The kids Expedit book cases

Tonight our "kids' room" was put to good use.

Rachel invited a bunch of kids over to hang out and watch a movie.  There was quite the noise coming from "downstairs" (4 stairs to be exact).  We've always tried to have someplace for them to bring friends and I've often fantasized about a room with a soda fountain, jukebox, and plenty of room to play games or dance.  At the pace we're going, maybe Abby will benefit from my dreams someday.  

For now, the room we have for the kids is evolving.  

Before (no pictures) I only had one of the bookshelves shown.

It was laying sideways with the big TV on top of it.

Then we had our old "tube" TV on the ground next to it for the kids to play games on.

Cords and boxes were everywhere.  It was a mess.

So I bought another Expedit from Ikea, stood them both upright and bought a long entertainment piece also from Ikea for the big TV and Dad's old small flat screen for the games.

They fit perfectly!

So now we have room for the kids books as well instead of keeping them in their rooms.

The bins hold video games, exercise videos, family videos, and kids videos, plus accessories for the games.

We've actually got the room backwards from what the original owners planned it.

That slate step up is supposed to be a raised platform for movie chairs.

The other side of the room is equipped for a large screen to be pulled down from the ceiling.

But we use that side for our exercise stuff (not so pretty).  We also use this room for guests so both the big and little couch are pull out beds.

Well, I guess it's time for the kids to go home.

The house is quiet again.

That's my signal to go to bed.

Good Night!

Garage reveal!--finally!

Remember my dark, cluttered, messy garage that I've been working on for what it seems forever?
We really needed to be able to use our space better especially since we are in there every day.
Well, finally I think I've made tremendous progress.  It still needs to be tweaked, but here it is.

Then:

So dark!! 

To add to that, we had to keep Esther's bike in the house cause there wasn't any room in the garage.

 Now:

The first step was to add light.
Look at that!  We can walk without tripping!!
And the bikes are in their proper home.

 Then:

  We don't really have a lot of storage in our kitchen so just inside the garage became the overflow area.

 Now:

 Thanks to our good friends, we added more useful metal shelves.
Now we can actually see what we have and what we need.

Then:

I really don't like having my laundry in the garage.
This dark dirty area made it even worse.

 Now:

Now, it's much brighter and cleaner.
(Notice the laundry?  That's what happens when I get into a project)
The bin's next to the machines is an idea I got from my neighbor.
It makes it so you don't have to bend over with the laundry baskets.

I added hooks to hang my wreaths.

I'm slowly getting rid of the cardboard and replacing them with plastic bins.
Our laundry shelves used to be full of baskets when all the kids were home.
Now it's just the baskets that are full of clothes.
 I think someone needs to take them to their room!

Then:

What a mess!

 Now:

Much better!
Now the things we don't use much are in the back and the holidays are easy to get to.
When we got our king bed, we had them bag our other mattress then we put it in the garage.
It will go in either a guest room someday or be given to the kids when they get married.
You might be wondering why we have another dryer.  It's electric and everything here is done with gas.
It cost just as much to buy a new gas dryer as it did to install an electric outlet.
So we just bought the dryer.  When we buy a house, we'll get rid of the one that isn't needed.
The empty boxes and containers are waiting to be repurposed.

Then:

This was our "work bench" that no one could do work on.

 Now:

It still needs some organization, but the floor in front of it is clear and I have space to finally do some painting projects that are piling up.  That chest of drawers is slotted to go to Bekah once it's done.

Whew!  That was a lot!  It feels so good to have gotten to this point.

Organizing Dad's office

Okay, so as my sister pointed out, I'm supposed to be working on 

organizing our garage.  The funny thing is that everything seems to be connected.

Working on the garage meant shifting things from one room to another

or organizing a room so that items in the garage can move out into the house.

Books were the first items to tackle.  We had several boxes of books that needed a home in the house.

I started with a wall of IKEA bookcases in the formal living room.

I also got a couple from a friend for the family room that I'll show another time.

