Pantry Re-do

Organization and reorganization - we just can't get away from it, can we?  Or maybe that's just me... 

No I'm pretty sure it's everyone ;)  When I get the chance I've been working my way down the list of places that needed decluttering that I made for the 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge (note to self - I need to post an update on that.  The official 40 days were over a few weeks ago lol).  Yesterday I had some time to waste before heading to my daughter's dance recital and I didn't want to get started on anything big, so I decided to finally add the labels to the containers in the pantry.  

I said that word again, didn't I?  Finally.  I've had those letters cut out (vinyl lettering using the silhouette) and sitting here for weeks now.  And the pantry itself?  We put shelves in it and repainted it, oh, a year and a half ago.  I don't suppose I will ever catch up completely or totally finish the projects on my list.  And I'm ok with that.  I'm ok that it takes a while to get things done, and even longer to share them on the blog.  At least things are getting done, and progress of any sort is really the goal.  That, and having a life outside of the To Do List, which is really what life is about right?

So before another one of the kids comes downstairs needing something or the dog insists on going outside and I get interrupted again, let me share my pantry photos.
This is the Before:

The biggest issue was the wire shelving, of course.  I'm probably a closet snob now that my husband is so good with installing built-ins.  I can't stand the wire stuff anymore.  So it had to go.  As did that metal post right in the middle of the closet.  It was always getting in the way.

And let's not forget the overall clutter. 

So I emptied it all out and stacked it in the sun room - can you believe ALL that was in that one closet?! - and turned the husband loose on the shelving.

Did I mention the closet re-do was what told him I wanted for my birthday that year?  Yep.  And I painted it myself too - happy DIY birthday! ;)

At the time I had been seeing a lot of fun walls in pantries and I wanted to do something unique and fun but without putting a lot of extra time into it.  What I ended up with was a series of stripes using leftover paint from the rest of the house.

Then I was all set to load everything back in.  I started off being methodical about it.  I put the seldom-used stuff in the back two corners and assigned specific shelves to certain types of food - baking, cereal, snacks, etc.  Then I realized I was having Kaitlyn's party that weekend and needed the sunroom and I shoved the rest of it in there willy nilly.

A few months later my friend Audrey came to visit and insisted on helping me finish organizing it one afternoon.  Everything got completely sorted, categorized, tossed (if expired or didn't look like I would ever use it), and reshelved.  And that was the point it has been in for quite some time - functional but not quite fully finished enough to take final photos.

 Until yesterday.  WOOHOO!  Labels are on and the pantry is finished!

 For the containers themselves I tried to work mostly with what I had already.  The sugar and flour were some I've had forever and after going back and forth and looking at all the fun and pretty containers available in many different stores I decided to stick with clear plastic ones.  That way I can just rinse them out if anything spills and we can easily see what's inside, even without the labels.  The jars for the brown sugar, powdered sugar, rice, granola, etc are actually containers that used to hold nuts.

 I purposely had my husband build that one shelf shorter just for cans.  It's working really well for us and freed up enough space that we could fit in one more shelf than had originally been able to fit.

I want to pick up a few of those under-shelf baskets the next time I'm at Ikea for potatoes, onions, and maybe those lunchboxes.  (There's always something on the list isn't there?)

I made sure when I was organizing everything that the things the kids need to access themselves were within easy reach (cereal, snacks, lunchbox stuff, drinks) and things like chips and candy were kept up out of easy reach.  The top shelf also holds things we use for entertaining.  That white bucket with the handle is a divided container that holds plastic utensils and napkins and I always keep it stocked and ready to pull out.  The other baskets hold napkins, paper plates, straws, cupcake wrappers, etc.

And there we have it.  It's not quite Pottery Barn catalog perfect, but it looks good and it's functional.

Master Bedroom - Complete!

Guess what?!  For the first time in my adult life I have a completely pulled-together, fully decorated bedroom!  Yay!

I really only had finishing touches left - something decorative above the bed.  I had run across the unfinished wooden scroll frame (in the center) at the craft store months ago, brought it home and painted it white with the intention of putting a quote or something inside it on the wall.  Then at my last big trip to Hobby Lobby (I think my friend and I spent 90 minutes just wandering lol) I ran across these big monogram letters 50% off.

I love that they are already embellished for me and the paint even matched my room.  I did have to find and paint the "&" sign to finish it off.

I even hung everything up all by myself last weekend while the husband was working.  They're all centered and straight and everything! ;)

So here's a look at the room all put together.  The wall décor (on the right) I made a while back.

The lamps I picked up at Target a month or so ago.  And look - some of my photos are out on display!

My newly reupholstered chair and the console table Sam built.

I don't think I've shown that off yet.  The shelves were kind of an "oops" when he was building the console table for the living room.  He had the upper part all together and called me out to the garage to check it out and I had to tell him "um, honey...I didn't want the DVD player in the middle I wanted it hidden behind the shutters on the side."  We were eventually going to put something there anyway so - bonus!  I just need a couple more accessories or books on those shelves.  I'm sure I will run across the perfect thing eventually, but it doesn't detract from the room as is.

