Office Storage

One of the reasons why the office got to be such a dump zone is because there was no organization, and there was no organization because there were no storage options. Well, all of that has changed. Over the last few weeks, all thoughts have been on the organization of the office.

(While I admit that I am anxious to have the office finished, I must admit that part of my motivation came from Christian. See, he told me that I can not call in our neighbor to help paint the living room until the office is complete. Well, fine!! A finished office is what you will receive, because I have been waiting three years for some fresh paint on those living room walls!!)

Back to the office... If you can't remember, here is what it looked like... 

Is anyone else finding it hard to concentrate... or breathe? Oh My Clutter! Yikes. Well I am happy to report that it looks like this no more! 

After painting the closet area a soft-toned grey and rehanging the shelf, the organization could begin.  In such a small room, two desks in the room would have been too much, as we can see from the picture above. So I utilized the closet area by putting my crafting desk inside. Enter task one of creating storage: building my craft desk. 

I decided a while ago that I would use the Recollections Cube Storage System, which my mom bought for me from Michael's last Black Friday for a super deal! It's a great line of storage products because you can mix the pieces to fit your needs! Here are the cubes I used.

I chose to use three different kinds of cubes. One with four slots for holding my various paper products for card making and scrap booking. One with four smaller drawers, which hold various crafting materials from flowers to jewelry-making supplies. Two cubes with three drawers each, which hold my Cricut cords and accessories, tapes/glues, stickers, yarns, ribbons and paints. 

Here they are put together in the closet. The Recollections line also sells a set of two desk tops that work with their cube products. I used one here between my stacked cubes, the other I might use as a shelf. There is plenty of room to wheel our computer chair in to get my craft on!

I found these great floating shelves at Target. They came in a set of three different sizes. The largest is perfect for my Cricut cartridges and the smaller shelves will hold some cute glass bottles with various materials in them. 

We store out wrapping paper in the office closet, so it was going to need a nice new holder. I found these two great totes at Marshall's on clearance! Woot! The smaller one is now being used for storing our wrapping paper, boxes, labels, etc. The larger one has been put to use holding all those crafting projects I haven't gotten around to yet!

 

As you can see it is pretty full!

Everything is coming along nicely. I will be painting the living room in no time, I'm sure of it!

DIY Calendar

I have been thinking about creating a command center in our house for a while now, much like this one I found on Pinterest...

So organized!

Well, a few weekends ago, I took a couple of steps toward making our command center. For one, I chose where I wanted it to be in the house. I have hopes of one day being able to park both cars in the garage and make that the main entry into the house for us (keeping all the dirt in the garage and NOT in my foyer!!). So, to me, the logical wall to execute our command center would be right inside the garage door. Luckily, we have a small wall area there that will work perfectly!

The next step was making a calendar. I found this tutorial on Pinterest (seriously, what would I do without Pinterest?!). I had everything I needed on hand, so I got started!

This lovely frame was originally intended for the spare bathroom. It was going to hold a sweet little birdie print from Etsy, but I found a better artwork option at Michael's. So this frame will now be turned into a calendar!

Next I gathered all the materials I thought might be needed for this project: scrapbook papers, glue, burlap, tape, ruler, paper cutter, etc. I started by taking the glass out of the frame. I started measuring to see how big the columns and rows should be. Problem number one... I am horrible at fractions! The width of the tape I chose to use for the column and row separators needed to be taken into account. This is where I faltered and threw math out the window. I would simply start marking off where I thought the tape should be and go from there.

                            


It must have been my lucky day because it turned out alright! After leaving two inches at the top for an area to write the month, I worked my way down. Then I worked my way across (sorry no photo, my camera battery died).

This is what it looked like when I had my tape applied.

Then I started on the background. I used the cardboard insert that came with the frame and glued the paper onto it. You can see a small seem in the yellow paper, but I am thinking about using my Cricut to cut an oval or rectangular shape to glue on over top of that area where I will be able to write the month. Make it stand out a bit more!

And here is the finished product!