But most recently I got 2 more Billy bookcases from IKEA in white for Dad's office.

Below is what Dad's office looked like a year ago.

Silly, that's not an office.  It's a storage room.

You're right.  Not pictured is what it looked like when we moved in.

It was the room where everything went that didn't have a home yet.

There was literally no room to move.

 This is the other side, my side, kind of.  

The bookcase is really Dad's but everything else is mine.

The table is a repurposed homeschool/seminary table turned to desk.

The lamp shades I found at Tuesday Morning.

But back to Dad's side.

This was my next step.

We got him a nice desk that was pretty on both sides because you can see

it through the door from the other side of the house.  So it

needed to look nice.  I took my fabric cabinet out and gave him a

small bookcase that was in the boys room.

But he still needed more storage.

Thus the need for the Billys.

Now granted, I still have some of my things on there, but everything comes in steps, right?

At least we got to display Rachel's crayon artwork that she gave me at Christmas, my own watercolor, and Dad's Lone Ranger lunchbox that I got him for Christmas (he's his childhood hero).

I love it now that the floor is clear.  We can actually use the door if we want!

So here's the before and after . . . for now.

Jewelry as wall art project

I've not been posting much lately because I've got the organization bug.

Once Christmas was over and I set my goals for the year, being more organized was at the top of the list.  I know that I was working on it a little before and showed you how I was

going to tackle the garage.

Well, it turns out that as I'm doing the garage, it has been spilling into every other room

of the house.  Books needed to come out of the garage so there needed to be shelves, etc, etc.

So I'll start showing you a few that I've been working on.

Nothing is totally finished but I have to start somewhere.

The jewelry project actually has no connection to the garage, it just bugged me. 

I thought a jewelry "tree" on my dresser would be nice so that I could see everything and make choices easier.  It ended up looking just like a blob.

So I saw online the picture idea and loved it.  So before Christmas, I made my own.

It got everything off my dresser and made them easier to see.

 I got the frame, as is, from The Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $8.

Then I just used foam board because I had it on hand, covered it with some cute fabric from my collection,  cut a section of chicken wire to bend around it and secured it in the frame with duct tape (no one is going to see the back and I'm all 

for using what I have, plus it keeps the wire from scratching the wall).

Cup hooks for the necklaces, hoop earrings, and a couple bracelets.

 I then found the ceramic egg tray at Home Goods to use for my studs and others that wouldn't hang.

I love  being able to see my things.  But as I write this, things are changing in my room.

Joseph bought me the king size bed that I always wanted for our anniversary in November.

Our closet is also really inefficient as well as our dressers, so things are changing there as well.

I'll post again when my jewelry creations finally have their resting place.

Project 2 & decorating for Christmas

We have a tradition that the tree is decorated by everyone in the family.

Over the years I've received resistance and declarations of observing instead of participating.

But even though there is grumbling (by those who've out gown it), I continue to hand an ornament with a hook to the nearest body.  I love that we do it as a family and at least are in the same room together while creating such an iconic symbol of the season.  Eventually though, I'm usually left to put on those last remaining decorations.   Now, the tree has become a finishing touch to all the work I've done in our formal living room: project 2.

Remember project 1 was putting light in the garage.

The next step was to bring the books from the garage into the house, thus the need for bookcases.  The idea came after our trip to Lake Arrowhead.  I wanted the room to feel more cozy like the ones we saw there.  It's such a large room with lots of wall space.  

I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  

The process made for quite the mess for a few days.  There was stuff everywhere.

Although I swore off particle board, there aren't any solid wood shelves to be had.
So I found some with wood veneer at Ikea, the Billy bookcase.
It's much more sturdy than those at the other big box stores.
I did it all myself with the help of Matthew.

I read a blog where the Billy was made to look like a built-in.
I would love to do it, but we are just renting.
See how they did it here.

I actually feel grown up to have bookcases that aren't crammed with every book in the house.
With so many people in the house, we have collected a lot but have usually stored them  for efficiency not beauty.
To make them look better, I took the book jacket off each book.  I love the bindings and the gold lettering.
It's got a good start.