So one more time - this is the Before photo taken December 2010 when we had just purchased the house and our furniture hadn't even arrived.

And After!

 And in case you were wondering - yes, this is the ONE room in the house that stays this clean almost all the time.  I even make my bed every morning  ;)

 

Linking to:

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Up on the Wall

 Remember this?  Well, I got it up on the wall!  (See Dari?! It didn't take 6 months! lol)
Where?  In the master bedroom, of course.  On that big blank wall by the bathroom.

 

I found I already had some photos printed, so I was able to make a nice little grouping on the wall.

PS - the hangers on the back of those frames drove my husband nuts when hanging them.  Not only are they each not quite placed in the same spot in the back, but the little hooks flip up and down so it was a real pain trying to get them on the wall.  We ended up with our faces pressed against the wall and a flashlight trying to see behind it to make sure we caught the hooks right.  I think it took us as long to hang these as it did to do the entire monogram photo wall in Tyler's room.

I'm starting to get excited about this room coming together.  I can count on one hand the number of projects I still want to do in the room - yay!  Next up is reupholstering a chair.  The fabric I ordered for it arrived the day before yesterday.  EEEEK!

Tyler's Monogram Wall

I finished it!!  Tyler's Monogram wall, which has been in the works since I did Kaitlyn's wall shortly after we moved in (3 years ago!), is finally DONE!

This is what his room looked like yesterday morning:

 And after the husband so nicely helped me hang everything up (without one swear word! A couple of eye rolls, yes, but no swear words lol  I point this out only because he had just spent some time wresting with hanging other photos in our bedroom and they weren't exactly cooperative.  I might be banned from buying frames with that type of hanger ever again.):

I'm so excited to have this one on the wall.  I put it together a couple of years ago and Tyler was not happy when he found out I had glued the cars on there and he could never have them back.  Didn't matter that he never played with those particular cars ;)  I'm pretty happy with the overall car theme for the room - kind of subtle so it doesn't scream CARS and not too toddler-esque so hopefully it will last him a few years.  But with enough bits here and there to be fun and personalized.  Look! I even managed to match the colors of the bedspread with most of the photos (that wasn't exactly intentional lol).

When we showed Tyler the finished wall last night he looked at it for a minute with no expression then as he started looking closely at it he got pretty excited.  I'm very happy with it and also very happy to cross another project off the list that has been on there for so long.  I'm feeling very productive lately.  You'll see what I mean as soon as I get the chance to work on a few more blog posts (and a few of the bigger things I am realizing I never got posted - like Tyler's birthday party from December!).  For now, one last look at the wall while I breath a sigh of relief to have it not only finished, but shared with everyone in Blogland (or at least the few friends that I know of that consistently read my blog).

Linking to:
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Sometimes Done Is Better Than Perfect

That's one of the quotes that has been popping into my head a lot lately.  Done is better than Perfect.  Seems like a good mantra, right?  It fits pretty well with what I've been trying to accomplish this month - to get some of those random things I've been meaning to do crossed off the list.  And it's working!
So far I have:

 

 Labeled the garbage can.  We know "right is recycle" but guests don't and I've been meaning to put some vinyl labels on it for months.

 Replaced the rug in the entry.  I've been meaning to do this ever since we moved into this house (over 3 years now).  The above photo is the poor old rug we've been using.  Waaaaaay past its prime.

And there is the new rug.  Found it at Home Goods yesterday for $15.  Awesome!  I'd been looking for something "perfect" and kept rejecting option after option over the months - too expensive, not enough color, found it in Utah and didn't want to bring it back on the plane, blah blah.  I'm really happy with this one.  I don't know if it was worth the wait, or if it's perfect.  But it looks good and was a great price and that's great.

 

Put all my store rewards cards on a keychain.  We all have of a ton of these right?  Usually the one I need is always in my "other wallet" and not with me.  And when I do remember to bring the wallet with all the cards, half of them fall out while I'm searching for the correct one.  So I finally got smart and punched holes in any that didn't already have keychain tags and threaded them all on a keychain.  Not only is my wallet no longer bursting at the seams, but I can keep this keychain in the console of the Yukon then when I'm out shopping and at a store that I know has a rewards cards I can just grab it and take it inside with me.

Some of my other goals:  getting some stuff up on the walls, displaying more of our photos instead of just storing them on the computer, and using some of the stuff I have in the closet that "might be useful someday."  These photos hit all three at once.  When I ran across the photos I had printed from our Christmas card photo session I decided then and there to go see if I had any frames for them.  The frames came from my friend, Audrey's house when she moved a few months ago.  They were painted different colors and there was a dried flower mounted on the matt in one.  So I spray painted the frames, flipped the mats over and painted them with acrylic and now they are a nice matched set that looks great in the bare-until-last-week hallway upstairs.

What do you think, Audrey? ;)

It feels really great to get some of these small things done.  I wonder what else I can tackle this week while the motivation is flowing...

