New Garage Door

Never thought I'd be so excited over a new garage door. It's funny how when something breaks and you go shopping for that one single item, you start noticing that item everywhere. Or at least I do. A couple years ago our garage door broke and I mean BROKE. It fell off the tracks and luckily we were in the living room, safe, and our cars were parked outside the garage. All we heard was a loud BOOM and we went running!

So the door had a big fat crack in the front and it had buckled and was bent out of shape in a few spots. We paid to have it reinforced and it lasted a while but has recently begun creaking and it was making us nervous. Well once we decided to look at garage doors, which I didn't have much interest in at first, I started thinking "decorative"! Not sure what clicked and light bulb turned on but I LOVE the craftsman style house. My mind just thinks decorating! If I could, I would transform ours into a craftsman but that would cost a fortune!

That being said, we found something we both liked that we thought would make a nice impression. As far as garage doors we wanted something solid with great insulation and steel backing. The room above the garage is barely useable because of poor insulation. We found this garage door - it fit all our needs and it's so pretty ON! It dresses the house up nicely. We had to change the rails and opener and the darn thing is super quiet and has a key pad and is helping our bonus room stay more comfortable temperature-wise. Those were the really important things and the decoration was the plus. We are so behind the times with a lot of the modern conveniences (smart phones) but are really excited about our brand new garage door we got today. Who would have ever thought?!?!?! What was the last upgrade you got really excited about????? I'd love to hear!

That LAUNDRY Time Of The Week Again

It's THAT time of the week again and it came waaaay too fast!!!! I'm kidding. I was lagging last week and didn't do the laundry until Thursday so I don't have a ton but I wanted to get back on track with my schedule and do it since it is Monday. It works really well for me to do it on Monday. That way at the end of the week I'm not bothered with the chore of laundry. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

Not to rub it in but I am getting ready to take a much needed nap and am begging my three year old to nap so I can go nap too. It is just about my favorite part of the day. HA HA!  Before I go though just thought I'd share how I separate laundry after I fold so I can take it all upstairs. Our laundry room is on the main floor. We each have a basket and there is a bag for the linen closet too. It helps so much. I go ahead and hang the "hangables"(think I made a new word) and lay them in the baskets too so I just have to take the laundry upstairs and put it away. I'll be working on reorganizing dresser drawers and will eventually share that too.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Our Tile Backsplash

Happy Weekend! Hope your weekend is a good one. A friend is shopping for back splashes right now and asked me to send pictures of ours. Here is our back splash. We used Ivory Travertine with glass tiles. We opted for simple. What kind of back splash do you have or do you have a back splash? Have a great rest of the weekend!

Organizing Baby & School Papers All In One!

I am so psyched! I found an awesome site with lots of organizing goodies! I have to give credit where credit is due - Destination Domestication - Check her out! I didn't come up with these on my own by any means but I LOVE the idea and knew it was something I needed to make to help my sanity. I have a first grader and with all the school papers and artwork, it gets to be a lot! I think this system is going to be great for organizing my childrens' things! Right now I have boxes and bags of things in the tops of their closets and this will certainly simplify!

I still have baby books but am way behind on them and this should help to get things better organized! Woot Woot! Just a little excited!

Since I am on a budget and pinching pennies like never before I went the cheapest route I could find! I was in BJ's warehouse doing my bulk grocery shopping when I came across a box of 50 standard green hanging file folders with labels and plastic label markers for $7.00. I bought those and then found the bins 2 for $13.00 at OfficeMax this week. I scooped them up too. 

After test driving two cars and while sitting waiting on my car to be serviced at the dealership yesterday, I cut out my labels. Because I don't like my handwriting I typed them in WORD and pre-printed 'em using the same labels as on Destination Domestication. I altered the last one to "WORK" because my kids will probably have some sort of jobs before they are 18.  

Today I spent time getting help with my Cricut because it has been dragging when cutting. Finally got it reset and cut the names out of vinyl. SWEETNESS!  

LOVING this project and it didn't cost much to make. Now it's time to start transferring papers over to this new system. Can't wait! Thank you Destination Domestication!

