Bathroom Redo Project

I have been after my husband that I think we should put a frame around the mirror in our main bathroom, the girls' bathroom. He didn't agree. he did not like the examples that I showed him like here. Finally he admitted that he just didn't like the wide framing around the mirror. Oh, silly boy, we can do thin framing instead. Then ideas started to flow of what we wanted to do: a new shower curtain, paint, move the shelf, redecorate, put in a new light fixture, and restain the cabinet. I meant and said that I wanted to do all of this over summer vacation. Nope, not my husband. When he has a project in mind, he wants it done then and quickly. So over Christmas Break, he decided to get started on the project while I was sleeping. In fact, he wanted to complete it all in one night. This did not happen. He completed almost the entire project by himself. I was recuperating from a surgery and could not help. My husband did an amazing job. I can't wait to show you. Here is a link to the before.

Now for the reveal:

Looking into the bathroom, this is what you see. Doesn't it look like a completely different room with the frame around the mirror? Oh how I love to look in this room now.

 We moved our Target shelf to the wall above the toilet. We looked for something different to use, but either did not like anything or it was out of our price range. I don't mind the white and actually like it in there, but my husband would prefer something that was the color of the cabinet and frame. Each of the buckets from Target Dollar Spot are labeled using my Cricut. They are from left to right and top to bottom: neosporin, clippers, temps (thermometer wouldn't fit), q-tips, floss, and band-aids.

 Below the towels are the basket to hold toilet paper rolls. It's a tight squeeze for three, but it works. The basket came from TJ Maxx for $6.99 and is called a kitchen basket.

 I found the printables online (I can't find from which blog right now. If you know please let me know so that I can give proper credit.) and the frames are from Costco.

 Another bucket from Target's Dollar Spot (love those). This has the essentials such as mouthwash, lotion, hair detangler, and deodorant.

 Another basket from you guessed it...Target's Dollar Spot. This is to corral the hand soap, toothbrushes, and timer for brushing the teeth.

 A printable for the definition of bath online (I can't find from which blog right now. If you know please let me know so that I can give proper credit.) and frame also from Costco.

 Shower curtain purchased on Black Friday from JCPenney.

 The view sideways from the doorway.

 The view with me included. Just realized that this is the only picture with the light fixture partway in there. Ooops forgot to take one. Trust me it's much cuter than the builder's special we had going on in there.

 Under the sink, another basket from Target. This one contains a basket holding ponytail holders, brushes, and a hairstyle book.

 This basket holds curlers and cleaning wipes. The drawers hold the hair things.

 Here's the cabinet after the restaining. Isn't it gorgeous? My husband really did an amazing job!

 And a side view of the cabinet.

Cleaning, Project 365, Scrapbooking, and Grandmas

Well, I did it. I went into the scrapbook room to clean. Let me just say that a layout I did on Halloween was still sitting on the table covered by a pile of stuff. It got so bad that the girls just started putting things on the floor when I asked them to put something in there.

More than one I have wanted to create something, but I didn't want to do the work necessary to make an empty spot on the table. I even had Christmas presents that I hadn't put away yet. Now the room is not organized completely, but then I honestly don't know if it ever will be.

After putting things away, I actually made a layout.

The journalling says: Why do I go so long without creating something? I love to craft, I have a space, I have lots of supplies, but I don't create. I love how I feel after i create something, but I still don't do it often enough. Why? So hopefully with this new clean space, I will actually go in there and create. Even organizing my pictures would be wonderful.

Project 365 March 1 and March 2 did not occur. I do not know what happened. I thought I had only missed one day, but it actually was two. The way I see it is that this is my project. If I miss a day, I can extend the project that much longer or I can use more than one picture from another day. Less stress that way.

I did take pictures today, but I can't decide which one of these two I would like to be my picture.

I feel blessed to have this quilt. I can remember my grandma telling me about this quilt and seeing it on her bed. All of the patterned fabric was from my grandma and her sister's clothes growing up. I am not sure who actually started the quilt. But I do know that ladies who were in the nursing home with my great-grandma helped finish the quilt. My grandma loved this quilt and wished that she could sew. In fact she wished she could sew beautiful clothes like a girl that she grew up with was able to do.

