NaBloPoMo - Day 2!

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, October 2, 2013. Filed under:
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So, the prompt for Day 2 is "What is your favorite autumnal flavor?"

I'm having a bit of a challenge thinking of this one.  The first flavors that spring to mind when I think of autumn are pumpkin - of course - and apple cinnamon.  But guess what?  I'm the world's pickiest eater and I'm not really a big fan of either one of those.  They smell delicious and every year I love to sniff the pumpkin spice candles, and even stock up on a few, but the taste of pumpkin makes me gag.  I also don't like the texture of baked apples.  They're too mushy!

However, a farm/pumpkin patch near my home has the world's most amazing make-your-own caramel apple bar.  They let you pick your own apple, then they slice it up for you and cover it with tons of warm gooey caramel.  You then get to add your own toppings.  Rainbow sprinkles, nuts, chocolate chips - dump on as many as you want!  From a girl who loooooooooves the toppings at the dessert bar in buffets, it's like a slice of fall heaven.

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I know for some people half the fun of a caramel apple is eating it off of the stick, but I absolutely love that they slice it up for me and I can dig in with a spork.  Who doesn't love a good spork?

If you ever find yourself in southeastern Wisconsin around autumn, I highly recommend a trip to The Elegant Farmer.  Their caramel apples can't be beat, and they have a deli full of fantastic foods.  Around here, they're really well known for their apple pies baked in a brown paper bag.  Due to my aversion of baked apples, I've never personally tried one, but my family assures me that they are delicious!

They also have gourmet cheese and caramel popcorn.  So good!!!!!

Now that I've got myself thinking about those caramel apples, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to head down the road to the Elegant Farmer this weekend and indulge in one.  :)

NaBloPoMo Oct 2013 Day 1

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, October 1, 2013. Filed under:
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I've been out of the blogging world for awhile due to some crappy life circumstances, but I've been wanting to get back in to it. I've been missing writing rambling posts that some people actually read :) I was goofing around on the Internets, and stumbled across some people in the Planner Addicts FB group I belong to who were talking about participating in NaNoWriMo in November - the National Novel Writing month, where from what I understand the goal is to write a novel of approximately 50,000 words in the month of November. I'm definitely not capable of writing a novel, but I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered NaBlogPoMo - National Blog Post month! The goal is to write a post a day during the month of October. There are even prompts to help with what to write about every day, although it's not mandatory to follow the prompts. This month's theme is Fall, and since I love autumn, I decided to give NaBloPoMo a try!  Plus, it gives me time to finish up some of the projects I have in the works :)

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Today's post is: "What is your favorite thing about autumn?"

I sat and thought and realized that I can't think of just one thing!  Autumn is that time of year where I get to break my Uggs back out of the closet.  It's the time I can start ordering my Peppermint Hot Chocolate from Starbucks and actually enjoy the warmth of the beverage.  I love the smell of autumn, too - especially when people start burning leaves.  And the leaves changing colors are so pretty!

And aside from my Uggs, autumn is the time of year with some of the cutest wardrobe choices ever.  Hoodies, sweaters, and scarves, oh my!

Plus, football season is back!!!!!  I love my Carolina Panthers.

In short, this image I found on Pinterest is a perfect summary of what I love about fall:

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Speaking of Pinterest, do you follow me over there?  I'd sure love it if you did!!  Find dipNdollop on Pinterest here!

Does anyone else want to share their favorite thing about fall?



Craftaholics Anonymous's 2013 Summer Gift Exchange

Posted by Anonymous on Thursday, July 11, 2013. Filed under: ,
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I love making crafty projects, but after awhile I run out of people to give them to.  Or, I just don't have anyone to give something to.  And while I love decorating my own home, since many of my rooms are "in a transitional phase" right now, I don't want to spend a lot of money creating something that I'll just have to re-do and/or donate once I finally get around to decorating that room.

Enter Linda, the fabulous mind behind Craftaholics Anonymous.  Twice a year, she totally rocks it out and sponsors a handmade gift exchange.  I wanted to participate during the one last winter, but I kind of lost track of time and missed the sign-up date.  Shame shame on me.  So, I've been (im)patiently waiting for the past 7 months for the summer exchange to roll around.  As soon as I got the e-mail in my inbox, I bounced on over to Elfster to sign up for this summer's exchange!


