January Cure: Day 3

I've recovered from the disappointment of not being able to sweep and mop every corner of my house. Well, not really , but today is a new day and with it a new challenge. Today's challenge was to sit and medidate on a room in your house. If you want the specifics they can be found here: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/10-mindful-minutes-get-a-fresh-perspective-january-cure-assignment-3-198654

Let me be completely 100% honest. This was very challenging for me. No TV, internet, music, or distraction of any kind. Considering I have a baby, a husband, a sister that pops in from time to time, and a Mom and Dad staying with us at the moment this was particularly difficult. But it needed to be done and as I have a ton of spaces in my house that could use a fresh perspective it wasn't going to be easy to choose just one.

After much deliberation I decided on the Living room since that is the place where my family spends the most time and it's also the first thing you see when you walk into my house. I did as the assignment said and imagined the room with out stuff. Once I did that I found my mind starting to wonder. What color would I paint the walls, I really hate these blinds in the front windows, I really need to get this desk built. I had to stop myself for a second and refocused on what I needed to do to make that space more functional. As I went along I wrote down a few notes to myself on what I could do to make the flow better and not so much on the aesthetics.

All in all I think that I did pretty well, though it was hard for me to just think of how the space was used and not so much on how it looked.

January Cure: Day 2

Here we are day two ,well actually day 3 ,but who's counting..... oh right, me. Hmmm, well to be honest the second assignment of sweeping and mopping all floors in my house is daunting to say the least. There are still so many boxes, baby supplies, clothing, shoes, and no where to put all of them! And after trying for two days I'm going to have to put this particular assignment on the back burner. The amount of stuff we have amassed is just "cray-cray" as the kids would say. I think that might be losing my mind because of all the clutter.

Clutter, clutter everywhere...

So for this assignment I give myself a D+. There was effort put in, the first floor was completed, but I fizzled out :( I'm definitely going to come back to this once I get some shelving installed. Although I am disappointed that I don't have gleaming hardwood floors throughout the house, I realize it's not the end of the world (sort of). I'll post tomorrow about Day 3 of the Cure, hopefully it won't be throwing out all cardboard boxes cause I would be screwed. See you tomorrow lovies !

January Cure: Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of Apartment Therapy's The January Cure (let's just call it the cure from now on , shall we?). I was super excited all yesterday during work and when I got home I sort of fizzled for a while. Let me explain, the first assignment for the cure was to walk around the house and write a list of all problem areas and what needed to be done. I live in a Row Home (duh) and I have 3 levels of living space to traverse.  So when I got home all of the steps were mocking me.

The actual staircase in my house. Viewed
from the 3rd floor. Weep for me.

Never the less I had made a promise to myself and you, oh dear reader, to take on this project and I shall see it through to the end! Well as I stated before I started from the very front of the house and made my way up each flight of steps to each living space. Part of me wants to just post the list, but I thought it would be better to just hit on a few key projects that I plan to actually undertake. Here are the highlights:

Vestibule:
-Paint
-Install wainscoting
-Replace globe light

Kitchen:
-install backsplash
-put up spice racks
-create a Coffee Corner
-create a chalkboard wall

Landing into Basement:
-measure for pegboard and install
-plan out storage for tools, cleaning supplies,
and other items

Blinds through out house:
-make all blinds into roman shades and replace
Living room blinds with Bamboo blinds

Playroom:
-Sell couch
-hang new pictures
-install more shelving for toys
-fix light fixture and hang in room

So there are the highlights. I've got a much longer list then this (I will be posting a picture of the list in my next post). This should be a very interesting journey.

And We're Back

Wow, I was gone for quite a while. Did you miss me lovies? Of course you did! While the Holiday season is great fun, it's also a ton of work. Preparing meals for family and extended family can take a lot out of a person. (Even a Superwoman such as myself).  I did have time to make some Christmas decorations, but unfortunately I did not document any of it. It was my daughter's first Christmas and I just couldn't stop taking pictures of her!

Well there's always next year. 

By the way.... Happy New Year! And what a new year it will be. I stumbled upon Apartment Therapy's January Cure and decided to participate. For those of you not in the know, Apartment Therapy emails you a project everyday for the month of January to get your whole house in order. I was SUPER enthusiastic about this as I have not had any time to organize since I got pregnant. As you know from previous posts I have a thing for organization. While I've never been what you would call "organized", I like to think that at heart I'm a professional organizer (it could happen). So for that reason I've decided to chronicle my journey for the month of January! Get excited lovies it's going to be an amazing ride!

If you would like to participate you can sign up here:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/its-back-join-us-get-organized-in-2014-the-january-cure-198346


And if you haven't heard of Apartment Therapy before I suggest you check them out! They have a lot of great articles as well as inspirational design from regular people like you and me.

