Sunday, June 12, 2011

What About the In-Betweens?

We always see the before and after pictures, but what about the in-between pictures when life is actually being lived?  Welp, here's my in-betweens.  This is what my place looks like RIGHT NOW without any staging or extra cleaning or organizing.  Here's a naked look at my place on a random Sunday night at 10:00.


Looking into the kitchen from the living room. 


Kitchen table cleared off as usual.  I find that it really helps family dinner time if the table is already cleared and clean.


Kitchen counter (yep, I'm that short on counter space)



Cleared refrigerator front, stove and microwave.  All wiped down and ready for action.



Living room.  Not perfect, but it'll do for tonight.

 
Nice and clear hallway.  No tripping in the middle of the night for me.

My bed is made and ready for sleepy time.


So, there ya go.  This is what my place looks like on a random night.  Sorry for the crappy pics, but since it's 10:00 at night I have zero natural light to help with my usual level of crappy quality of pics.  What does your place look like on a random night?  Anyone brave enough to blog about it?  :)

Friday, June 10, 2011

Master Bedroom Closet Make Over

I am so excited to post about my bedroom closet today.  It's one of my favorite rooms in my place.  I like to sit in there and read, do projects, blog on my laptop, etc.  My bedroom closet is big.  For the size of our place it is really big.  We actually turned it into a nursery when DD2 was born.  Yep, it's that big.  After we moved her into the same room as DS5 the closet became, well, a mess.  We took the baby stuff out (for the most part) and started the bad habit of dumping and running when it came to that closet. 

Here's the view from the door way into the closet.  I'll go from the right to left so you can get the full effect.  :)



My girl over at Family of Monkeys has a handy hubby.  I've actually known her hubby for 15 years or so.  He not only found this awesome shelving unit for FREE he also installed it for me for FREE.  SCORE!
(Remember I don't stage any of my pics :D ) On the top shelf we have presents to be given out later during the year.  I like to buy ahead with a specific person in mind. The next shelf down we have most of my shoes.  These are the pairs that I don't wear on a weekly basis.  Those are on the shoe mats by the front door.  I love that I put my back-stock of shoes in clear plastic boxes.   It makes they very easy to organize by color and type.  It also makes it very easy to grab and go when I need to locate a pair in a hurry.  The next shelf is my photo stuffs.  Here I have my scrap booking material and most of my photos.  On the bottom shelf I have the kid's DVD players (the black things on the left), more photos, and 3 clear plastic totes filled with items such as tape, scissors, my thank you note writing station, etc. All the way on the right is the leaf for my kitchen table.  Sometimes I have to stick things in undesirable spaces because of my lack of space.  That is one of them.  And finally we have my laundry sorter.  I LOVE, love, love my laundry sorter.  Honestly, I don't know how I lived so long without one.

  A closer look of the shelves.

And my beloved laundry sorter. To the left of my laundry sorter are the kids toys that I have rotated out for a while.  I find that they play with their toys more if all their toys aren't out all the time and I rotate them for freshness.


My clothes are in this pic.  I hang all my shirts.  It looks like I have a lot of clothes, but I don't swap out seasonal items.  I leave them hang all year long.  I also have worked in the business world so I have a lot of business suites hanging on the right.  On the top shelf are my handbags, my teddy bear, Joanie, which I've had since I was born and my hubby's pants sorted into 2 piles.  Jeans and non-jeans.  The 3 drawer carts below used to by DD2's dressers.  Now they house clothes are to be grown into.

Hubby's shirts.  Admittedly he has less clothes than me, but really, he's a guy.  He doesn't need as much clothes as I do.  :)  On the top shelf you can see his folded jeans pile, my collection of Longaberger baskets are in the blue tote and all the was to the left are boxes full of glass stuffs that my Grandma insists on giving me, but I don't have any occasion to use them or anywhere to display them.

Carts on the right hold clothes to be grown into.  The black cart holds misc electronic stuffs and batteries.  The white cart on the left holds extra kitchen towels that my Grandma has embroidered for me (same Grandma as the glass Grandma.)

Storage.  Bottom 2 are Christmas ornaments.  Top 2 totes are important papers.



My pants and Nursing school textbooks  on the next shelf



The pictures on the wall are new.  Part of my New Years resolution was to put more things up on our walls.  I love the saying from Uppercase living, don't you?  See the pic all the way on the bottom left of the baby in the cowboy hat and boots?  That's me!  :)


 And what kind of mom would I be if I didn't include a pic of what DS5 made me for Mother's Day.

What do you think of my closet?  Yes?  No? Maybe so?  Can you think of any ways I can better organize the space?  I'm always open to suggestions!!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Please Leave a Comment :)

Hi and thanks for stopping by.  I hope you enjoy your time here.  Please feel free to leave a comment.  I loves me some comments.  I'd love to read your blog (if you have one) so please leave me the link so I can stop by.  I can't wait to hear from ya.  :D

Friday, June 3, 2011

No Spending for 10 Days

Starts when we get back in town on Monday.  It's time to trim the fat off of our budget.  I figured there's no better way to accomplish that then not spend anything for 10 days and then we can see what we really need.  I'm not stocking up in any means for this event.  Actually we will be just getting back into town so it'll be really interesting to see how I can use up what we have in our cupboards for food and around the house for activities.  Now, realistically I know we can't go 10 days without spending anything at all 'cause we'll need gas to get to work, etc.  So, in the spirit of spending as little as we can I'm going to post here what I spend *if* I spend something that day.  This should be interesting....

Day 1 - $0

Day 2 - 50 cents parking downtown
             $46.37 gas for van (with fuel discount)

Day 3 - $0 On a side note our DVD player broke today.  This is a big deal since we don't have TV, but in thespirit of not spending we are waiting till the end of our 10 days to buy a new one.  Hopefully my kiddo's won't miss their 1 movie per day too much (and that I can keep my sanity without that reprieve that the DVD brings.)

Day 4 - $4 parking downtown

Day 5 - $9.11 The rest of birthday present for DSD14

Day 6 - $0

Day 7 - $47.61 gas for van (with fuel discount)
             $9.06 Wendy's (we had guests over for lunch and I didn't plan ahead to make enough for the extra ppl)