The Flu and Potted Plants - Oh Me Oh My

How are you? Long time no see but I'm sure you have been busy on your end. We've been doing things too but really the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a downer trying to recover from the Flu, Bronchitis and Strep. :- ( 

 

Just hoping our household is on the upswing of things now.

 

Well my post is pretty random but I'm kind of an "all over the place" kind of thinker most of the time anyway so here goes...

 

I'm really not that great of a gardener. I try though, really I do! As far as in the flowers and plants area, I'd say I'm pretty minimalistic. We'll call it that since I just don't have a very green thumb! So mainly the flowers you see in my yard are in pots. Yes potted plants. Yee Haw.

 

I bought a couple of beautiful large metal planters a while back and planted them full of soil and flowers and honestly they did horribly. The rain and weather drowned what I had planted even with rocks placed in the bottom of the pots. So here's what I did next after emptying everything out - I got out my electric drill and randomly drilled holes in the bottom so water will escape.  

 

 

outside of pot where I drilled. Wear your safety glasses!

 

keep

going

down

 to

read

more!

 

 

This is the inside of the pot if you couldn't tell. :)

 

I imagine it will help the next plant I put in it. I sure hope so anyway. I don't know that this little post will help you but thought I'd share anyway. Drilling is an easy task. Let's hope it works. Thanks for reading if anyone did.

 

Okay now go get that flu shot if you haven't already! You definitely do not want the flu. There is my real tip of the day. Hope all is well. Over and Out!  

 

 

Tree and Stump Removal Oh My!

I'm so excited! The kids are back in school - my youngest just started Kindergarten so I'm catching up on all the outstanding projects we have at home! The past couple of weeks I cut down two trees and dug out four, count them, FOUR tree stumps all by myself! ROAR!!! haha.

I'm still excited. I had called around to various tree stump removal companies and no one called me back! Better for me because I did it by myself and saved my family a lot of dough! I would post the pictures of a couple stumps and the area I'm working on but I'm having trouble uploading pix this morning. It's not too bad uprooting smaller sized stumps but it takes dedication, strength and the mindset. Oh and lots of breaks!!!! The roots systems on some of them were tough. I've uprooted bushes before but these were a good bit harder. It took me three days to uproot four total and an hour per the first two stumps and then about fifteen minutes on one stump and two hours for the last stump. Lots of water breaks are needed though!

I've got a very loooong to do list so I'm getting to it. Lots of things to work on inside this week. I'll be sharing some of those projects too! Can't wait! Hope everybody is good!

A Little Alarming!

Um several years ago someone I know had a fire in their home and it caused quite a bit of damage. After that everyone in our family got Fire Extinguishers as Christmas gifts! Was probably one of the smartest gift ideas because it is something everyone should have, just in case. So if you're ever looking for a practical gift, this is a good one! It was received well by everyone I gave one to!

 

My point of this post though is --- I've had this extinguisher for years. I have another one too but in my last kitchen "clean out" I realized that the gauge on it showed that it was empty, which was pretty alarming! It was no good to us if we needed it. I do not want to take that chance EVER! It went to the nearest recycling center so it could be disposed of but as a friendly reminder, maybe check your fire extinguishers to see if they are still good. Always best to be safe! Hope all is well!

 

 

 

Organizing Photos

How are things going? It's been HOT here. As far as stuff around the house I've got a big project going on and will probably continue all summer long. I'm working to reorganize all of our printed photos! I've saved up and used coupons to purchase plenty of photo albums so that isn't a concern and I can dig in and organize! 

 

photo albums oh my!

 

I love going through photo albums that belong to my parents and grandparents, and truthfully this project needs to be done for my kids. I want my kids to have photos they can see and remember things by. I've got boatloads of digital images but we have boxes full of printed photos as well. Going through everything and coordinating time lines and subjects for the albums has been challenging but I am starting to see the light!

 

Table covered in photos!

I've got photo albums of each child, one of our beloved cat, several family ones that include pictures of events and things with my husband's family and mine and wedding albums and albums of just my husband and me. Plus I've got some throwback photo albums that have sticky pages with clear view covers you lift up and replace to hold photos. I'm using those for pictures I can cut out and place in a collage sort of way. Oh the creative juices are flowing and it's keeping me busy!

Loading and Unloading My Trunk = DeCRAPIFYING Again!