After my grandma died and my grandfather was going into assisted living, their house was put up for sale. Family members were allowed to take a few things after the auction happened. Different people wanted different things. I didn't plan on taking anything. I went so I could take pictures of my favorite parts of the house. I did get those pictures and I have scrapbooked them. While I was taking pictures, I noticed the quilt on the floor. Different people were either walking right by it or even on it. I don't think they realized what it actually was. At that point, I asked if I could have it. As you can see, I got it.

I do have plans for it. The quilt was made into a bedspread. I want to cut the ruffled sides off and bind the quilt. Now I have to figure out what fabric to use for the binding and actually complete the binding. Then I want my family to use the quilt and know where it came from. I miss my grandparents and this quilt makes me feel just a little bit closer to them.

Laundry Room Organization

Over Christmas Break, the husband and I reorganized the laundry room. This is after the previous organization that I had posted earlier.

Now some things are not that different, but really needed to be redone due to lack of keep-up.

We were able to get some cherry slot/slat board for free. So that was put up quite a bit ago, just never pictured. Adult coats and jackets are on top with children coats on the bottom. Adult shoes are on the two racks to the left. Children shoes are on the twirling rack. We just went through the shoes and donated what didn't fit. Somehow the girls grew out of almost all of their shoes seemingly overnight.

Close up of the coats and shoes.

The container to the left holds the beach towels. the green basket has goggles. These are only used during swim lessons during the summer, but I really don't feel the need to move that stuff into storage and then back out when we need it because it really doesn't take up that much room. I FINALLY labeled the bins so there is no reason for things not being put away correctly. I used my Cricut Expression and vinyl for the labels. The brown basket on top is for gloves that do not have matches at this particular time. Melodye's and Brooke's bins are for soccer stuff.

Here is the storage area. This area was my nemesis. I hated it. It had gotten so I would have to pull boxes out to get to the ones behind them. So I then just started throwing things wherever there was room. Now each row of bins is for a particular holiday with Christmas having two rows.

These bins were also labeled. The taxes bins, of course hold previous years tax information. When I put a year in, I take the oldest year out. So my tax information will not ever be any larger than these two bins. The bins with the girls' names are for school papers. There is a hanging file folder for each year of school. When the girls bring home papers I want to keep, I put them in a drawer of the buffet in the dining room. Every few months I go through the papers. The ones I still want to keep go into the file. I keep things with their handprints, special writings (especially showing their personality), etc.

In order to make present wrapping better, I bought two more bins and labeled them. Now we can grab the bin for exactly what we need without having to dig through other things.

I convinced the hubby that I needed a better bookcase. I had a little bookcase and books were piled in front of each other. We bought one white bookcase, moved the old one in Melodye's room, and moved her white bookcase downstairs. I love the look of the books all arranged. The bookcases are behind the heater and water heater. They fact the storage area.

So now it is January 13 and the laundry room is still looking like this. In my book that is a successful reorganization.

Toy Room Reorganization

Tommy and I spent some time in the toy room organizing it. The girls had semi-quasi-cleaned it. Which meant that they picked everything up off of the floor and shoved it somewhere. At first glance it was straightened, but I could not handle the way it was. Also, the girls said that they could not be able to tell their friends where to put everything. So reorganizing had to happen. Now the toy room was organized previously as shown in this post, but things had to change with all the things the girls had grown out of and donated.

This is the view to the left of the door. Now I didn't get any close up pictures of the basket and art cart, but they are labeled. This is quite an accomplishment that all of the labeling did occur. The basket categories are Build-A-Bear clothes, Horses, Mr. Potato Head, Super Hero Stuff, Animals, People, Vehicles, and an empty basket. The cart with the pink drawers holds all of the art materials like crayons, markers, glue, etc. The white carts hold odds and ends right now. The kitchen stuff used to be in them and we have not repurposed them other than holding coloring books on top and construction paper in a drawer.

This is the right far corner. The train table does not hold trains anymore. It is now the lego table. Stuffed animals are on the shelf. They have an addiction to small stuffed animals, especially dogs and cats. Swords and light sabers are in the bin next to the lego table. Baby dolls are in the beds. Brooke got rid of all of her baby dolls except for her American Girl Twins.

This is to the right of the door. The closet is in the corner. Then we have an easel from Ikea.

