikea. Here is her newly installed closet organizer. On the left he have dresses and skirts with a shelf of stuffed animals. On the floor on the left is her American Girl Doll and bed. Up at the top of the organizer is a shelf with things that will not be accessed regularly like her keepsake box. In the middles we have the first shelf with extra blankets. The next shelf has pillows. Then a shelf of Webkinz. Then a shelf of craft kits. The bottom shelf has American Girl Doll clothes and other craft items. On the right of the top are extra hangers, and out of season clothes. The bottom pole has her current clothes with a shelf of stuffed animals above.

Enough of Melodye's room. Here is the Master Bedroom Closet. On the left I had Tommy hang the rod a little lower because I do not have full length dresses. The height is measured to fit my dresses. Although skirts and his dress clothes are there. The shelf above has some purses and out of season clothes waiting to be put under the bed when we get bed risers. The high shelf above everything else is a good place to put birthday presents. On the right my clothes are on on top sorted by color while his clothes on the bottom are sorted by the type of shirt. We each decided our own system.In the middle we have a few sweatshirts, extra hangers, duvet covers, and sheets. I have to give a shout out to a lady that had posted on Organizing Junkie on how she folds sheet sets. I tried it and it is amazing. I will try to add a link later. I am falling asleep while posting this.
This is the bottom view of our linen closet. Self explanatory I think, but feel free to ask questions.
The top view of the linen closet.
I sorted the kids toys in the garage. I pulled things out of the wagon since we used to store things in it. It is to the left of this area and easy to pull out as needed. The top shelf has a watering can and life jackets. The next shelf has Frisbees, bubbles, inline skates and baseball gloves. The last shelf has chalk, a basket with small balls, and a basket with soccerballs for practices. On the ground is a rubbermaid container filled with balls. To the left is a mini garbage container holding wiffle bats and rackets.

I apologize for any ramblings or misspellings. I have been actually falling alseep completing this post.

Question

Well I was going to post my Summer Goal List and what I accomplished. But I can't figure out how to use a strikethrough for my font. I think you can do it in the new version of blogger, but I can't remember how to get to the new version. Anyone want to enlighten me on this I would really appreciate it.

Brooke's Closet and Bedroom Organized

Now I did forget to take a before picture of the closet, but this is everything that was in the closet. The closet was exactly what we had when we moved in the house: a pole and a shelf.



A picture of the mess from the closet.

Another view of the room with the mess from the closet.

These pictures are out of order. But this is a view of her room after the closet was finished. Laundry hamper is from Bed Bath and Beyond about 3 years ago. The lid doesn't work too well because the girls like to get in the hamper and hide. (They're crazy). The inside of the dresser has been reorganized to help Brooke now that she wants to get her clothes. The bottom drawer has pants, skirts, capris, and shorts. The third drawer has pajamas and underwear. The second drawer has tights, socks, and soccer socks in bins. The top drawer has blankets and pillows for daycare.

Here is a view of the corner of Brooke's room with a partial view of her closet.

Another corner of her room.

Here is Brooke showing off her closet. The shelf holds things that are not used that often like her keepsake box and 3 pairs of pants that are way too big. There's room to grow on that shelf. The top rod has out of season clothes. The bottom rod on the left has dresses. The bottom rod on the right has the rest of Brooke's clothes. The main point of this reorganization was to make clothes where Brooke can reach without a stool and without breaking hangers. She has broken quite a few hangers pulling out the clothes she wants in the last year. The middle section has 6 areas. The top one has her breathing machine and accessories. The second shelf has her extra sheets. We keep the extra sheets in the room they will be used because out linen closet isn't that big. (Note to self: take picture of reorganized linen closet.) The third shelf has Webkinz. The fourth shelf also has Webkinz. The fifth shelf has an extra comforter. I love having that just in case Brooke has an accident or if someone stays the night. The bottom shelf has two sleeping bags just in case someone stays the night again. There was a change after this picture was talking. I had Tommy put 2 more shelves (evenly spaced) between the pole on the left side and the top shelf. He did a great job with this closet organizer.