WHATUP????!!!??!!?! How are you? What are you up to this summer? Swim team has me pretty busy and so does the hizzie! I am doing a MAJOR overload of decrapifying our house! I've been reading up on minimalism and how to live with so much less and am in serious DEJUNKING mode. If something doesn't emit happy thoughts or positive energy or I am not in love with something, it's leaving our house.

 

There are many things that don't belong to me so my children and hubs have to sort through and decide for themselves if they want to part with them or not. So far I have taken five trunk loads of crap to donate and I already have another trunk load full. I'm decluttering every part of our house, slowly. I can't say I'm on a path where I go room to room though. I find it better to just start and stop and keep moving. So far my son has weeded through all his school papers to decide what to keep and what to toss. It has been a big task. I've gone through wedding items, clothing, photographs, filing cabinets, books in the attic, trinkets, mementos, toys, you name it!

 

My child's school work we sorted through!

6th trunk load full

A lamp I was going to redo for 5 years and never have. We don't use it so I'm donating to someone who can!

 

We took a family vacation a month ago and it's always eye opening to see what we can live without when we are away. There is so much crap in our house that we don't need! I'm so excited and it's so freeing to load up the car, unload, and donate things to someone else who CAN and WILL use them! YESSS!

Wall Hanging over Headboard

Guess I've been MIA for a while. Things have been pretty busy here. I wanted to share with you what I did over our head board. I think it offers a nice contrast between the fine lines of the head board and the and the night stands. The mirrors are curved and match the overall theme of the room. Happy hump day!

 

Minimalism At Its Best!

I follow a bunch of blogs and sites on minimalism and would love to have a more minimalistic life. I know I've talked about this over and over. Just tired of feeling like I'm drowning in stuff. I absolutely love going on vacations and not having EVERYTHING we have in our house to show how well we can live a simpler life. I'm working on the next garage sale and bagging a bunch of stuff up to sell and hopefully rid the house of. My house may not look super stark of all knick knacks and stuff but it'll be cleaner and contain only necessary things and things we love. The hardest part is toys and children's items. Carefully working on this to feel more worry free and care free! Do you like the idea of minimalism? It's kind of annoying how quickly my family has filled up space so I'm back at it working to clear it out again! Are you doing any organizing since it's Spring?

 

Wall Hanging - Over Bed



How's it going? It has been a busy month and I've been working in the yard more than the inside of the house lately. The past couple of weeks I've raked and bagged seven bags of pine needles and then made two trips to the hardware store to lay down eighteen bags of mulch in the front beds. It was a chore because I first bought black mulch and it didn't look right with the house so I went back and got brown. I also came in contact with a snake for the very first time. Not fun.  

 

Getting back to the inside of the house, here's a picture of our master bedroom. I'm sharing because this is what we used to have over the headboard. I love to see how people decorate walls over master headboards if there's room. It took me a while to find the right thing. This isn't it! I wasn't settled on this mirror. It was lonely and looked out of place.

 

I'll share with you later what I found to hang there. Hope everyone is good. I'm whooped.

 

 

Spring Brings New Projects

Spring time has brought on allergies but I'm so glad it's finally here. With Spring here we've got lots of new outdoor projects to work on. Cannot wait to get them going. I won't bore you with all the details but here's the lowdown on the way back yard. The landscaping is tough but we cleared out a good wooded area in the very back and have some big trees that are spaced apart where we'd love to build a tree house. Doubtful it will happen considering we don't have the proper tools or the know-how but here is a rough draft of one we made up. Most likely we will add a swing or two in between the trees instead of a tree house. It's fun to imagine and draw up plans though!   

 

 

 

What kinds of projects are you doing this Spring?

Getting Rid of More STUFF!

How's it going? I've been MIA for the past few weeks I guess. I've been trying to do different things while adjusting to my youngest starting pre-school. I have to say - I LOVE it! That and basketball season coming to an end, I've been busy with a lot of things.

The Spring is coming up before too long and as always I'm working on getting rid of MORE stuff. I just want to get the house cleaned up and totally free of all clutter. I know I say it all the time, I'm just tired of feeling like stuff and cleaning it weighs me down. It's not worth it. Thinking about having stuff in the attic even bugs me to the point where I just want to get rid of it. Uggh. Enough whining and more DOING! Here goes nothing as I take a bin and walk around the house filling it!

Good Will and Kid Consignment - here I come!

Happy weekend!

Mason Jar Paint Storage

WHAAAATUPPP? It's been a looong/short week here. Kid stuff, house stuff... schtuff! Today my kids are off from school so we have a loooong weekend and hopefully it won't feel short.