Organizing Paper Files

I don't know about you but I am up waaaaay too late on a Saturday night, and all because of a caffeinated sweet tea I ordered at dinner. I gave up sodas over eighteen months ago and every once in a while I'll splurge and have a tea. I'm kicking myself right now because I've got to be up in a few hours for church!

Anyhow, tonight has been pretty good. Our favorite college basketball team won their game and since then I've been quite productive. After the kiddos went to bed I attacked our filing cabinet. It is the one organizational thing that overwhelms me the most. I detest it. It has so many folders and so many papers and I  do not like dealing with mail and bills, yada, yada. Just like clean laundry, I don't like sorting mail and putting it away.

It's necessary though and I decided to tackle it so I can move on to more fun activities! There was a LARGE pile of papers to sort though and I made a couple labels for new file folders and finally filed the whole thing so there are no more papers floating around. RELIEF! Below is the proof of the leftovers. Now to shred and recycle (Remember: check to see if your recycling will take shredded paper and if not, check with your county recycling centers). Maybe if I file more often I won't get so overwhelmed. I'll keep trying!

Do you have a good solution for handling papers? I figure the more folders I have, the easier it is to file papers. There are more categories that help separate important items! Have a great Sunday! I plan on having some fun. Hope you get to too!

Fans Clockwise For Winter

How is your week going? It's hump day and the week has been pretty good so far, minus a leak in our ceiling but it is fixed now. : )

 

Here is a little tip for wintertime savings! I recently learned this from my mother-in-law. She swears it is a big power savings in her house so I'm willing to try.

 

Set your ceiling fans clockwise for winter to help bring the heat down from the ceiling. I have researched this and you should do it only if you have fairly normal height ceilings. If you have vaulted or high ceilings it doesn't help as much so it's best to keep it counter clockwise. Here are some good instructions I found to explain why!

 

Hope this helps YOU.

 

 

Spray Painted Squash

I must say it has been five days since I shared my new cleaning schedule. It is going well! I've revised it somewhat and will continue making adjustments to fit my schedule better, but so far after five days the house is actually staying clean. I do a little bit every day and the house is clean! I must admit it is an awesome feeling. I don't have that constant feeling of stress over the house being a disaster! I will also start fitting in other things like slowly pulling in craft days or project days too to make a routine of them so there is no guilt! 

So I wanted to share one of my Good Will purchases. I bought this ceramic squash and honestly it wasn't bad to begin with. I've been trying to add little splashes of color here and there in the house so I painted it a solid color. It's an ocean blue spray paint and I love it. It sits in a cubby on my desk and it contrasts nicely against the dark wood. I love how it turned out!

What have you spray painted lately? Anything. I'd love to hear!

Cleaning Schedule For The Week

Cleaning For The Week

Monday: laundry, mirrors, bathroom sinks, toilets, tubs, shower & empty trash cans

                                                                      

Tuesday: dust all furniture

 

Wednesday: baseboards

 

Thursday: vacuum & mop

 

Friday: do once over before weekend

 

Wordless Wednesday

Chair Is Where? Chair is There!

It's Monday and I've gotten a lot accomplished today! YAY! My oldest started back to school today and I've been busy! After going to the gym at 5:00 am and dropping my oldest off at school, I bought groceries, made two large pans of lasagna and I even found the time to clean all the mirrors, sinks and toilets in the house AND empty the small trash cans (all with my three year old in tow). I know you wanted to hear all about that. ;) My youngest is down for a NAP - I feel like I have to spell it but at three years old, he knows how to spell it too. I'm ready for a nap myself!

So I was thinking about it and I posted about a chair I got for Christmas nearly two years ago. I didn't know where I wanted to put it in the house and I forgot to show you when I finally decided!



After sitting on the idea of using it as a computer desk chair, I decided it wouldn't be comfortable as one. I put it in the dining room in the bay window as a separate little sitting nook. It has so many colors on the fabric which makes it awesome. I can move it from room to room if I really want because we have so many of these colors on the walls. For now, I think it goes great in this room!!! Love this chair! Do you have any pieces of furniture that get moved around in your house?