New Furniture!

 This one has been a long time in the works.  We've been in search of a piece of furniture to house the cable box and DVD player since we moved in three years ago.  We finally spotted one we thought would work, with shutters to cover up the ugly electronic components, but of course it was too expensive so we made plans to build one.  I ran across the shutters and legs at a Habitat for Humanity resale store in March.  Then last month I said that's it, we're building this thing for my birthday!  So, one month late and I did the finish work myself but Happy Birthday to me! ;)

 One set of shutters hides the cable box.  The thought was that the remote would be able to shoot through the gaps when they are open, which is does.  But because the components are on the side in the corner the remote still gets some interference from the couch sometimes so we've been opening the door when we want to watch TV.

I know - the colors look all different.  That's because none of them looks right in photos.  In person it's a much deeper, richer teal color which I love right now.  I'm also really happy with how the antiquing turned out.  According to my Pinterest research I was supposed to use "antiquing glaze" but the stores here had no clue what I was talking about it.  So I did the spray paint, distress the edges with sandpaper, then stain over the top of everything method.

 You know what's coming next, right?  ACCESSORIES!

Dressed Up for Summer

 Happy Memorial Day!  Hope everyone is enjoying the fantastic long weekend - we sure are!  Usually these "smaller" holidays catch me by surprise and we're left wondering how to entertain ourselves.  This year the down time was very much welcome, and to add some fun to the mix we had a very fun BBQ with new neighbors Saturday, pool time yesterday (and probably again today) and today we will be heading out for some shopping and lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (our belated Anniversary celebration since Wednesday, our 14th anniversary, was crazy busy).

As usual, we have had all kinds of things going on including projects in the works.  Since I'm still in Spring Cleaning/Updating mode, the front porch was one of them.  We have a pretty great front porch - plenty of room and I love the stamped concrete.

 And it's just kinda sad to see such a great space go unused for so long.  So this year I told the husband that for Mother's Day I wanted furniture for the front porch.

 I really wanted rocking chairs, but they won't rock on the stamped concrete.  Adirondack chairs felt like the wrong style.  I eventually found a nice (and inexpensive!) metal bench online and on Mother's Day weekend we took a trip out to the Outlets to find some accessories.  I'm either really picky or shopping in the wrong places, because I only came home with a few pillows for the bench and a new door mat.

 Prompted by a Mother's Day card and cash from my mother-in-law (Thanks Jacklyn!) I spent a fun half hour in the garden section picking out annuals.  Oh - and did I mention I spent a few hours a couple weeks ago repainting the posts and railings?  And ta-da!  I think our front porch is all set for the summer!

 Look - I even remembered to put out the red, white, and blue wreath for Memorial Day. ;)

 I'm still going to keep my eyes open for a small table and maybe another chair for that far corner.  But for now, I'm liking the final results.

Happy Mother's Day to me! :)

Pallet Wall Art

This post has been a long time coming.  The project itself was a series of starts and stops over a period of months, then once I got it finished it sat for weeks before we mounted it on the wall and then the photos have been waiting to be blogged for quite a while now.  So before I get distracted again, let me share the latest addition to my craft room.

It all started with a stack of wooden pallets that the builders in the neighborhood abandoned.  And like a lot of my ideas lately, I had seen a number of fantastic Pinterest projects using those weathered pallets - everything from outdoor coffee tables to flower boxes.  I found myself drawn again and again to the pallet wall art and finally I decided that the perfect place for some wall art of my own would be above the dresser I refinished for my craft room.

Have you ever tried to pull apart a wooden pallet?  Geesh!  Those babies are built to last! LOL  Eventually the husband got sick of watching me struggle with them and helped me pull them apart.  I have a phobia about bugs, and since moving to North Carolina it has only gotten worse.  So I laid out all the pieces on the patio and hosed them down.  Sprayed them with bug killer and let them sit.  Did it all again when I decided they had been sitting too long.  And one more time before moving them into the garage.  Just for good measure, right?

Eventually I found a day when the power tools were out and I used the nail gun to attach the weathered wood pieces to some newer 1x4 scraps.  Then realized that the finish nails, though well hidden weren't going to keep it all together well enough.  So I added some screws, stained it to bring out even more of the character in the wood and left it to sit again while I decided which quote I wanted to display.  See, this is where the perfectionist in me rears its ugly head.  Was that one too cheesy?  Did this one fit the feeling of what I had in mind for the room?  It took me weeks to come back around to my original thought of simply using the word Create.

 

It was a pretty simple matter to cut a stencil using my Silhouette.  A bit trickier to get it all lined up right and keep all the edges of the contact paper down while I added the paint.

In the end, I was very happy with the result, but it felt like there was a bit too much "white space" now.  So I free-handed some swirls.  Then let it sit in the garage for a while longer before I decided I liked the swirls and could finally recruit the husband to hang it on the wall. 

Oh wait!  We were out of picture hanging supplies! LOL  Eventually though it did make it onto the wall and I get to admire it every time I use my printer.