Crafty Links

Thought I’d post some tutorials that are currently sitting in my bookmark folder.

Once I finish my projects I really want to work on these.

Japanese Inspired Placemats.  I need some new decorations in my dining room, this would be a nice change.

Taggie Football.  I think this is going to be one of my new go-to gifts for little baby boys. Except, I’m already planning one for a little girl whose dad is a huge football fan.

Mini Market Tote. I made my first bag last summer and now I keep finding more that I want to try. I really like this ladies blog.

Links to tons of ideas. I could browse this post forever looking for ideas.

Finally, it’s not a specific craft, but it seems like every post that she does makes me want to go to Goodwill and re-purpose my findings for awesome, cheap decorations.

What are your favorite craft tutorials?

Happy Blogiversary

I was checking my archives this morning for something and noticed that I’ve been blogging for 5 years!

Happy Blogiversary to me!

5 years ago I was working at Glen Eyrie,

I was coaching Cheerleading,

and we just got our adorable puppy, Puddle.

Who now looks like this:

Nevermind. No current pictures of Puddle exist since the birth of Isabelle.

I’m glad I have this blog- quick and easy walks down memory lane!

New morning routine

Every once and a while my friend Monica writes about morning routines on her blog.  While I never really have set times for my day, I tend to have some semblance of a routine.

Lately it’s looked like this:

6:00- Tim gets up

6:30- Isabelle wakes up- Tim gets her up and out of bed

7:30- I wake up, get out of bed while Tim gets ready for work

8:00- Isabelle and I eat breakfast, Tim leaves for work.

8:15-10:00- I do my internet blog reading/emailing/facebook. We get dressed and ready to head out for the day if we are going somewhere.

While I like have the time to sleep in- I haven’t really been ready for the day if Isabelle is up when I get up.

A couple of days ago I ran across this blog (click here) and again was reminded that I need to be up before my child is.

So, new morning routine for me!

My plan is to get up at 6 AM to do my Bible study and then my internet time.

I also am going to try and get showered and dressed before Tim leaves for work

I haven’t gotten much farther than those two changes, but I think that will ultimately set me up for a better day. Maybe I’ll post an update in a couple of weeks and see how it’s going.

Continued Spring Cleaning efforts

The next room that is now super clean is our TV room.

This was a little less exciting- I had no major organizing to do in here.  While it’s the most used room in the house, I keep it tidy but don’t keep up on the dusting, etc.

I dusted all over the room- the fan, around the entertainment center, and vacuumed the dust off the fireplace. I also washed the windows and rearranged some decorations.

It didn’t take me very long to do and I was even able to clean off our kitchen bar and put everything away in the new places I created last week.

And now, for making it through this post (since you all wanted to know that I dusted!) I leave you with this:

Every girl needs her diva glasses…

Fruits and Veggies

Last week while browsing around Facebook, I cam across a link for an organic veggie delivery service. I searched around a little and decided it would be a good thing for our family to try for a while.

I’ve seen things about Community Gardens and services like that- but haven’t looked into much for our area. I also have good intentions to make it to the farmer’s market during the summer, but I never do. So having a place where I can get organic (mostly local) fruits and veggies delivered to our door was very fun!

I got my first delivery last night and so far I like it. The nice thing is that there is no contract for service so we are able to try this out and see if it fits in for us.

So, yesterday afternoon this showed up on our doorstep.

I got the smallest box the service has available. The nice thing is that they recycle most of the food packaging in their warehouse, so I have no plastic bags and can return the box and any packaging they did include at the next drop off.

I’m all ready to open it, can’t wait to see what’s inside (well, I already know because they send me a list that I can edit if I don’t want a particular item).

Finally I get to see what we’re going to be eating for the week.

Looks yummy and farm fresh.

Here’s our total food purchase.

Not too shabby. I’m going to take my list to our grocery store and price the organic foods we got to see the price comparison. Even if it’s a little bit more to do this, I think the positives outweigh the negatives here. For one, having groceries show up at your door step is a plus for anyone.

Here is the information this company. They operate in Colorado, Kansas City area, and a portion of the east coast. You can get the delivery info at the Door to Door website. They let you decide which weeks you want delivery as well as let you customize your box.

I’m especially looking forward to what will be available in the summer and may have to increase our box size. For now I’m making sure we eat everything this week!

Playroom cleaning part 2

Yesterday I left off at the toy side of our playroom, now I’ll head over to the office part of our playroom.

I am a horrible piler and tend to pile things up until I’m tired of it and then clean everything up. I’m trying to be better with that and I think it starts with having a place for everything. I’ve switched to paperless billing for almost all of our bills and that has really helped with my piling. While organizing everything I was able to figure out what I have problems with and I think I was able to create a place for almost everything (what didn’t have a place was moved to the basement for me to deal with later, that’s how I roll).

Here is the before of our office area.

Not so pretty. Once I was able to identify where I wanted items to belong the process became easier.

Here’s what I ended up with.