I was paired up with Melissa from California, and I immediately got excited when one of the items on her wishlist was a large vinyl wall decal of song lyrics.  I've had my Silhouette for about a year now (you can read about the search for it here, here, and here) and while I've used it for small basic tests and to cut out things from the Silhouette store, I'd yet to really create anything of my own.  I'm a member of a Silhouette group on Facebook and seeing all of the awesome projects that those ladies and gentlemen create really gave me a kick in the pants to start experimenting with the capabilities of this machine even more.  After all, that IS why I bought it, right?

So to start off, I opened up my Silhouette Studio software and kept an open Safari window next to it, so I could reference back to the original vinyl decal Melissa had included on her wishlist.  Then, it was just a matter of picking a font and re-creating what I saw!

It didn't occur to me until much later that a screenshot would have been much more effective than taking a picture of my computer monitor - sorry :(

I designed it using one consistent font since that's how the original was and despite my love of unique fonts, I actually used one of the stock Apple fonts on my computer.  I sized it to 12" x 36", loaded my vinyl in to my Cameo, and clicked cut.


Not gonna lie, while it was cutting I was freaking out a little bit since I'd only ever done vinyl designs that were about 4" x 6".  But hey, computers know what they're doing, right?  Most of the time?


But hey, any day you can see the cut lines is a good day, right?

Here's where I'm going to share the most common sense advice ever with you.  Do not attempt to weed black vinyl at 11:30 pm when you are tired in a poorly lit room.  You will lose letters and apostrophes, then go to bed feeling flustered.  Admission:  this photo from above is from the second time I cut the design, when I got smart and worked on this project around 10:30 am.  You know.  When it's light out.

So after my duh moment and using the second piece of vinyl that I was smart enough to buy in the length I needed (hope for success, plan for failure?) and about an hour of weeding, my decal was looking pretty awesome if I do say so myself!


So then I just popped some transfer tape over the top - I chose to put the transfer tape on right away to help prevent the letters from shifting during shipping.  I had to layer two pieces of transfer tape since I only had sheets that were 12" x 24", so I hope it worked out okay.

After that, still making use of my awesome Cameo, I decided to play around with the print and cut feature.  Using some sticker paper I had, I created a cute little shipping label.

Sorry for the blurring, but I'm pretty sure Melissa wouldn't appreciate me plastering her name and address all over the internet

And then I also used the print and cut feature to make up a little note.  You know, hey, hope you like your gift, how to attach vinyl to a wall, if you hate it or there's a problem e-mail me.  That kind of thing.  Nothing too special, but I thought they were cute and it was feature of the Cameo that I hadn't ever played with before.  Turns out I'm completely in love with it and want to make all sorts of stuff using it now.

It also turns out that I desperately need a pedicure.  Poor little toes.  

Anyway, thanks Linda for hosting the exchange!  And Melissa, I hope you like your gift!



If you'd like to see what some of the other "exchangers" made/received, check out the Handmade Gift Exchange Linky party here or go here for info about the exchanges and to sign up for an e-mail reminder for the next gift exchange!





Sarah vs. The Command Strips

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, June 30, 2013. Filed under:
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Today, I'm going to talk about that one time that I was nearly bested by some of the most simple technology known to man: what is essentially double sided tape.  That's right - I nearly lost a battle with the infamous Command Strips.  And friends, this would not have been the first battle with the foamy strips of awesomeness that I lost, nor the second, but in fact, the third time that I would have been beaten down by 3M.  I couldn't let that happen.


I'm a smart girl folks!  I've got a college degree and everything.  Yet these evil little strips, which many in the blogging world seem to adore, apparently bring out the stupid in me.

Case Study #1:  They remove with no damage!  Christmas of 2011, I used Command hooks to hang our Christmas stockings on the wall (yes, the dogs have Christmas stockings!).  January 1 rolls around, and I go to gently pull down on the little tab to remove the strip from the wall, and proceed to take a half-dollar coin sized piece of paint and wall texture with me (that I still haven't repainted to this day, I might add.)  Fail #1.

Case Study #2:  As we saw in my pantry, I hang reusable shopping bags on the back of the pantry door.  They are hung using the Command hooks.  Not 100% paying attention, when I went to hang the back piece of the hook, I accidentally stuck it to the door upside down.  Obviously my fault, I can't blame the strips for that.  When I went to pull down on the tab to pull the plastic piece off, the tab ripped off!  So now there is a plastic backing for an upside down Command hook perma-stuck to the back of my pantry door.  Which will come in handy if I ever decide to hang a wreath on that door...  Fail #2.