 

So I posted a sneak peak many months back that I was going to share a project with mason jars. I finally got off my patoot and did it. I used mason jars to store extra paint we had in the garage. We had lots of cans sitting around with small portions of paint leftover from painting the house. I got rid of all rusted paints and kept only the ones that were clean.

 

If you know me, you know I'm a bit of an organizational freak. If you don't know me, well now you know! Labeling the jars with tape and my handwriting wasn't good enough. haha! I wanted to label them more "professionally".  

 

 

 

I picked up a package of Avery circular labels at Wal-Mart.

You have to go to the website and pick a template to use for your label.  

 

 

I chose a simple one to be nice to my printer.

I labeled the paints with:

 

Store

Color

Type of Finish

Room in the House

 

 

 

You go through the sheet template making each label. 

Important: When printing remember to un-check "Fit-to-page".

I made this mistake and spent some time on the help line. They were wonderful though and sent me a new package after I messed up printing two sheets of labels. They were so helpful! 

Below is a sheet of my labels printed on the circular stickers! You can change the colors of the text and images and I changed them to shades of gray to go easy on my printer. 

 

 

 

Here are my organized paints all labeled neatly! I really like how easy this is. It keeps the garage so nice and neat and the paints don't take up nearly as much room as they did!

 

 

What do you think, would you do this in your home?

Happy Friday!

One Word - 2015

So it's now 2015 and yeah I'm late in the month to be talking about New Year's resolutions. I don't really make them, nah, not so much, I don't want to disappoint myself by NOT living up to some sort of BIG expectation for myself. I set goals and really try to make them but that is less expectation than to make one big "resolution" or something. ;)

Last year I found this neat site called One Word and came up with a word for last year. I think my new word for this year is FOCUS! I'm typically a pretty organized, energetic kind of girl but want to keep on track and stay focused on even the smallest of goals. You see, my mind goes nuts trying to come up with all kinds of creative things and it makes it difficult to stay focused on just one thing. So in the end I have lots of unfinished projects and not always the total follow through. I'm getting better though!

Here's hoping to GET Focused and STAAAAY Focused because the list way far below is the list I made for 2014 and you can see what I actually finished last year!

So for 2015 here are my goals:

• Filing Cabinet - paint or give a makeover
• Do something with lampshade I have in attic
• Better organize my desk
• Organize computer files better!!!!!!!!!!!
• Organize wedding pictures
• Stain or paint a dresser, book case and lamp in youngest child's bedroom
• Give oldest child a new bedroom makeover
• Possibly redo kid's bathroom
• Touch up paint or repaint downstairs bathroom
• Re-touch paint in a lot of rooms 

Small Goals for 2014 were: 

• 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 kids' 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 gatee used to be

I've got lots planned for this year! What are your resolutions or goals for 2015???

What's Your Sign?

Can you believe it's already Thursday? I really can't! This week has just flown by! It's been a good week with a few rough patches but over the hump and staying positive that today is a new day. Do you like inspirational sayings to help you through things? I do! I love reading different quotes and sayings and try to find ones to help me through different situations, it's kind of therapeutic or something.

 

Anyway, a few months ago I found this sign at  a store called Home South with this adorable saying. I just love it! For the longest time I had it sitting in the dining room while I was trying to find a place for it.   I try not to purchase anything anymore unless I know for sure where it's going but I really liked this sign. 

 I was considering hanging it on the wall in our living room, in between the fireplace and window. I kept going back and forth about it. I didn't want to crowd the room with one more wall hanging OR cause it to look cluttered.  

Finally I was back in the store looking for something and also trying to get ideas for hanging the sign. Heck, I moved things around on our hearth and decided it looked good there so that is where it lives now. I really like this sign and what it says!

 

"LAUGH as much as you breathe.

LOVE as long as you live."

 

 

 It's a great reminder for us all the time!

 

 

Who Wants Gummy Shag? NOBODY!

EWWWWWW GROSS! This has been an upsetting eye sore on our living room area rug for the past month. or. sooo. Oops! One of the kids dropped a fat wad of gum that molded to the edge of the rug and nobody would fess up to it! Just great.

I didn't mean to procrastinate but with the holidays and December "busy-ness", I let it go and got to it when I had the time to research it. I have some very good news to share!

Nasty gum stuck on/in the carpet. GROSS! 

