The New Year-- aka Planning mode

I am not a resolution person. My goals (if needed to be done) will always be accomplished:
Weight? It's 5 pounds at a time.
Eat better? It's a 7 day goal.
Sleep better? It's a daily goal.
Be more patient? ...Let's try 5 minutes.

It just so happens my home/decorating/DIY projects are all coinciding with the New Year. They have been on my to-do list or already started before the holidays came in like a wrecking ball. Ha ha! I had to. 
So here's my Resolution List: (to start on by the end of January because I am just that good.)

1. Finish painting upstairs guest room - 2 more walls need a second coat.

2. Paint the accent wall in the Master Bedroom - Palladian Blue!!!! - can you tell I am excited for this?!?

3. Rearrange furniture - Bookshelf moved from one guest room to the other.

4. Decorate downstairs guest room - It has a bed and 2 nightstands. It needs help.

5. Redecorate Master bedroom and hang art.

6. The office - dang it! Can't this room do itself???

7. Garage- or not. I keep telling my hubby that once we insulate and drywall it, that I will tackle it. And oh, my dreams are big... but I really have no idea where to start.

8. Decrapify and Organize.

9. Hang my gallery style frames in the hallway- print off pictures too.

10. Eat more chocolate- yes!

Happy New Years, and may all your dreams come true.

The office- the organizing nightmare.

It's been like this forever.

My hubby informed me that I needed to clean it. 

yeah, about that...

I said in a sing-songy high-pitched voice- "Yard Sale!"

He was like "when you have a box for me to go through, let me know."

I must have said it to fast. "OK!"

"What? Why are you being so agreeable?"

"Which box would you like to start with? There's like a dozen."

"No. You have to go through them, so you know what's in them..."

"It's all crap."

that flew like a ton of bricks. 

But I'm mildly excited about organizing it. I have started developing a plan. 

- photo storage boxes (looks like they might fit perfectly)

- zip ties or rubber bands (to restrain the cable mess)

- move the furniture pieces to make it flow better.
- toss the old computer cases (slightly excited for recycling day!)
- hunt down more workspace for his projects to stretch out on.
- add some color probably by way of art-ish to the walls.

The Pantry Panic~ what a relief.

I was going insane. The Pantry was driving me nuts. When we moved in- a little over a year ago. I just started stuffing things in... I kind of had a plan. Random small appliances on the right. Food on the left. Piece of cake. Then it started to look like this.

Food items were falling off the shelves. I couldn't find things. It was just chaos!



Sunday morning at 6:30am I was fighting off the cleaning bug. I was not ready to be awake. Or wake up my men.

With breakfast done, I started pulling stuff off the shelves. Breakfast items grouped together.
Canned goods together.
Pasta together.
You get the idea .
Then my table looked like this!

This mess stayed until I arrived home with some baskets from Michaels (50%off- cha-ching) Monday afternoon and got to work.

I lose things in these back corners. So the baskets were my solution. They were the closest to the perfect size for my corners!! Yes!
The top basket holds baking goods.
The second basket holds drinks- coffee, hot chocolate, tea, etc.
The third basket holds my leftover containers (and lids- sigh). 
The bottom basket holds snack stuff.

Finally it was done!

Sanity has returned. I can see into my pantry more then I have in the last  9  3 months.

I was giving my son a bath. I heard a "Whoa! Holy smokes!" The Hubby found my pantry. He said he'd hire me to do his office and the garage.

Dude, you can't afford me.

The second makeover- Kitchen Kerfuffle

These are probably the most familiar and the most embarrassing. Familiar because we've all been there, every. day. Embarrassing because we let it get that bad, though we would dare not let anyone see if possible. But alas, here it is!

So since this fateful day, 3 days ago, I've loaded up the dishwasher (named DW, ha ha!) and run it every evening, full or not. It feels good but kinda wasteful at the same time. Although if you knew the love/hate relationship I have with my dishwasher, it's not really that wasteful. It loves it, I hate it.

So the love/hate relationship is...

Soak dishes in the sink.
Load in DW.
Run the cycle. DW decides to:

turn itself off after I walk away,
not start at all,
run a partial cycle (though all the buttons are pushed),
run the cycle without opening the soap compartment,
get the spinners caught on something that's not in the way.

Re-run cycle in DW, which suddenly works fine.
Re-soak at least 25% of all dishes because they decided they didn't want to be clean.
Load pre-pre-pre-pre cleaned dishes and the start on the new pile that has accumulated during the previous 4 cleanings.

Annoying right? And it's a brand-new dishwasher. State-of-the-art. blah. I really want to go all paper and plastic. I recycle. no pun intended.

My ultimate finishing goal is:
1. to love everything above my cabinets. Its a smorgasbord of things I'm trying out to see what I like and what works for me.
2. Attack the pantry. It's scary.

Well, this is it. Makeover #2!

the start- Laundry - Drop your drawers here!

I was finally fed up. with everything.

Tripping over stuff every time I came in through the garage.
Shoes. Laundry. Boxes. Cords. Rugs. Brooms.
I was fed up with hearing my husband ask what I did today.
"here's dinner and your son hasn't been given up for adoption." What more could he want?!? 
My son isn't that bad, but I get 5-10 minutes in each station.
Each station being:
1. the highchair
2. the johnny jump-up
3. the dishwasher
4. the magnets on the fridge
5. the pool toys
etc.

So naturally whatever I could get done in each of those 5-10 minutes is all that really got done. I dedicated all of my son's naptimes plus folding the laundry during play time to accomplish this:

Minus sorting through my "fan" mail, which I never want to do. Shred, shred, shred, I don't need 20 credit card offers from the same place in 1 month!!!




Anyway, this is my start.

It can only get better from here, right?