So, that brings us to the current date, and my current dilemma, which is this:


This is the view under my work desk in my home office.  I work from home in a customer service job, so I have the computer plugged in, along with my phone and amplifier, my lamp, and I also had my Silhouette plugged in over there at the time.  I like to stretch my legs out all the way under my desk which was causing me to kick the cords and unplug stuff from time to time.  While at my local Menard's, I happened to be in front of a display that had a pack of Command strips while thinking about the cord issue and I figured they would be a good solution to my dilemma.


So I picked them up, and my nemesis and I were face-to-face again.  My plan was to use the Command strips to stick the power strip to the underside of my desk, thus removing any cord clutter from around my feet.  Genius, no?  I was pretty proud of myself. 


I cut the strips in half since the power strip I use for my work stuff isn't that large or heavy.  Really, I just wanted to include this picture because I was really darn proud of myself for getting the scissors to balance like that all on their own while I snapped this photo.


I read the directions super carefully, and cleaned the power strip and the bottom of my desk and waited for them to dry before adhering the Command strips to the power strip, then attached everything to the bottom of my desk.  I laid under my desk and held it up there pretty tight for about 15 minutes.  When I let go, everything stuck - so I walked away feeling pretty proud of myself.  (I did unplug everything from the strip as well, so there was no excess weight pulling it down.)  Success, right?!?!

WRONG!!!

When I walked in the next morning, the power strip was back on the ground, where it started.  I may have possibly overreacted at this point, since my solution was to cut four more Command strips in half and stick them on to the back of the power strip then secure the whole thing on to the underside of my desk with clamps.  I then left the clamps there for about a week.

But...this all happened about 6 weeks ago, and this is what I've had ever since.

Sorry for the horribly blurry iPhone photo

Success tastes so sweet.  And now I can stretch my feet out without worrying about hanging up on people or disconnecting my entire computer system, which is always a good thing.

So, that's my saga with the Command strips.  Any one have any good tips for me so I can get along better with these foamy sticky strips?  Or is there a product that you constantly have to do battle with?  Am I all alone in that respect??







I'm Back!

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 28, 2013. Filed under:
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Well, maybe not badder than ever, since at the heart of it all I really am your classic good Midwestern small-town girl, but I am back!

I follow some really amazing blogs.  Jen from IHeart Organizing, Abbey from The Cards We Drew, Whitney and Ashley from Shanty 2 Chic, Kate from Centsational Girl, Ruth from Living Well Spending Less - just to name a few!  As of right now, I have over 30 blogs in my Feedly feed.  (Feedly feed?  Is it just me or does that sound redundant?)  And every. single. one. of the ladies (and couple of gentlemen) that I follow is above and beyond extraordinary.  They inspire me, guide me, give me great ideas, and terrify me.

Yup.  They terrify me.  I'm a perfectionist.  If I'm not great at what I'm doing, amazing, fantabulous, awesomesauce - well then, what's the point in doing it?  So, as of the time of my last post, I was feeling inferior.  None of my ideas felt creative, and nothing I did compared to the amazing skills these other bloggers had.  How could I compete?!

In addition to feeling "bested", I felt overwhelmed.  I was seeing all of these amazing ideas posted all over the internet and blogosphere, and I wanted to try them ALL!  Ooh, essential oils and making your own face washes and body lotions?  I'm down.  Hey, look, canning and making your own spaghetti sauce and pickles and taco sauce and jams and jelly and dilly beans?  Sign me up!  Organizing and decorating and Project Life-ing and re-decorating and building and card making and crafts for kids and volunteering and sewing and crafts for pets and crafts for husbands and digital design?  Sounds GREAT!  And let's not forget cleaning and making my own cleaners and constantly searching for ways to be more efficient and try new recipes and be an amazing friend and daughter and be the best person ever because everyone has to love me, right??

Whoa.  Hold the phone.

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I like instant gratification, so I'd be in the middle of one project, but then I would see something else (be it on Pinterest or another amazing blog) so I would drop what I was in the middle of and scamper off like a little raccoon (they're the ones attracted to shiny objects, right?) to go play with my newest project.  I'm pretty sure that I have things for projects that I don't even remember.  

I couldn't keep up with my own expectations for myself, and I burned myself out.  And then, an amazing thing happened.  I was spending some quality time on the couch with my iPad yesterday, and I was going through Jen's blog over at iHeart Organizing.  And by going through, I mean I started alllll the way from the very beginning of her blog.  And reading her early posts made me remember why I started my blog.  For me.  So I have somewhere to record all of the projects I work on, so I can remember them later down the road.  Do I hope that others read what I write and get something out of it  - and even like me?  Of course!  But I get that my blog isn't for everyone, and I can't make everyone happy, and that's okay.  I can work on projects inspired by other bloggers, and that's okay, too.  Don't they say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery?!