The closet finally has a rod to hang the costumes. There is a stool for the shorter kids to be able to reach the costumes. The container on the shelf is holding the trains until we can give them to someone who will use them. The white cart that hold the dress up jewelry and crowns from the earlier post is still being used on the right side of the closet, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

And then we have the door to enter and exit the room. I love it being a pocket door. I love being able to see what the kids are doing without going in the room. I wish that the kids would learn not to put their hands and faces all over the door.

January 2010 Monthly Goals

 
The New Year has officially started. 2010 ... amazing ... and going to be difficult to remember to write. I have thought long and hard about New Years Resolutions. Deciding how I would like to do them and keep them with keeping them being the ultimate goal. Well I read something earlier today and sadly I don't remember where, although it might have been a Facebook post or not. Basically it said why set New Years Resolutions only once a year, every day is a new day with all these possibilities. I really like that thought, but setting resolutions each day will get old really quick. So I have decided to set goals/resolutions a month at a time. I figure in that amount of time (28 to 31 days depending on the month) I will have time to achieve my goals and if I don't achieve them completely I am able to adjust them for the next month.

So here are my goals for the month of January 2010:

1. Actually complete Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred. I have completed Day 1 and that is a real start.

2. Do not eat out for the whole month. Now this is a whole family resolution. Tommy has said that he is on board. Now I just have to get the girls on board. I figure this will be beneficial in eating healthier, spending less, and planning our time better.

3. Get our savings account built back up to a comfortable amount. Now this means watching our spending, continuing using coupons in the combination with sales, but mostly being mindful of how we are spending our money.

4. Keep up with the house cleaning and organization. Now don't get me wrong ... the house never gets that bad, but enough to annoy us. We spent our Christmas Break cleaning, organizing, and purging. I would like for us to keep up with this and in the process all of us will be in better moods. (The only room that didn't get done was the scrapbook room so I am going to make that a priority. Who am I kidding? It is always last on the cleaning priority list, but I am going to try to get it cleaned and organized by the end of the month.)

5. Work on the February Lady Sweater. Now I would love to say finish it, but I do not know if that is realistic. I started it in the spring and it has now been sitting for months and months. So I am not even sure where I am on it right now. Good news though, I did finish my Alice scarf which had no reason to take so long other than laziness.

Labor Day Pipe Dreams

I don't know about other teachers. But for me, Labor Day is viewed as a chance to get things done at home and for my classroom that I do not normally have time for. Oh picnics are nice and wonderful, but I dream of whole days getting things done because everyone else has plans and then use Monday as a day to do stuff at home that I enjoy. Now this pipe dream never comes completely into fruition. But I can always hope and dream because that always makes my day better if I keep hope alive.

Here are some example of things I would like to accomplish:

• I would like to go through Brooke's closet and dresser to pull out all of the clothes that she has completely outgrown which is most of them. She has outgrown clothes that were bought at the beginning of summer. GRRRRR stop growing so fast!!!!! (You are supposed to be my baby not my amazon girl.)
• Clean Brooke's room so that she has no excuse as to why she can't keep it clean.
• Go through Melodye's closet and dresser. Give Brooke any clothes that will fit her that Melodye still hasn't worn and has tags on it. Get any skorts that are too short for her out of her room. She thinks if there is still room in the waist they fit. But she is so skinny they never fit in the waist, her butt hangs out instead and no just because there are shorts under there does not make it okay.
• Organize Mel's room so that there is no reason why she can't keep it clean.
• Go through my clothes.
• Transfer all pictures off the cameras (I have to find the little one first). Label and order all of these pictures. Back up the pictures.
• Cut and file coupons. (I am so behind it is not funny.)
• Go through organize and label boxes for school. I had help packing last year and all of the boxes didn't get labeled.

Now that was just home stuff. For school, I would like to:

• Get Tommy to make dividers for my big book rack. The ones I have will not hold up the books.
• The boxes for school also need to be listed here.
• Make homework packets.
• Redo my lesson plan form.
• Set up my grade book.
  
• Update my grade book.
• Get some decorative things for classroom done.
• Make some center for next week. (I need to start looking further ahead to see what I need.)
• Some other stuff in my bag that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Once I get necessary stuff done. I would like to:

• Scrapbook
• Read
• Sew
• Just enjoy myself
• Go to Lopez family picnic on Sunday.
• Watch the first disc of Veronica Mars Season 1.

Of course, I won't get all of this done, but I do like to have those pipe dreams and hope that I can become a super hero and finish all of this. I also would like to start blogging again. I am missing it.

