Throwing out the last year, literally.

Happy New Year, folks! 

Did you have a glorious night of fun with friends and family? Or did you sit in front of your computer beating a video game like I did? (And crying because it was a sad story!)

I wanted to finish up 2013 in a nice, clean organized way so that I could start the new year refreshed and feeling accomplished. I stuck to my goal of getting the Christmas decor down last Friday which led to re-organizing and cleaning up two closets that evening. Then Saturday I went to the Dollar Store and got some more organizational materials to do some more work! My husband was a big help in getting the decor put away and helping me move and lift stuff up high (I'm so glad he's tall).

I managed to get all the closets in order this weekend except the office closet because I don't even know how to start. Most of it isn't my stuff and I have no idea what to do with it.

But the linen closet is in line with the help of some fabric cubes I snagged for $4 at the dollar store (they are between $5 and $10 at Target so it seemed like a steal to me!)

I walked into the kitchen to do some dishes, and when I opened my cabinet to get a detergent packet I decided it was not to my liking...

So I yanked out all the crap under it and grabbed my contact paper.

Then I grabbed the rejected desk organizers & a matching waste basket to stuff things like sponges, gloves and such in. Now it is pretty and organized!

Of course I couldn't stop there. Even though I haven't gotten half the stuff I want for kitchen organization...

So I gutted the drawers filled with potholders, towels and aprons and moved them around and pulled out a grocery bag's worth of towels to be tossed or donated. I moved the aprons to the bigger drawer (I have a few aprons...) and stacked up the other stuff nice and neat in order by time of use. [That last part sounds weird but it just means that the Christmas and Halloween towels are in the back since those days are further away.]

Then I stopped myself because the rest of the kitchen needs to wait till I have made my Ikea trip. (And I still hadn't started the dishwasher...)

Apparently my organization/cleaning sickness is contagious though, because my husband started cleaning his desk that night. It snowballed (maybe with my help) and the end result was this:

The whole reason I wanted an "L" shaped desk was so I could work on the section opposite my computer, but it was piled up with the printer and a server underneath and I had no room. So Chris moved the server and the printer and now we both have desks that are quite clean!!

We also cleaned up the laundry room and got a rack to hang my cleaning supplies on.

The biggest accomplishment this week was purging, though. I am almost positive our garbage men hate us.

We took out 10 bags and 2 boxes of garbage! That of course includes Christmas and our normal weekly garbage, but GEEZ! That's is a lot of stuff! But don't worry, I didn't just throw away everything. I have multiple containers of items that I washed up and packed to be donated to my church for a missions fundraiser. And I am sure I will have more once spring gets here.

I still have so much to do, but I have to wait till my Ikea trip is over and a few things get moved. I'm really looking forward to all the accomplishments of this year, though! I have a good feeling about about 2014 and I hope you have a great year!!

Spring has come to save us all!

Well folks, it's finally spring. Thank the Lord! I had the worst case of cabin fever and probably some mild depression. I wrote the most depressing downer blog post and decided NOPE! Not gonna post it. I don't want to write people into a bad mood, but even though I didn't post it, writing it helped get a lot of that nasty stuff out of my system.

I bet you are all pumped for nice weather! We are having some nice weather this weekend and I have worn myself out!!

Friday I came home and jumped into old clothes and went on a gardening rampage. I cleaned out the flower bed (which has more rocks than dirt each year) and murdered the area around my lilies and mums to give them some room to breathe. I planted some seed I snagged at the Home & Garden show then I cleaned up the porch a bit before my husband kindly reminded me that food is pretty important.

Saturday my secret plans were to find some dress clothes for work and maybe do some more gardening or go buy a new wallpaper border for our bathroom. Instead, one thing led to another and I ended up making lots of flower arrangements, cleaning up the sidewalk, working in the shed and yanking up the outdoor carpet from the side porch.

Here are some of the flower-related stuff I did and the front porch. Just ignore the crazy spray painted carpeting, hopefully it will be removed later this year.

These I did just to add some flowery goodness to the counters in the kitchen. Took my husband's potion jars and stuffed plastic wrap down in them and filled with water. The look much better in person.

I hung these frames in the spare room and have yet to do anything with them. I saw a Pin on Pinterest of tiny arrangements hung as 3D art so I went with it. The pictures are pretty awful and I will probably switch out the flowers, but they were what I had to work with when I randomly decided to do this. I will never get over how the color of the walls appear in photos. It really isn't that loud in real life I don't think. Though it is pretty bright.

The tins were my grandmothers and I wanted to use them. I have tried doing multiple arrangements in them, or storing gardening tools in them, but it never looked right. I always think of non-vases (watering cans, wagons, toilets...) being used as vases as being an old country lady thing, but this just seemed right.

I really like lanterns... I don't know why. I saw this at Michael's and had a coupon in hand. I had to buy it. I just stuffed some Spanish Moss in the bottom (protip: use that crap outside cause it is messy!), stacked a couple mini grapevine wreaths to act as a nest (I used these for a kids craft project & had extra), and stuck a few floral bits around the sides.And DONE!