My first choice would be to have all new furniture, but that’s not really going to happen anytime soon. So, you do with what you have.

Here’s what I did for this section:

• Top of shelves: Isabelle’s memento box, playdough and fingerpaints, and sheet music that needs to go in a binder
• Next shelf: CD’s. We aren’t getting an Ikea in town for another year, but when they get here all our CD’s and DVD’s will be in their boxes.
• Middle shelf: Books we frequently need access to. All the other books  were moved to our shelves in the basement
• Printer and Piano books have their home on a shelf and then Tim’s big CD books are on the bottom. (I think someone likes music)
• Sorted through all loose papers. 95% went to the shred box.
• Created a space for our current budget papers- all rest went to our file box
• Cleaned off desk top and dusted everywhere
• Moved drawers so that they were accessible from the desk

What’s nice about this area now is that there are still a few areas with empty space! You never know when you are going to need a new home for something- and now I have options.

I’m finding that when I know where an item belongs I am more willing to keep other spaces tidy. Instead of leaving things around in the family room or kitchen I immediately put it away.

What’s funny is that I never realized getting this area organized first is what will help when cleaning the other rooms.

So there is my spring cleaning for our playroom. I haven’t decided yet what the next room will be. I may continue the progress on our main floor and do the family room.

More cleaning!

So far I’ve been keeping up with my spring cleaning goal. I’ve also been able to maintain the rooms I’ve cleaned so far. That’s a pretty big deal. We all know it’s easy to have a cleaning blitz and make everything look good for a day, but it’s way harder to keep it looking that way.

This time I worked on our playroom. This room is what most people would consider the formal living room. I’ve always had it set-up that way and we never really got much use out of it. When Isabelle’s toys started spilling over in her corner in the family room, I decided to do away with the formal living room. We also moved our home office to a corner in this room. This change has been great for us.

The room has been set-up this way for probably over a year now and I finally feel like things are organized and have a place.

This time I’ll show you a before and after of each section of the room and tell you what I did.

First, the toy area.  The two pictures below is one wall.

I wanted to use our wall unit a little better and always have trouble with where to keep all the toys. I played around with ideas for a bit and came up with this:

After:

My main thing was to move up the bottom row of shelving. Isabelle is used to them, but pretty much someone hits their head whenever she has friends come play. By moving up the wider shelves I was able to put a medium width shelf within Isabelle’s reach (she really likes to put things on that lower shelf). I also moved the container unit over so kids are no longer reaching under the shelves to pull out toys. I dusted the shelves and edited what I have out. I got a tea set from my Grandma last year and don’t have a hutch or anything to put it in. One thing I learned from years of watching Clean Sweep is that if you have collectibles but don’t display them, what do they really mean to you? So instead of trying to display all the pieces I have, I selected some pieces to look like it was set up for tea time and put those in the middle shelf. I kind of like them there.

I also cleaned the piano real well and found a place for Tim’s piano books and trombones. Here is the after of that area.

Overall this new arrangement for the toys is working. I still think I need something to hold the rest of the toys, but for now I think it’s ok.

It’s time to go get a little girl dressed, so I’ll add part two tomorrow.

Bringing home Bunny

First of all, I have to laugh at the people who saw my old cheer skirt. Yes, I kept all of my uniforms from high school. I’ve always kept them in the name of dress up clothes so I decided to move them to a different closet. I may get rid of them eventually, but for now they are fun to have.

One of Isabelle’s Christmas presents this year was her first trip to Build-a-Bear! We’ve been in there a couple of times and she thinks the store is just there to watch the cotton spin, so this was going to be a funny trip.

Our first challenge was getting her to pick out an animal. We first tried to get her to look at all the animals and pick one out. The first thing she did? See the water fountain outside the store and leave to go play in the water! While she was playing I picked out two animals that she doesn’t have yet- a bunny and a cat. We got her back in the store and let her choose so she picked the bunny.

We then assembled it and she got to help stuff the bunny.

Before we could finish the bunny she was ready to give it a bath, so we stitched it up real quick and headed to the bath.

Isn’t the scarf cute??  She saw me putting mine on and wanted hers! She wore it the whole time. Thanks Aunt Melissa for making it!

After the bath we were able to pick out an outfit. I eventually got her to pick out a shirt and we were able to add a skirt and shoes to complete the ensemble.

Finally we got to take Bunny home! The “home” for Bunny had provide the most entertainment. Isabelle sticks bunny in there all the time and carries her around the house.

Bunny has been a great addition to Isabelle’s playtime. She got her first baby doll for Christmas too so she’s always dragging on of them around. It’s fun to watch. I didn’t get a picture of her with Bunny until this morning, so here’s introducing Bunny.

A bit of winter cleaning

I decided to end 2009 with a bang here on “New Normal” by not posting for five weeks. Five. weeks. I don’t know how you all keep up with me.

To make up for it, I have an incredibly exciting post. Yipee!

Tim’s company had their Christmas party in mid-December and he always seems to luck out on the door prize end of things. This year he won a gift card to Old Navy which meant shopping spree for me!