And then, for an even clearer sign that I was supposed to come back to the blog, I got this comment last night:

"I found this tutorial in google after searching for a cork board without a wooden frame. My original plan was to just paint a chevron pattern on my board, but I love this idea so much more! "

Oh my Gosh - I got Googled!!!  And the comment was left just as I was wondering if I should come back to the blog.  I'd say that's some pretty awesome blog karma, wouldn't you??

So my bloggy commitments going forward:

  1. Limit my Pinterest exposure - I think I may even remove the app from my phone.  GASP!
  2. Have fun, and remember I don't have to be the best or have 30,000 page views a day - this is something I do because I enjoy it, not something to stress over
  3. FINISH PROJECTS!  No more starting a new project until the previous one is completed.
  4. Share the love <3
  5. Take breaks if I need them - enjoy the sunshine!
Anyone else ever struggle with meeting their own expectations for themselves?  Do you having any coping/calming mechanisms you'd like to share?

Until next time!


In the Pantry

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, May 27, 2013. Filed under: ,
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Over Memorial Day weekend, Friday - Sunday was dedicated to deep cleaning my house.  Weird way to spend a weekend for some, but to me it was fabulous.  Some of the tasks completed included deep cleaning the carpets, wiping out the fridge and freezer (for the first time in a very long time), finally putting away the stacks of stuff that seem to pile up out of nowhere, and overall just tackling all those little cleaning projects that I always seem to put off "until another day".  The house smells so clean and fresh now, it's wonderful.



One of the projects that I undertook over the weekend was organizing the pantry.  I feel like I do this every two months or so, but it only lasts for two to three weeks before it slowly descends back in to chaos.  This tells me that I just haven't yet found a good method of organizing everything that works.  So every time I re-do the pantry, I tweak things a little bit and I'll keep tweaking things until I find a method that works for me.  I didn't take any before pictures, but I'm pretty proud of the after.


I hate those wire shelves that the builder installed in our pantry.  I have plans to pull those shelves out and replace them with MDF shelves instead.  It's actually pretty high on my project list - I really hate those shelves.  I find them to be the most useless things ever!


I have an entire shelf dedicated to boxed dinners.


And a half of a shelf dedicated to boxed baking mixes.


And the bottom shelf is dedicated to snacks.  I swear I don't normally have that many bags of chips -  some family is coming over for Memorial Day so, like, three bags of chips are for that.  And I've been addicted to Rold Gold pretzels lately. The big plastic container stores Squirt and Duchess's food.  Squirt has a sensitive stomach, and Duchess has been told she needs to lose weight, so I buy 15# bags of limited ingredient dog food for sensitive stomachs and reduced calorie dog foods and mix them together.  Then I store them in this container.  I tried feeding each dog the food meant for her, but that was just a disaster. 


Any extra bottles and cans get stored on the floor of the pantry.  The 2-liter bottles aren't common - but I figured they'd be easier for Memorial Day.  I actually don't drink soda that often.  Juice tends to be the most common thing down here...but I've been on a caffeine kick lately.  It's bad.


I picked up this little blue box at Hobby Lobby and I use it to store all of our drink mixes.  Mio, Crystal Light, Kool-Aid - even the dry milk powder I use for baking all fit in there really well.  It fits perfectly on the shelf up by the breakfast items.


This divided box was another Hobby Lobby find, and it works great to corral all of our little snack items.  It shares space on the shelf with our baking mixes.  Has anyone ever tried those Hello Panda cookies?  They sell them in the Dollar Spot at Target, and I'm in love with them.  I used to eat cookies called Koala Yummies when I was a kid, and the Hello Pandas remind me of the Koala Yummies.  So good.


I use a Command Hook on the back of the pantry door to hang all of our reusable shopping bags.  Our local grocery store gives you a $0.05 per bag credit off of your grocery bill, which is pretty cool.  Now I just need to remember to grab them when I'm going to the grocery store...


Part of the reason that I hate the wire shelves is that they don't support the weight of canned goods very well without totally bowing the shelf.  As a result, I moved the canned goods to this cabinet to the right of our stove.  The canned goods are in isolation.  


