Happy Wednesday everyone! So I’ve been organizing. A lot. And I was going to share an organizing post with you today but two hours later I’m STILL editing the pictures. I took too many. And I may have gotten a bit distracted somewhere along the way watching Fixer Upper. Two episodes. Oops. :) Continue reading “Clean spaces and a work in progress”
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Just wanted to wish you all a lovely weekend and share this picture of Ad I posted on Instagram last Thursday night. I took it right after she finished her masterpiece – a Cupcake Valentine box to go with her cupcake valentines. I nudged her in the right direction but she pretty much made the whole thing by herself and was so proud. So was her mom. :) I’ll share how she made it at some point. SO so easy with stuff we already had around the house.
Continue reading “Happy Love Day!”
Ok. I have to thank you all for your sweet comments/advice when I shared my front entry bench dilemma with you earlier this week! The bench is so fun there, but I think I’ve decided to leave it in the formal dining room (for now anyway!) and look for a new bench for the entry. Since I started talking front entry with you all I thought I’d share another room in our house that is one of my many decorating projects for 2015 – our formal living room! Makes me kind of laugh whenever I think about this space because the first thing I told our architect when we were sitting down to design our house was that I didn’t want a formal living or dining room. Rooms that don’t get used as much and just sit and take up space.
And yet that’s exactly what I have now. :) My husband really wanted the formal dining room so we compromised by him getting the space and me getting free reign to decorate it as UN-formal as I wanted. :) The formal living room came to be because for a while in our plans when you walked in the front door you were staring at the dining room. Neither of us loved that idea. I really wanted to walk in the front door and see out into our yard and pool so we ended up putting in a formal living room to look pretty when you walk in. Sort of an extension of the entry. I LOVE this room now (I had so much fun designing it!) and I think we actually will use it more than I thought we would once we get furniture. It has been sitting empty for a year. :) But that’s about to change!
Continue reading “Our Formal Living Room (blank slate!)”
Popping in to share my most recent fun find with you all! Last week I went shopping with a good friend of mine and she introduced me to the cutest little boutique here in San Diego. SO many fun things in that store. I wanted one of everything! I didn’t buy one of everything (are you reading Kenny? I promise I didn’t.) :) What I did come home with was this fun print of California with a heart magnet that (for me) represents San Diego. I fell in love with this immediately. First just because I’m collecting things for a gallery wall in my house and the soft pallet and wood frame are exactly the vibe I was looking for.
But more importantly, this print tugs at my heart for another reason.
Continue reading “San Diego is home”
Happy Monday everyone! Good weekend? I hope so. I have to share my fun new find with you all! I was at Down East Home in Utah last time I was visiting my family and landed on this fabulous black tray. There was only one in the store and it was kind of hidden in the back. I went to pick it up and the handle came apart on the left side. I showed it to the store manager and asked if he had another one that wasn’t broken (knowing the answer would be no) and he said no but I could have this one for 40% off. Score! That’s totally the response I was hoping for. :) Easy fix to glue the handle on and I LOVE it on my farmhouse table. I needed something big and this fit the bill perfectly!
Continue reading “Benches and Bowls”
Happy Wednesday everyone! Continue reading “Over 10 fun ideas for Valentine’s Day!”
Happy February everyone! This month always creeps up quickly doesn’t it!? I decided to add a bit of Valentine fun to our mudroom this year. I actually decked the mudroom for Christmas and just made a couple of quick/easy changes. Nice that both holidays are all about RED. Continue reading “Valentines (and Christmas!) in the mudroom”
Thanks so much for sharing in our Annie happiness everyone! I had such a good day reading all of your sweet comments. I had such a good week actually. It felt wonderful being back in our routine. I printed the girls’ chore charts to help get them back on track and scrubbed our house from top to bottom to help me get back on track.
Continue reading “Back on track”
Hello everyone! I’m back. Fell off the social media planet for a bit. We have had quite a month! I know most of you come here for organizing/home decor, etc. so I’m giving you a pre warning that today’s ramblings are more of a personal/family post. I need this recorded in my blog books! I don’t have time to keep up two separate blogs, so until I do, you all know that once in a while the family stuff gets sprinkled in-between. :) Plus this is pretty much all we’ve been doing for the past three months and it has just been too much fun not to share! Two more pre warnings: #1 – this will be a long post (a lot I want recorded!) and #2 – I’m going to be shamelessly bragging about my girls. I know – so annoying that I’m about to be one of THOSE moms. But I can’t help it. I’m just so proud of them I could burst. :) Regular organizing and decorating posts are right around the corner!