Ahh Back To Packing Lunches!

I didn't think I would be so ready for my oldest to start back to school after Christmas break but I am sooooo ready. Must sound terrible but we need more structure in a serious way! Something that has helped me with packing lunches is to pre-pack on Sunday nights! Maybe it sounds disgusting and maybe it's not your thing but my mother works in food service and if she's okay with it, I've got my stamp of approval. She did, of course advise me to make sure the bread is still fresh and soft before sending and I've tested it before and the sandwiches were fine. My guy is a little picky and doesn't like much on them so it makes it a little easier that way I guess. No mayo or mustard so not a big deal. No sogginess there.

It's one less thing I have to do the rest of the week so it saves this mama majorly on time. I simply make five sandwiches and put them in containers in the fridge and each night all I have to do is pull one out with fruit and two pre-made snacks from my handy dandy snack drawer! Trying to keep it simple as the school year continues! Do you have any tips or tricks packing lunches?

Blog Goals!

It's just freezing cold here and burrrrrr I can't seem to get warm. Tonight we saw our alma mater play hoops and when we got home, the kids went to bed and what did I do? I swept and mopped the floors downstairs and then hopped on the computer to do some blog work! So exciting for a Saturday night! ;)

As far as Keep It Simple goes I am seriously trying to fix a lot of things that don't work to get it moving again. I've found inspiration from others and want to keep it moving. So I am setting small goals and it's somewhat working backwards to bring it back up to speed. I am adding back in the images that were lost and updating the links I posted on other sites. 

Tonight I updated two posts with re sized images and relinked them to Pinterest so people don't click on my images to find  nothing. Fun stuff!

Just to remind anyone who might be reading along I am still on Pinterest and Twitter as "Less Is More".

There are links on the blog.

I am working towards getting my blog back on Facebook. I'll let you know as soon as I do! 

Hope you have a great rest of the weekend! Looks like I've got lots of work to do but it will be quite a process and could take some time. Didn't I just talk about setting small goals?!?!? Ugghh!

One Word

Neato! Just the other day I was saying I don't make resolutions, which I don't, but I came upon a site that made me laugh. It's called One Word and it's about not making resolutions but coming up with a single word to describe what kind of person you strive to be in the next year. I would say AWESOME SAUCE but seeing that it's "two words" I can't use it. Haha! It came to me fairly easily though and my word is persistence. I have the tendency to start something full force and not follow through and finish, or give up. I have small goals I want to achieve this year and must be persistent to get them done! I won't get anywhere unless I do!

Small goals for 2014 are:

• Finish labeling spices in spice cabinet
  


• Filing Cabinet - finish labeling all files in file cabinet
  


• Refinish kid's table and chairs in playroom
  


• Do something with the lamp that's in the playroom - I have some ideas!
  


• Create a gallery wall in the house so they are better displayed
  


• Better organize my desk
  


• Organize computer files better
  


• Organize downstairs closet
  


• Organize wedding pictures

• Purge. Purge. Purge.

• Label toys in kid's rooms

• Fix crooked pictures on walls ;)

• Finish bunk bed bedroom!
  


• Print photos

• Clean rugs and runners

• Paint speaker cover in living room

• Paint play room spots where baby gate used to be

Mostly my goals are to organize and stay organized. I am trying to pinch pennies for now so I'm not doing a lot of redos. I have to work with what I've got and we'll see how it goes!

Do you have any goals for 2014?

Bye Bye Christmas Decorations

I haven't been looking forward to taking down Christmas decorations ever since I put them up. It won't be too bad once I get started but I just never like doing it. The house looks bare and it means Christmas, which we were looking so forward to, is past tense... The motivation wasn't there until this morning when I heard my loving cat puking two times in the dining room, next to the tree. Yuck. That says it all! It's time to come down. Time for the cat to quit gnawing on the garland, the trees, etc. Yuck, Yuck. On that note, I have LOTS to do today!

Do you have animal or kid troubles associated with Christmas decorations?