Two weeks ago everything was insulated. Above is a picture of the playroom and the playroom closet. A happy place for my kids to play and for me to organize all of their toys. :)
The outside of the house was completely wrapped and there are holes and tunnels all over the back and side yard for pool and landscaping.
Kole’s pop out window. :) The siding is moving fast. It amazes me how much is done each day. I love to pop in to check on the progress.
A blurry pic of me with my designer and cabinet guy. Love these two. I could hang out with them in the wood mill all day long. Oh my word that place smells good! Nothing like the smell of freshly cut wood (especially when it’s freshly cut wood for my doors and cabinets!).
I’ve gained four pounds. Crap. Total stress eating and not enough time to exercise. Jeans are getting tight. I’m trying to do better this week! My fajitas
Plus I’m hoping my new cup will help me drink more water. I LOVE this cup. I found it at Staples but I’ve seen them all over. It keeps your drink cold. I carry it all around the house with me when I’m home and take it with me in my car on the go.
Also at Staples I found this adorable little aqua lined pouch. It matched my planner so I couldn’t leave the store without it. :)
It lives in my purse holding my go to purse make-up. I love it because I don’t have to fish around for chap stick when I need it. I just reach in my purse and grab the zipper pouch.
I also added these soft pick tooth pics to my mini make up bag. Perfect for when you are out and about and have something stuck in your teeth. Hate that. These soft picks are the best!
Happy Friday friends! Posting a Fashion Friday re-run for fun! This post was written in October 2011 so the clothes I’m wearing aren’t exactly current. :) But I still wear a lot of them and since it’s Friday I figured it would be fun to pull out a Fashion Friday post from the good old archives. Many of you have mentioned that you miss Fashion Friday posts and I do too! I actually have so many pics of my current clothes sitting in a “Fashion Friday” folder on my computer. I just never have time to sort through and post them. Plus I started feeling a little silly posting so many pics of me in front of my boring bathroom mirror. :) But sometime soon I may get over it and find an extra hour and shock you all with a current Fashion Friday. Until then, here is a blast from the past. Enjoy your weekend everyone!
———————————————————————————————————————
What a week! And it’s only going to get crazier! Is everyone ready for the Halloween madness that is about to ensue? We have several parties on the weekend’s agenda. YEA. One I have to bake something for. BOO. I’m quite sure a good time will be had by all. Despite the baking. But before it’s time to costume up, here are a few things I’ve been wearing lately.
First I’m sharing some of the purses I’ve been using this Fall. I never spend a crazy amount of money on purses because I like to mix it up and use a different one about every other week. A lot of times I’ll use the same one for a few weeks during the day, but switch purses when we go out at night on the weekend. Here are a few of my recent favorites…
This purse used to belong to my sister. But then I saw it and fell in LOVE with it. Isn’t it fabulous with that orange lining and green zipper and stitching!? My sister agreed it was way more of an Erin purse than a Carly purse. So after she used it for a few months, she mailed it to me. That was several years ago and I’ve used it every Fall ever since! It’s too small for every day, but I use it a lot when I go out.
Speaking of scoop necks, I wore this simple grey scoop neck top this week. Bought it last year at Express? Maybe Limited. One of the two.
Another simple sweater. I like the button on the neck. This one is from Banana Republic. Funny. When Car and I were in New York we walked in a Banana Republic and both said at the same time “ahh…feels like home!” We love that store.
But I did love the color and I did love the lining so I bought it in an attempt to branch out from my clothes comfort zone! And because my sister can be extremely persuasive when she wants to be.
Plus having our shoes this close to the door always resulted in a messy pile of shoes just waiting to be tripped on.
Plus I bought the girls new summer flip flops. Â And flip flops this cute just seemed to need a fun new home! Â Plus let’s face it. Â I was just in the mood to organize something.
Wa-la! Â I bought one more shoe rack and moved all of the shoes from the front of the garage to the side under the racks we use to store garage tools, coats and backpacks. Â As cute as the mudroom I’ve designed in my head? Â No. Â As practical as the mudroom I’ve designed in my head? Â Definitely.
I decided to bring down all of the girls shoes from their bedroom to free up more space in their closets. Most of mine and Kenny’s shoes are in our closet other than our “slip on quick and go shoes” (Uggs for three months out of the year and flip flops for the other nine)
All boots fit on the top shelf. Â Want to see my secret for keeping boots standing up straight and tall?
When the kids come home from school, the van door opens, kids step out, and immediately put their shoes away on the rack. Â They empty backpacks and hang them along with their jackets. Â The “after school mess” is taken care of before my kids even enter the house!
See what I mean…rollin’ right off the tongue…
Hi everyone! I thought today I’d share how I organize my pictures on my computer. You may remember that I ended my relationship with iphoto a while back. As much as I have loved my new Mac, I just couldn’t ever figure out a system on iphoto that worked as good for me as the system I have been using for years. And that’s the thing about organization. It’s really just about finding what works best for YOU. So I went back to my old system. And I have fallen in love with my old system all over again because I had a chance to see what else was out there. And it’s so true that you never really realize what you have until it’s gone. {tear}
(I can just hear Kenny singing Aladdin’s “A Whole New World” right now. He sings that song to me whenever I say anything even remotely sappy.)
Moving on.