Make Your Own Wooden Letter With Cardboard

It's been sometime since my last DIY , but this particular idea has been marinating in my brain for quite a while. I've loved these little beauties for a while now :

http://www.etsy.com/listing/159032097/large-wall-letter-creamy-white-and-brown?ref=market

While I do love these letters, I never felt like paying money for them, nor did I feel like purchasing wood and a jigsaw to make my own. (Although in the future I do plan on purchasing a jig saw along with other power tools.) Since my last post about my Ikea haul, we've been stuck with a lot of cardboard around the house. Rather then let it go to waste I got the idea to make these letters. A great way to recycle and get some of this unwanted cardboard out of the house.

DIY Time!!

Materials List:

-Wood Glue
-Spray Paint (whatever color you like)
-Utility Knife
-Stencil of a letter
-Cardboard (enough to make 4 to 6 letters)
-pencil

Steps:

1. Use your utility knife to open up the box so that it lays flat.

2. Take your letter stencil and trace the letter onto the cardboard. You'll want to do this about 4 to 6 times.

HELPFUL HINT: I made this stencil using Microsoft Word on my work computer. I wanted a font that was simple and clean. Making my font size 650 made a pretty good size letter ,but I wanted mine bigger. If you work in an office and your boss doesn't mind use the copy machine to blow up the image. (If you have more specific questions post in the comments below and I will get back to you ASAP!!)

3. Now that you have traced your stencil lay the cardboard on top of either a cutting mat or another piece of cardboard (we don't want to scratch up your working surface!). Take your utility knife and carefully cut out your drawn letter. Take your time, but remember if you make a little error we can go back and correct it.

4. Repeat step 3 for all 4 to 6 cut outs.

5. Once you have all of the letters cut out line them up on top of each other. When they are lined up you will be able to see if there are some edges that overlap. Use your utility knife to trim away any excess.

6. Now use your wood glue and glue them all together. You do not need to slather the whole letter with glue, just enough to keep the edges down and the letters on top of each other. Wood glue dries pretty quickly so make sure you have the letters lined up correctly.

7. Allow the glue to dry for about 30 minutes to an hour.

8. Now here is where you can do what you want. I decided to spray paint my letter one color, but you can use colorful paper, contact paper, or stencils to color your letter. (I will be going back in a later post and making some letters for my daughter's room in different colors.)

9. Make sure that you use your spray paint outside and coat the entire letter including the sides.

10. Let dry and you are all done! Set it on a shelf, hang it up with ribbon, or place it in a frame.

Weekend Pinterest Round up! Centerpiece Edition

So tomorrow I will finally have a DIY for your viewing pleasure! (Being a blogger is hard work!) Until that glorious day, I've got some more pinterest projects for your enjoyment. Last Pinterest round up was about Thanksgiving decorations and crafts, this week we are going to focus in on the center piece of the table.

1. This is a great tutorial that talks about how to make grocery store flowers look great!

via Apartment Therapy

2. Here are 7 different centerpiece ideas that you can make yourself. Links to full instructions are listed on the website.

via http://www.bellenza.com

3. If you are feeling ambitious and have the time then this DIY pallet centerpiece is very chic and rustic.

via The Idea Room.net

4. Or if you have some craft paper (or an old book you don't care about) laying around then you can make this nice pumpkin center piece.

Minted.com

5. Finally another 5 tutorials for your Thanksgiving holiday celebration. These won't break and can probably be made with things around the house.

Shine.Yahoo

Well that's all for today my Lovelies. Please stay tuned tomorrow for  my latest DIY project !

Project and Clean up Weekend!

Our house....is a very, very, very fine house.

Good morning Lovies (that's what I'm calling you now so get used to it)! Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of days , but if you read this and this then you know we have been getting prepared for the holidays. I don't know about you ,but if someone  told me that after a year of living in our new home we would still have boxes, still need to paint the first floor, and still need to add shelving I would..... well I probably would have told them they were right. Even when we were moving every year (I got bored with our apartments very easily) I would always have a few boxes still packed up sitting in a corner somewhere.

Now that we have a beautiful baby girl , I feel the maddening desire to have everything organized! If you follow me a Pinterest (and if you don't you really need to) I've got two boards dedicated to cleaning and home organization. I dream of color coded binders , Google apps perfectly synced on my phone and computer so I'll never miss an appointment again, and every drawer, nook, and cranny of my house so perfectly organized that Martha Stewart herself would fall to her knees and cry. Well sadly that won't happen with boxes of books and art supplies sitting in my living room. So I've dedicated this weekend to cleaning and completing/starting my DIY projects! (Lucky you!)

So be on the look out lovies for my next DIY post. I hope that you all have a great weekend!!