Bakery goods are kept on the counter, because the wire shelving presses in to the bottoms of the loaves of bread and deforms them, and for some reason I don't like when my bread has funny lines in the bottom of it.  I've been toying with the idea of getting a cute bread box to put over here.  Two for one:  hides the bread and I can decorate it and make it a cute decor piece!  Maybe I'll have to start haunting the local Goodwill and keep an eye out...

One thing that really bothers me about the pantry is the amount of pre-mixed meals.  I know they're horribly bad for me, and they're filled with preservatives.  And I've read that I can also make many of the same mixes for cheaper, and that the homemade version tastes significantly better.  My goal is to go through these mixes, and either make and eat them or donate them to our local food pantry, and start making some of my own mixes.  

I love Hamburger Helper (the Italian Cheesy Shells are my fav) so that's going to be sad to give up, but it'll be worth it to eat healthier.  I know there's all sorts of websites filled with recipes for mixes and breads and the like...does anyone have any recipes that are personal favorites that they would be willing to share??












The Roof! The Roof!

Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, May 25, 2013. Filed under:
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...wasn't on fire, thank goodness.

Last week, we had some severe thunderstorms power their way through my little corner of Wisconsin.  The town just to our west (like, less than five miles to our West) had wind gusts that measured 68 miles per hour!  The grill blew around the patio like crazy and the house next door, which earlier that day had just installed a new wooden swing set for their kids, had to watch that swing set blow over on to its side.  I went outside after the winds subsided to look for damage and fortunately I didn't see anything.

And then, about a week later, when I was coming in from getting the mail, I just happened to look up.  And I saw this:


Granted, I've been a home owner for less than two years, but even I'm intelligent enough to realize that it surely wasn't supposed to look like that.  And of course, it was raining that day.  And the next day.  And the day after that.  Anyone that knows me will gladly inform you that I'm not the most graceful of individuals.  At any given moment, I probably have at least a half a dozen bruises and/or scratches on me - majority of which I have no clue how they got there.  The last thing my family needs is me climbing up on a ladder on to a wet roof.  But - the last thing my roof needed was to have a chunk of it blown backwards.


Sometimes, telephoto lenses just make things look that much worse!  I didn't know what that part of my roof was, so I sent picture messages to Stepdad to figure out what I was supposed to do.  Did I need to call a roofer?  Did I need to curl up under my desk in the fetal position and cry?  Should I just sit in the driveway and look at my roof and laugh, since it took me a week to notice the damage in the first place?

And then the skies parted and angels sang and I got the world's greatest response.


What what?  Stepdad can fix it!  Woohoo!!  The next day, it rained in the morning but Stepdad was awesome enough to come out after he was done with work (when it was no longer raining) and he climbed up on to the wet, second-floor roof and hammered the roof vent back in to place and nailed it in.  As he was on his way down, the skies opened back up and the rain came back down.  Talk about perfect timing.

So now, the roof is fixed again.  I need to keep an eye on our attic, which luckily is useless - it can't be used for storage or anything.  I need to crawl up there and see if any water got in, and if so, make sure I do everything I can so no mold gets in.  

So that's what I've been up to lately.  I haven't been working on any projects lately because of my whole house deep cleaning spree.  Most people spend their Memorial Day weekends on fun vacations and stuff - not me!!  I clean.  And man, does it feel good.

And for your daily dose of awwww, here's a great shot I got of my older dog Squirt the other day.  I'm in love with this picture.





Decorating the Bedroom: Part 2

Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, May 15, 2013. Filed under: ,
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After writing this post about trying to pick a paint color for my bedroom, I headed over to my local Sherwin Williams store to grab some paint chips to hang on my bedroom wall to try to pick a paint color.  Husband loves the paint color "Anonymous", and I'm a big fan of "Dovetail" and "Keystone Gray".  I also stopped by my local Menard's, and picked out the Dutch Boy colors "Dried Plain" and "Lake Cottage".  Husband really likes "Lake Cottage", too. 


I really like all of these colors, and was having problems narrowing them down, so I figured maybe I was going about this the wrong way.  Maybe I needed to find some new bedding that I loved, and pink the paint color to match the bedding!  Stroke of genius, right?  So I headed to Target.  I recently re-discovered Target as an amazing store for home decor, after going years with only buying from Kohl's, Crate & Barrel, and Bed, Bath & Beyond for any home decor I needed.  I took Husband to Target with me, figuring that it was his bedroom, too, so his input was important.

This was probably a combination of the worst two ideas I've had in quite some time.

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I'm in love with this comforter set, and thought it would look fabulous with the darker Anonymous-colored walls that Husband loved...but Husband vetoed this comforter set right away.  No hesitation.  I was devastated.