On the opposite wall, I finally put up the tapestry that my mother gave us many years ago.

I got this pretty little table recently from my friend who didn't want it anymore.

This lovely angel was made by my sister Julie many years ago.
She goes up every year.

My sister-in-law, Tammy, made the sign with changeable holidays, I painted the cardboard "W" from JoAnn's, the star's from Home Goods and the angel from Good Will.  I love a good find.

 

More projects to come . . .

adding inexpensive lights to the garage

The last couple of weeks, I've kinda slowed on my blogging.

I needed to shift gears a little to focus a little more on my home and family.

During this time I was able to get a few projects done that I've been mulling over in my mind

for a long time now.  The time and means were available 

so I jumped at the opportunity.

The first project was small and simple but it was necessary to complete for the 

rest of the projects depended on it.  You know, one room overlaps into the next kind of thing.

It all started in the garage.  

We need room in the garage for food storage and our queen mattress because we were getting a king!

The problem is that all our books were taking up space in the garage waiting for a bookcase.

Plus the fact that everything else is being stored in there but we can't see a thing.

There is only one light right next to the door.

This light.

It's not much. As a matter of fact, it lights so little that the kids are scared to go in there.

They just toss things in the general direction they are supposed to be in or they leave the refrigerator door open to light their way back to the exit, thus ruining the food inside.

This is how it looks.

We actually had an electrician price what a new outlet would be and it was like $500.

Really?!

So I read somewhere that you can turn a socket into a plug with this cool gadget.  It allows you to use a plug and a lightbulb at the same time.

But it has two holes and I needed it to fit an extension cord that has three prongs 

(two prong has two holes, three prong has three, logical).

That's where this came in.

Put together, you get this:

Plug in the extensions . . .

then hook them up to inexpensive  shop lights from Lowe's for $15 each.

Now we can see our mess that needs to be cleaned and organized.

Comparison: $500+ or $35

We've got a good start! 

On to the next project, bookshelves . . .

organizing wrapping paper

The arrival of Joseph's new desk a couple weeks back has spurred me on to get our office organized.

It's a long way from done.  It seems that as I clean one area, it spills over into another one.

But as I was reading iheart organizing, I was inspired by  another of her guest posts about wrapping paper.  Go here to see her system.  I loved it but when I priced it out, it was over $100.  Wow, I'm not that committed to my wrapping. 

Below you'll see my weak attempts at bargain orgainizing, large gift bags and an over-stuffed wrapping paper storage container (that's actually meant for what I'm using it for).

I couldn't bring myself to spend $100, so I researched what other people were doing and I found  this idea if you want to use nails (cute!) and a pantry rack that you could either buy at Target or Chef's Catalog (this is the one I ordered).   I liked it because it was adjustable, inexpensive ($35) and wasn't permanent (no nails).  So I was excited to put it together and  hang it on the back of the door that leads to the bathroom adjacent to the office.  

I used elastic in two places:  (1) in a "V" on the gift bag shelf so that they wouldn't slip out the back side. (2) half way to the bottom shelf, to hold the rolls of wrapping paper.

It all worked great until I realized that the door wouldn't shut because of the hooks.  So, word to the wise, check all of your dimensions before moving forward.  But what I learned from my parents is that you can always find a solution.

My next best option was this little corner on the side of a large cabinet. 

Since there isn't any place for the hooks, I had to use nails.  But it's not

permanent because the cabinet isn't a built-in and there's minimal damage.

(I think it's better than nails in a door because I might change my mind or move again)

I went through the tissues and bags and threw out the unusable.  I still kept a lot of the tissue 

because I couldn't help but think of using the wrinkled tissue for craft projects.

(the top of the cabinet's gonna get worked on too)

Ribbons are on the small top shelf.  tissue next.  Then the bags.

So my wrapping papers went from this . . .

to this.  Much better.