Boiling HOT H2O did the trick! I boiled water in my teapot and placed an old towel under the rug to catch the water. I simply poured the water over the wad and gently picked the gum off with a metal pick found in a drawer. I had to pour water on the gum a couple of times to keep loosening and softening it but it worked like a charm. Took all of about five minutes and it came totally clean. The gum is made of latex and got gummy and a little stringy but lifted completely off. No color stain or residue left on the carpet. Just use caution so you don't pluck the carpet fibers out. Also use caution any time working with boiled water. No burning allowed!

What tricks do you use for gum removal?

No more gummy shag!

Remote Control Candles Are Cool

I haven't gotten a chance to chat too much because I've been trying to nurse all my family back to health. It's been an ongoing thing for nearly a week this time around.

 

I wanted to share one of my favorite Christmas presents from my parents. I got remote control candles. I love candles but really only burn one jar if any and it's rare these days. I try and keep candles out of reach due to our cat singeing his fluffy tail after I caught him up on our bar flicking it over a burning wick a couple of years ago. What a stinch it caused plus the whole house could have turned to ashes... a frightening thought. 

 

Anyhow I probably never would have bought battery operated remote control candles on my own. I just never gave it much thought. After receiving and playing around with them, I must tell you they are awesome!  

 

A comment my mom made was that if the power goes out, we have light! SO true.

So they came in a box of eight. I wasn't sure where I was going to put all the candles. With one push of a button they turn on and flicker much like real candles. They are wax on the outside and smell like vanilla. LOVE!

 

 

When I began looking for a new spot for the candles, I realized I had wall sconces and pillar candle holders with candles I'd never light because I just find them dangerous. I replaced all my real candles for these and I just love. You can cluster or scatter but I find them lovely scattered. With a point of the remote and a push of a button, they set a nice warm mood!  

3M Sticky Hangers Kitchen Organization!

I don't know about you but my kitchen cabinets have been a mess since before Christmas. I don't have that many pots and pans really (I like to only keep the basics and not too much more) but our cabinets had really gotten out of hand. Here's what they looked like before I got into serious organization mode last night.

 

Over the break a family member gave me a couple packages of hooks. :) I wasn't sure how I'd use them but I knew I could always put them to good use. There is always need for improvement!

 

 

Last night I cleaned out all the cabinets sweeping all crumbs out and organizing EVERYTHING!

 

I had some wiry thingies too that needed better homes than being tossed in cabinets. I was able to make more room inside the cabinets by hanging these wiry thingies. They are for the pizza stone, brownie pan, etc.

Nothing too exciting but heck it works. If you try this at home, just be sure to hang it so you can close your cabinet! I really like. What have you used 3M hooks and hangers for?

Label Making NERD I AM!

I'm stoked! I have been shopping for a new label maker b/c mine quit printing. I've had it for years and LOVE it. I use it for lots of labeling. Right now I'm working on our filing cabinet to get our files up-to-date. Anyhow I put the label maker in a pile to donate b/c it wouldn't print. The label would come out of the machine but there was no text.

So I was shopping for a new one and honestly, I hate to spend the money on something like this all over again. I started googling techie stuff troubleshooting and learned my batteries were flat. There is no ink in these little machines which is the beauty of them. It's a heat thing and my batteries were just flat. The machine wasn't dead but all it took was a change of batteries and my little label maker is back in business. I love the Internet for stuff like this! YESSSSSSSSSSSS I'm that kind of a nerd b/c it made my morning! The Internet saves again! What has the Internet saved you from doing lately?!?!?!

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

It's January and the past month has been a whirlwind of events. I hope you had a wonderful time over the holidays! We were able to spend a lot of time with family over the break and it was nice. Today marks the first day back to the grind. I'm excited though because I just do better on a schedule. Give me too much time and I turn into a big slug. So today it's early and I've already gotten in a workout and been grocery shopping. I had a strange encounter with a woman trying to sell me on why our government is corrupt in the parking lot at the grocery store at 6:00 am and I would have thought my body language told her to please leave me alone. Not sure she was ever taught about strangers and approaching another stranger in the dark but I got in my car and scooted home to get lots of stuff done before I wake the kiddos.

 

I love this time of the year because the days are already starting to get longer. Light at the end of the tunnel. I don't have much to say as far as home decorating projects except that I'm all undecorated from Christmas. Yee Hah! Now to get on to other stuff that has been on my waiting to do list for sometime now. On that note, I better get kids ready for school. Happy Monday and Happy New Year!