~*~*~*~

I have a lot of goals for the outside this summer and one of them includes this side porch. Since no one sees it really it's not going to be a show stopper, but it needs love. The outdoor carpet was gross and had moss like crazy so I hulked out and tore it all up in one piece. I should have gotten a picture of the before, but when you're in the moment you just go nuts.

From the back yard moving to the front.

From the front yard, the pipe on the left isn't staying there obviously...

The cracks and right side of the 2nd picture were completely covered in weeds, dirt, grime and moss. It's not perfect, but I think I did okay for a crazed lady with a snow shovel plowing them all down!

As you may notice the porch is pretty yellow from the adhesive. Most of it comes off with scraping, but the internet tells me I can grab a solvent for adhesive removal which I plan to do soon. If it still looks bad after, I found a tutorial on painting it which is about a two day project with no rain allowed. Ugh!

I'll take pictures as it progresses and once it looks more appealing I plan to load it up with flowers and such. I also want to do something along that retaining wall on the right, but I am still working on that one.

How do you dress up your porch for spring?

Accomplished

I feel very accomplished so far this weekend and I still have a few hours left! I was (against my own will) up at 7:30 am Saturday morning and by noon I had trimmed and mowed most of the yard, made a huge container of chicken noodle soup, painted a bookshelf, ran errands, did laundry, washed and put away dishes, painted some wall art, and worked on someone's DIY Christmas present (I have one present down for one person that I bought the last piece Friday!)

My husband experience the joy (frustration) of applying contact paper to cheap wood with me yesterday evening and when it was done there were a few problems but he just screamed "It's FINE! I'm DONE!"

While a close inspection would prove impurities, I am really happy with the over all results!

Before with the shelves removed (Cat in the way as usual)

After (Before I loaded it up)

Loaded with all our crap

I realize that in the photos with all the stuff on the shelf it isn't very impressive, but MAN does it make the room a lot more cheery! It is the brightest thing in this room and the most decorative.  We are hoping to fix that soon though!

I'm considering painting my paper trays red to spread the love, but that means another trip to (ugh) Wal-mart to get more paint.

What else can I get done before Monday!?

What did YOU accomplish this weekend?

Craziness!

I was gonna post Halloween-related stuff a long time ago, but in case you hadn't noticed, Hurricane Sandy was crazy and while we were fortunately not in the areas devastated we got some crazy weather. Disasters like this are terrible and I was thankful my New York friends were safe and sound unfortunately I know that the same cannot be said for everyone.

There are many ways to contribute to the Hurricane Relief via texting, outreach ministries through many churches, or even some of your favorite retailers.

Blizzard will be having a digital pet download up soon for WoW that will also result in contributions being made to relief funds.

With that being said, on with the recap. 

As I said we had odd weather, which included snow with about 4" here and 1-2' in the mountains. As a result of the weeks of nonstop rain and snow and slush and overall yuck, the postponed Trick or Treat to November 1. I guess since the kids were all suffering from cabin fever they were ravenous as well as I ran out of candy almost an hour before ToT was supposed to end. And I had a lot.

We also didn't have our normal Halloween party due to a bundle of issues that came up with everyone. 

But we had some wicked cool costumes this year!

My friend was Rose the Riveter and it was FANTASTIC! She even made a great backdrop for photos! 

I had planned on being Indiana Jones the year before but decided to do my gypsy costume first, so Indy was postponed to this year. My husband kept his costume hush hush, but when he walked in the room I laughed so hard and chuckled all night long.

 Harrison Ford x2!

He decided since I was going to be Harrison Ford he would be too! And his mom he worked hard making a really neat Han Solo costume. We didn't get pictures of every aspect of his costume, but she went to great lengths to create small pouches on the belt and many other little details.

After about 15 minutes of trying to get a good picture of Xerxes with the backdrop this was the only non-blurry one we could get. Cats aren't very good models.

In home decor news...

The spare room is coming along slowly since we can't get the furniture we need for it right now. But I did get some window treatments up and I have some ideas for wall decor with one piece waiting to be painted.

We have been doing some crazy cleaning lately too and my husband worked his butt off to clean the carpet. It looks brand new!!! I was astounded. I couldn't speak... I just spat out gibberish. My coworker suggested peroxide and holy crap! The results are amazing!!! Our carpet was horrendous in some areas and... wow.. I just... 

Wow.

Speaking of carpet, you may want to consider the below if you had new carpet within the last couple of years.

We had new carpet when we moved into our house (August 2010). After we moved in the furniture, the carpet fiber kicked up was a pain. We vacuumed so much that the vacuum became a mess and is now dead (it was brand new in 2007). The fibers are mostly gone from the carpet, but while I was upgrading my computer's OS I decided to clean out my keyboard. What did I find? (Besides chips and cat hair...)  CARPET! Lots of it! Unnecessary amounts of carpet fibers! IN MY KEYBOARD! 

So if you have newer carpet, you may want to start carefully popping keys off and check inside your computer tower too. The tower makes sense cause it is on the floor and the processor fan and whatnot... but the keyboard?!

This is why we can't have nice things. It is also part of the reason why we have respiratory issues.