This will be a huge help in keeping track of what is going on. The calendar will be a place where we can write down appointments, when we are out of town, when we are having guests, when Christian is playing golf and anything else we need to be aware of! I am very excited to get this up on the wall and put it to good use!

MIA

So it seems I have been slacking lately on the blogging. Two months worth of slacking to be exact! But I am back and hopefully here to stay!

I believe an update on some things that have been happening around our household is in order. First off is our new baby niece! While she is not physically in our household, she is always being talked about. We can't wait to meet little Lucy! We hope to make it up to see her over the July 4th holiday.

Check out my Sister-in-laws blog here!

Our friends Kristen and Adam came for a visit. After stalking Kristen's Pinterest page and seeing her board about European vacations, I immediately texted to find out if they were planning a trip. She said they were, possibly in October. WHAT?! So were we! I knew we had to talk with some friends of friends that had lived in Paris a little over a year to get the inside scoop! First though, we ventured into downtown Raleigh for a beer festival. We met up with some other friends there as well. I was voted to be the DD since I loathe beer! Then it was off to dinner to get the scoop on visiting Paris. We had a great time with friends while learning what we needed to survive Paris without being pick-pocketed! Success! We then headed home and played numerous games of Mario Kart. Adam and I dueled it out and left Kristen and Christian in the dust! At least Kristen was looking at the right screen this time!

We celebrated our third wedding anniversary! Time sure does fly when you're having fun. We enjoyed an amazing meal at our favorite restaurant, The Melting Pot. We have treated ourselves to a delicious meal here for all three anniversaries. I believe that makes it a tradition -- one I know we will have no problem keeping up with! Yummy! Another tradition is visiting the Outer Banks for our anniversary. We went the weekend before our actual anniversary this year. We loaded up the car with all our camping and beach gear and took off for a relaxing weekend. We did nothing but lay on the beach, read, sleep and eat s'mores! My kind of vacation. We took Crosby with us; he LOVES camping in the tent!

Oh yeah... Christian got a job! Woot! Then six weeks later, the company's expansion plan fell through and they laid off most of the workers... including Christian... bummer! Seriously, can he not catch a break here?! After being laid off from a job he was really enjoying, our friend and best man Sean was scheduled to make an appearance just 4 days later. It was perfect timing!

Whenever Sean comes to visit, they can be found on the golf course, and this trip was no different! It was great having him in the house again. We miss him when he's not here! Sean's girlfriend Sara joined the festivities later in the week. Sean and Sara took off for the beach and got engaged! Yay!

The main reason Sean and Sara ventured to our little slice of North Carolina was to attend the final round of the men's US Open. Christian and Sean headed down to Pinehurst for the Wednesday practice round, but the main event was Sunday. Outside of having to be super quiet (so hard for me!) and getting a bit over-heated, we had an amazing time! I even got a wave from Ian Poulter after I proclaimed my love for him after he teed off on the 5th hole! Amazing!

On that golf note, Christian caddied for a guy who had an extra ticket for a Tuesday practice round to the Masters. Guess who benefited from that... that's right Christian. He had an awesome time. He took more than 100 pictures!!! (All of grass... hahaha) He is also now addicted to pimento cheese sandwiches. I don't even care to look at the stuff.

After Sean and Sara left, reality set in. Christian didn't have a job and my hours were being seriously cut at the end of July as the kids I watch would all be in school full time. Luckily I work for an amazing family and they put out a message on their neighborhood message board and I got some calls for jobs. I met with a few families and was super stressed for a week until I picked a family. They live close to the family I work with now and they are flexible with hours so I can still work afternoons with my current family.

I drug Christian to a third Lady Antebellum concert in as many years. He was less than thrilled, as you can imagine a non-country fan would be. So I set out to recruit other company for the next concert, Luke Bryan. I would be seeing Luke Bryan this year!!! Enter my running partner-in-crime Lindsey. We had a blast! Luke's concert was right up there with any Kenny Chesney concert I have been to, amazing!

We have had a pretty busy couple of months. Ups and downs. The night of our anniversary at the Melting Pot, I declared that this was going to be our best year yet! While it had a rough start, we are confident that we will overcome the obstacles... together.