It couldn’t have come at a better time. Me and clothes haven’t had the best relationship over the last three and a half years. I was in maternity clothes for basically the whole year in ‘06. Right after losing Lucy I went and worked for Starbucks so instead of spending money on new clothes that fit, my wardrobe was polo shirts and khakis. While I was at Starbucks I was pregnant with Isabelle so I just went back to my maternity wardrobe. I’ve bought a thing here and there since Isabelle was born- but I feel like I spent the last two years in a couple pairs of jeans and t-shirts. In fact, I wore some of my maternity clothes until Isabelle was a little over a year (or longer). So new clothes have been a long time coming.

With the addition of new clothes I’ve noticed how much my closet is in need of a good clearing out. I have clothes that I probably wouldn’t wear even if I could fit back in them again! Plus, 95% of my closet is clothes I don’t wear, giving me no room to hang up the clothes I actually wear.

Last week I finally got fed up with everything and decided that spring cleaning is coming early to our house.

I got to work and ended up spring cleaning our entire bedroom (even Tim’s closet) in one day.

I decided that the only way I’d actually get it done well was to pull out all my clothes and sort through one big pile. Here’s what I started with (there are a few of Tim’s clothes mixed in).  Notice: when cleaning or crafting, the TV show “Felicity” must be on in the background- you don’t even want to know how many episodes I got through while doing this.

After about 3 hours I had three piles done. Keep (or try on), give away, and toss. The toss pile was only things with holes or bad enough stains that Goodwill probably wouldn’t take it.

Here is my toss pile.

Then it starts to get impressive. I tried to be harder on my clothes than I ever have before. Since I don’t wear most of them anyway it wasn’t as hard as I thought. My closet is largely filled with clothes I bought 5-6 years ago and aren’t really in line with what I would consider as my style now.

This is what I ended up with as a keep pile. The pile in the back left is the maternity clothes I sorted through.The front pile is what I wear regularly.

Yay! I also had a small pile to try on and ended up keeping three sweaters.

Finally, my giveaway pile. This is a little crazy and I can’t believe I held on to these clothes for so long. Tim did a sort as well and his clothes are included in this pile.

8 bags! Yikes. One bag is headed to the crisis pregnancy center with maternity clothes, I have a couple of pieces for Dress for Success and the rest will be donated.

I finished the afternoon by dusting everywhere (way overdue for that chore!), cleaning my closet and putting everything back.

I did take before and after pictures of my closet.

Before:

I rearranged everything so I could use existing shelves for my shoes and cleaned the top shelves for better storage.

See all those hangers? More than half are now gone from my closet. Getting rid of wire hangers was almost the highlight of my day.

And finally… the finished product!

It’s so nice to look at a color coordinated, clean, organized closet! I moved the drawers over and that helped with my shoe issue. We also used to have the laundry hamper in the main part of our room so it’s nice to move that. I have space for everything now and I’m not trying to find places to put clothes away. I was also able to get our suitcases off the floor of Tim’s closet and now he has room for his shoes. I’m really going to try and maintain this closet. I don’t want to have to do this process all over again!

I hope to be spending the next couple of months focusing on each room in the house and really giving it a good cleaning. I can never seem to do a full on spring cleaning blitz-in-a-month, but I think if I keep up my momentum I can get some good progress on the house.

Maybe I’ll even get another post up in less than 5 weeks!

Project in a day

Yesterday Isabelle wanted to play in her play house pretty much the whole entire day. Fortunately we put the play house in my craft room so I decided to work on a project.

Now that Isabelle is starting to help out a little in the kitchen, I thought it would be fun to get her an apron. I haven’t looked around too much to see what aprons cost, but what I ended up doing is definitely a better deal!

I mentioned to my mom that I wanted an apron pattern and so she got one from my aunt (hi Devonne!) and brought it with her while my parents are here for Thanksgiving.

When I looked at the pattern I didn’t want to mess it up with fabric I bought, so I thought I’d raid my scrap pile. I have a friend who gave me a bunch of scraps a while ago and I haven’t really done anything with them. I found some fabric that was big enough and coordinated enough for it to work as an apron.

Turns out the pattern was way easier than I thought it would be and I finished it by the time Isabelle woke up from her nap! That’s my kind of project.

I like how it turned out. I think it has a “Little House on the Prairie” vibe, but I like it that way. Isabelle really likes the pockets and immediately put her toy phone in one of them.

Here’s the front view

Here’s the back (which I like a lot)

Here it is in action

What’s nice about this pattern is that it’s still a bit big for her, so she’ll be able to grow into it. Also, it’s easy enough that I’m thinking about scouting sales for fun fabric with a cooking theme and an art theme to make a kitchen apron and an art smock.

If you want the pattern I’m pretty sure you can find them in a quilt shop- it’s called the Little Spring Fling apron and it’s done by The Apron Lady. (I couldn’t find the pattern on the website, but I’m sure you could figure out how to get it).