I know this system won’t work for everyone, but it may give you a few ideas of how to organize your pictures on your computer. It will be especially helpful if you share a lot of your pictures on a blog. Which I do. :) So here’s what works for me:
All of the pictures from my last post! And that is where my folders finally stop! I know. It’s folders, inside of folders, inside of folders… but this system has worked for me for so long. I just love having my pictures so nice and tidy in their happy little spot where they belong. :)
This system also makes things easy for me when I’m about to develop pictures for my kids’ scrapbooks. If I’m working on Addison’s book for the months May through August, I just go through each blog post folder for those months and each month’s “random” folder and pull any pictures that I want for her book. I move them to the folder on my main page called “PROJECT LIFE”, make any collages I need to and then send them off to be developed.
BTW – some of you have asked me how my albums are coming along since I haven’t been posting pics of them. Well, they’re not. I had great ambitions of getting so much done this summer and now I’m laughing at myself for even thinking that would happen! This summer has been so busy. But it’s ok. I’d rather spend this time making memories with my kids. I’ll record those memories later when they’re back in school. I’ll also shower, prepare meals, and do laundry when they’re back in school. A few other things that have also taken a back seat this summer!
So I’d love to hear your thoughts! What works for you with picture organization? Anyone do anything similar to what I do? No? Am I the only crazy folder lady out there?
I can live with that. :)
————————————————————————————————————————
Hi friends! I’ve missed you the past few days. :) We are checking off our “end of school year to do’s” right and left around here. I can almost say one week down, one week to go. And that will be a happy thing to say. I haven’t been this excited for summer break since I was in school myself! I’m about to end what I’m hoping will be my craziest school year, although with new house stuff heating up and becoming more and more time consuming I think I’m in for one more crazy year. But no more crazy talk for now. Instead let’s talk about something fun. I have been planning my organization presentation for tomorrow night! And that is FUN. :) The basic outline for my talk is to first go over my tips for getting and staying organized. I’ll have a projector and computer so I’ll be able to pull my blog up on the screen so everyone can see pictures. Then I’m just going to share different ways I’ve organized some of the spaces in my home to give everyone ideas. I was thinking it would be fun to take some of my favorite organizers to share because I like visuals and well – I kinda like organizers too. But which ones? I have too many favorites! So I rounded some pictures up to help me decide.
{BASKETS}
Baskets are beloved organizers for sure. Here are some of the ways I use baskets to organize things in my home…
baskets in the pantry for food…
baskets in the living room for books and baby gear…
baskets in the bathroom to hold toilet paper.
(These last two pictures were taken in December. Makes me want to pull out the Christmas decor!)
Baskets in my closet for accessories like belts, hats, and scarves…
and in the laundry room for smaller laundry items.
{BINS}
Bins for blow dryers and curling irons…
bins in the playroom for toys…
bins in the linen closet for cleaning rags and supplies…
bins to organize wrapping supplies…
and doll clothes in the girls’ room…
and “currently reading” books in Kole’s nursery.
{CLEAR ORGANIZERS}
While I love a good basket or bin I’m also crazy about clear organizers! I love to be able to easily see the items I’m organizing.
Clear organizers in the pantry to organize food…
and in the fridge to organize more food.
Clear organizers in the garage to hold nails and clips and screws…
clear organizers in the girls’ room to hold bigger toys…
in the closet to hold smaller toys…
in the craft cupboard to hold craft supplies…
in the bathroom to hold bath toys…
(Move over barbies! These bins have recently been taken over by trains and trucks.) :)
clear organizers to hold extra dolls/stuffed animals my girls won’t let me get rid of…
and a clear organizer that I’ll never get rid of.
For when the girls and I are in the mood to get fancy. :)
{RANDOM ORGANIZERS}
The rest of my favorite organizers are random. I like random and well – I kinda like organizers too. Have I mentioned that before?
A rack for magazines…
a case for cords…
some ribbons for bows…
dividers for clothes…
stackable shelves for canned goods…
and for spices.
A crate to hold files…
files to hold school work…
and folders to hold anything else I can come up with.
Boxes to hold keepsakes…
and Christmas decor.
I hope everyone had a great Valentines Day! I don’t know about all of you but I ate way too much junk today. Way way too much. My kids weren’t the only ones on a sugar high! So since I’m all about the junk food right now (starting that diet tomorrow…) here are some pictures of part of my temptation today. I had so many pretzel snaps left over from December (we didn’t have time to make friends our annual Christmas Pretzel Hugs) and as you know I went crazy buying Valentine m&m’s this year…
Kenny worked from home this afternoon while Kole napped so that I could help with the girls’ classroom parties. So much fun. The kids all had a great Valentines Day.
And me? Well Kenny got me a little something I’ve been wanting for a long time this year for Valentines Day. No flowers or chocolates for this girl. I finally got a label maker!! Oh my word! I’m flying high! Just you wait until we get moved into our new house! I’m going to organize and label every single thing we own.
The pics were taken in my mom’s backyard while we were visiting over Thanksgiving and Josie’s kids were there. El was dying to run and play with them so we only got a couple of photos out of this little peanut. Love what we got though!
Kole just wanted to play in the leaves so most of his pictures looked like this —
I knew my girls would want to personalize their Valentines so I picked up this pack of blank colorful cards and envelopes at Target last week. I figured they could write a little note to include along with the picture Valentine.
While I was in therapy with Kole this week I put the girls to work! They were so excited to make them. They worked…
and they worked on their Valentines. I thought they would just write a little “happy Valentines Day” or “thanks for being a good friend” but oh no. They wrote individualized poems for each person in their class. Oh my word they were cute. And hilarious. Kenny and I had a good time reading through them all. :) I’m off to finish teacher gifts before bed. Enjoy your Valentines Day everyone!!
The best way for us to stay in touch! Sign up for my newsletter so you’ll never miss a post! You’ll also gain access to all of my home and organization printables.