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Husband is a big fan of this comforter.  It's a darker teal than it looks like in this photo.  I'm not 100% sold on it...to me, the pinched pleats just look wrinkly.  

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This is a quilt option that we both liked.  I love the gingham look and how easy it would be to dress up with accessories, but with the wall colors we're considering I worry that it would be too much gray in our bedroom.

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We both agree on this one, too, but again with the overwhelming gray.  The nice thing about this one that you can't really see in this photo is that it has a bit of a metallic shimmer to it that I think is really pretty.

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Husband and I both like this set...it comes in a quilt option and a comforter set.  The comforter felt scratchy, but the quilt was nice and soft.  The quilt would be a nice option for summer, too.  We have a memory foam mattress and our bed gets really warm, so I like the idea of a quilt.

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I'm loving the deep teal of this duvet cover, as well.  I like having duvet covers, because they're so easy to pop in the washer when they get dirty.  With two dogs in the house, it's a requirement to have a bedding set that we can wash in our washing machine - I don't like to have laundry that I have to take to the laundromat in order to get it clean.

So, after my bright idea, now I have 5 paint colors that I really like AND 6 different bedding sets.  I'm thinking I should probably put the bedroom redecorating project on the back burner and tackle some pending projects that I have like refinishing a dining set that I got from ReStore and building a console table for the TV in our master bedroom.  Maybe some time simmering will tell me what I want to do...

Has anyone else ever experienced design block?  Or an overwhelming number of ideas and problems narrowing them down??

Linked up here...




Project Life Organization

Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, May 1, 2013. Filed under: ,
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Happy May everyone!  Spring has finally decided to make an appearance here in beautiful old Wisconsin.  It's sunny, about 80*, slightly breezy...couldn't ask for more!

After only a couple of weeks, I fell off of the Project Life bandwagon.  Not because I didn't love it, life just got away from me and I forgot to take pictures as I was going along.  But I figure the first of the month is a great time to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.  I'll forget my failure in documenting April (April wasn't that great anyway - the weather totally sucked!) and move forward.  I found some photo a day challenges via Instagram so that I always have some ideas of things to photograph on days that I'm feeling uninspired or stuck, and I realized that some of the projects I work on would also be good things to include in my album.

Since I'm recommitting myself to Project Life, I thought I'd take some time today to share with you all how I organize my materials for it.  I love how much less space this method takes up than normal scrapbooking does.  Seriously.  Are you ready to be astounded at how little space I need to store my scrapping materials? Check it out:


Are you impressed, amazed, and/or astounded?  I sure was.  I saw this metal drawer cabinet at Hobby Lobby weeks before I started Project Life, and I immediately knew I had to have it.  I had no clue what I was going to use this for, but it was so cute, and it was grey so I knew it would fit in to the color scheme of my office + craft room, and it was 50% off...so I bought it.  When I saw the sizes of the Project Life inserts, I whipped out my measuring tape and realized that all of the 3" x 4" inserts would fit perfectly.  So, after i took my cue from A Vegas Girl at Heart and cut up some 6" x 6" paper pads (Uncharted Waters by Glitz Design) to fit the 3" x 4" inserts, so that I could use these as filler cards.  With my awesome metal drawer unit, I have drawers where I can organize my filler cards by color, like so:


And like so:


My filler cards are separated by neutrals, pink + red, yellow + orange, blue + green, and multi, and I have one drawer for grid journaling cards and one drawer for lined journaling cards.  Then comes the fun stuff.  In the column of drawers to the far right, I have a drawer of washi tape that stays with all of my Project Life gear:


And two drawers of embellishments:


And right now there's actually - gasp! - one empty drawer that I have reserved for more embellishments :-)

Any embellishments I have that don't fit in the drawers (or that I haven't cut down to fit) slide nicely under the drawer unit, like so:


Since the 4" x 6" inserts don't fit in the drawers, I have a little plastic bin that I got from the Dollar Tree that fits perfectly on my desk shelf right next to the drawers where I can fit my 4" 6" cutouts that I use to make up week number card, and also holds larger scraps that I kept from trimming down the original 6" x 6" paper pads.  It's also home to some Recollections cards that I got from Michael's, that I'm debating between keeping or using as part of a giveaway for when I grow the blog a little more.


And that my friends is it!  Everything I need to complete a scrapbook layout, all stored on a 10" shelf that's 2' long.  Amazing, no?



Linking up...

@ Remodelaholic




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