This is Brooke's bookshelf that actually holds books. Brooke was having a hard time putting books away. So I went through and sorted them by size. I then took these containers and put the books inside of them. Now Brooke is able to find books easily and put them away just as easily. With this system Brooke is starting to read or look at books that she never knew that she had since she couldn't see them.

I hope you enjoyed seeing Brooke's room.

Upcoming pictures of organization projects are the master bedroom closet, Melodye's room and closet, the linen closet, and my scrapbook room

Just FYI I am a teacher and have the summers off. The summer is my time for going through the house and reorganizing things and decluttering. We started off the summer decluttering. I am now focusing in on the reorganizing, but I am running out of time. I go back to work officially a week from Monday. I usually go back before that. I wanted to explain this so that people aren't thinking that I do projects like this all year round. I am going to have to post my list of what I wanted to get done this summer and what I actually accomplished. Then it will be obvious I have a long way to go.

If You Give Jen A Closet Organizer

No pictures this post, but they are coming with some before pictures when I remembered.

Saturday

We purchased some closet organizers. Brooke's was put in first and modified to add more shelves. While I was finishing Brooke's closet, Tommy started taking our old organizer out which means no before picture. Our old organizer is going to Melodye. He puts in our new organizer and adds more shelves to keep me happy. It really looks wonderful, trust me. By this time it was late. So there are piles in the room of things to donate, winter clothes, things to put elsewhere, etc. We left those thinking we would finish today.

Sunday

We started on Melodye's room. Before her closet can be done, the room has to be moved around so that we can bring the dresser out of the closet. Her room has way too much stuff in it because I was not able to help her last summer (thyroid problems big time). So I start moving things around while everyone else was gone. The cheap dresser that we bought four years ago starts falling apart when I moved it. The middle support came undone. One drawer has already fallen completely apart. When Tommy gets home, I explain what happened. We decide to go to Babies R Us to look for any dressers on clearance. (That's how we got Brooke's and it is a good sturdy dresser. She has even stood in the drawers to get something without a problem.) They do not have anything. In fact they are starting to carry some cheaply made dressers. We decide to go to Harlem Furniture: The Room Place to look for a dresser. We end up finding a dresser we like. It is part of a floor sample sale. In fact the entire room was on clearance. We ended up buying a bed, chest of drawers, dresser, mirror, nightstand, desk, and hutch for almost 50% off. We discussed it and didn't feel we could pass up the deal with interest free for 12 months. So this means that I had to move everything out of her room. Move the new furniture in and find the appropriate arrangement. We have gotten about 50% of her things moved back in. She is deciding where everything is going. And no her closet organizer has not been put in and I am not sure when it will be.

Tomorrow I will be finishing up getting everything back in Melodye's room and put away in my room. It probably will take most of the day.

Weird thing happened Saturday. I received a letter saying that I had registered for a teaching workshop, but I hadn't. It is paid for and local. But as I researched it, I found out that I am registered for a 3rd to 6th grade workshop and I teach Kindergarten. I have to find out if it was my school that registered me and if I can change me session to the one the day before that will really benefit me. It is on "Launching the Writer's Workshop" which will be more meaningful than :Targeting the Test Writing Genre." Wish me luck with the change.

I also have to call Verizon. For some reason my texts from Borders are being blocked. I need those texts for my coupons. LOL

Problem Solved

Looks like the problem has been solved. So I have put the counter back on. We will see how it goes.

Problems

So I found out the reason I could not access my blog and many others were due to problems with SiteMeter. So I have removed the counter temporarily until the problems have been resolved. Thank you to Money Saving Mom for posting about the problem.

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

I can't wait for this to come out. It really looks good. Maybe this will be the first one I actually get to see at the theater.