Recipe Organization

Laura at Organizing Junkie had the theme of Recipe Organization for February. Let me tell you, I really needed this theme. I have been planning what I wanted to do with my recipes for years, but never got around to it. I wanted these beautiful scrapbooked recipes with pictures of the food I had prepared. But I think I have reached a compromise and I actually did finish.

The before shelf. This shelf is above the stove and microwave. Lots of recipes, but never really used.

The first thing I did was find the actual recipes that we regularly used. I was able to find a very cute recipe binder at Hallmark. And to make it even better, it was marked down 50% because there was a tiny bit of glue on the front cover. I didn't even notice it until the cashier pointed it out.

I used the recipe cards the binder came with. And yes I do believe that they are just as cute as the binder.

Next I went through and found all of the recipes that I wanted to try. I put all of them in a binder. But that wasn't enough for me. So I scrapbooked the front of the binder.

The recipes inside the Recipes To Try binder are just hole punched and put in. I didn't want to use page protectors. I figure once the recipes are tried and liked they will be written on the recipe cards and added to the Tried and True Recipe binder.

The binder is organized by Side Dishes which also includes appetizers and anything even close to a side dish.

The next section of the binder is the Main Dishes.

Lastly we have the Desserts section.

This pile is the recipes that I went through and am ready to depart with, but Tommy has to go through them first to see if there is anything he would like us to try.

This the Recipe Shelf After Shot.

Desk and Filing Cabinet Reorganization

Once again, the month has ended and Organizing Junkie's Monthly Round-Up is happening again. The focus this time was the office area. Our computer desk is in out kitchen/dining room. The computer is located there so that we can always see what the girls are doing on the computer. The problem with it being there is that it is easy to stack things up and they tend to leave things there.

So here are some before and after pictures.

This is the desk beforehand. The filing cabinet is to the right, but it will be shown later. The desk is messier than we really like.

The first thing I did was move the desk and filing cabinet to the wall next to where it was. I tend to organize better when I start over from scratch. I then pulled everything but the computer and printer off the desk. The top shelf is holding DVDs, a basket with paper, writing utensils, and scissors, a basket holding odds and ends, extra sharpie markers, and extra paper. The second shelf has the external hard drive, air in a can, tissues turned sideways so the girls can reach, bins with ipod extras and tape, coupon binder, cd box, and binder with computer games. The desk top has the monitor, speakers, printer, and a stack of papers on the left that are receipts for my husband to go through.

This is the filing cabinet before.

I had my husband hang the letter holder. I have been looking for a different one, but I haven't been able to find one that I like. We finally decided to just continue using the one that we have had since the early 90's. The paper sorters have printer paper on the top shelf, the second one has resume paper and writing paper, the third shelf has photo paper and labels, the fourth shelf has file folders, and the last shelf has scrap paper. The scrap paper is extra papers from school that I use the back to print coupons and for the girls to draw on when they want paper. The blue file organizer next to the paper sorters is for anything tax related for the current year. I will be putting another one there to keep the current years receipts in. I am not showing the inside of the filing cabinet. I only have the current year files in the files. Every January I empty it out and get things ready for taxes. So I did not make any changes from usual in there. If anyone wants to know how the drawer is labeled, just ask and I will share.

This is the counter between the kitchen and dining room. We are really bad about piling things there until we decide to deal with them. This is a problem for both of us. But I have made it a goal this year to keep it clean. It has been cleaned off a couple of times so far this year.

This is the counter after. There are still a few things that need to be put away. The items include Melodye's nutcracker and a Christmas ornament that need to go in the Christmas stuff downstairs, a CD holder that my husband got from my parents, two bibs knitted for the neighbors, a camera, and a candle.

This may not look like it is organized, but there is a purpose to papers being on the chair. These are papers that need to be shredded. Our shredder can only do 6 sheets at a time and then needs to rest. I put the papers on the chair so that I will see it and shred it each time. The stack is much smaller than what it was at the beginning of January. These are all the bills and records that are from last year that we do not need for taxes. If I put the papers on the desk, table, or counter I would not remember to shred them or I would just pile something on top of them and forget about the pile.

I feel so much better about getting this assignment finished. I can't wait for the next month's of assignement of recipes. I have gathered my recipes in a file a couple of years ago, but have never done anything with them. Hopefully this month I can do a little bit at a time instead of doing it all in one day like usual. LOL