In October my girls decided to try out for their first play. They have done a theatre camp the past two summers with CYC (California Youth Conservatory) just for fun and LOVED it. My girls have always loved singing and dancing and can be quite hams when they want to be so it didn’t surprise me they loved theatre camp. CYC is known around here for their high quality children’s theatre so when one of the camp directors reached out to us and told us they were putting on the show Annie and thought the girls had a chance at principal orphan parts, we decided to give it a shot. The girls each practiced a song and a short monologue for their scheduled tryouts. They both did great and made the first cuts! Then a week later, we met on a Saturday afternoon with everyone else who made the first cut for the second round of tryouts. I wasn’t sure what to expect and about died when I walked into the auditorium where they were holding the tryouts. SO many kids! There were only six girls (orphans) that would actually get speaking and solo singing parts. I got really nervous. Thoughts were racing through my head. This will be hard when they don’t make it. Even harder, what if one of them makes it and the other one doesn’t!?
How is the organizing coming along everyone? Did you all make a year plan? I’m seriously so excited about my plan (you can see it all here!). It feels so good to know that everything I want to get done this year will eventually get done. I’m just tackling my house in small bite sized manageable pieces. :) The month is quickly flying by and I’m almost finished with my January spaces (attic/extra room/play room). Hoping to take pictures and share them soon! Today I’m sharing over 20 ways to organize your home and life! I thought I’d pull up some of my past organizing projects to give us all some motivation. I know I can use some right about now! Some of these pictures are from spaces in our previous house and some are from the new house. Hopefully you will find something in this round-up that will help you with the spaces you are currently working on. (Click each link for the full post!)
Continue reading “Over 20 ways to organize your home and life!”
Happy Monday everyone! We’ve had such a fun and busy week with our kids. Lots of good stuff going on around here that I’ll share at some point! But first I wanted to tell you all about my new planner for 2015! You guys – I’ve finally gone digital. I have tried countless times to use my iPhone for a planner/calendar and just couldn’t do it. I love paper so much! But my husband and I were spending so much time e-mailing each other back and forth all day about things to add to our calendars… cancel this and add that and we can’t make it to this and call and change that appointment… Then we added a few new activities for the kids to our schedule and had so much going on that we quickly realized we needed a new system. So we did a little research and discovered the app COZI. Have you heard of it? It’s a family organizer and we are in love! It’s so user friendly and I love the way it lays out your day, week and month. Kenny has my calendar synced up with his work calendar so we can both add things and notify each other. Perfect for families with older kids too – the whole family can use it. I could write about all I love about Cozi for an hour but you can check it out for yourself here. So many neat features. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to a paper planner and for me that’s saying a lot! (Not advertising for them btw – just love this app and wanted to share it with all of my fellow planners.) :)
I still use my Time Management Binder (full post here) to organize everything else going on. This binder has always worked so well for me. There are places in Cozi to write out to-do and grocery lists, etc. but I still prefer to do that on paper. I’ll always love making a list and checking things off. :)
K now I have to show you this adorable handprint calendar Kole made for us in pre-school! This would be such a cute idea for a Mother’s day or Father’s day gift. Or for grandparents at Christmas/birthdays. Each month has a picture with his handprints in it…
Is that not the cutest thing!? Such a keepsake.
It’s hanging in my pantry and out of all of the calendars I’ve used over the years, this one takes the cake.
:)
Happy Planning everyone!
Ok. I have to start this post by saying that I was so touched by your sincere comments after my 2015 goals/word post! Honestly some of them made me tear up. So kind of you all. I have an e-mail folder full of blog comments and e-mails I’ve saved over the years that have meant a lot to me. I call it my “rainy day folder” and I turn to it whenever I’m having a bad/hard day for a little pick me up. :) Most of the comments on my last post are now in that folder. Thank you! Truly. Your love and support mean the world to me.
Talking Christmas cards today! Do you still have yours up? I might be a little crazy, but I usually keep my cards on display until after January (sometimes through February!). They make me so happy and I’m never ready to part with them right after Christmas. Here are a few pics of how I displayed them this year. I had grand plans of displaying them in a fun way on a blank wall near my office and then just ran out of time to put it together (maybe next year..). Instead my kitchen pantry door frame became the landing spot! I used painters tape to hold the cards up and they’ve all stayed in place. YEA.
Continue reading “Displaying and Saving Christmas Cards”
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