Organization

Well hey there! I hope you had a fabulous weekend. We’ve been busy around here just trying to get this place organized once and for all! Maybe by the end of 2012 I’ll feel like everything is in it’s place.

Last week I showed you my 7 year old daughters room makeover progress. I had just hung some floating shelves (IKEA Lack shelves) above a little sofa table. Eventually this area will be for all her jewelry, (play) makeup, nick-knacks, and desk area.

Unfortunately, all this switching around in her room has left quite a huge mess of toys on her floor.

The solution?

Another trip to IKEA.

This time for IKEA Expedit Shelves.

I decided to go with two of the 2×4 squares Expedit shelves.

I wanted to have a lower shelf that Kinsey could reach the top of to act as a table top, but I also wanted one that was taller to maximize the amount of storage she has. The solution was two shelves, one placed horizontally and one placed vertically.

And just as a quick tip, if you are going to be putting together IKEA furniture it is MUCH EASIER if you purchase a Hex Bit Tip set for your electric drill from the hardware store instead of using the manual “Z” shaped Hex bit that comes with the furniture.

I also decided to splurge and get her four IKEA Knipsa baskets. They had cheaper baskets, but I really love the look of these and feel that the overall look of her room will benefit from them (once I finish the room).

The Knipsa baskets are $16.99 per basket, so I could only justify four at the time. Eventually I plan on snagging a few more of these baskets before all is said and done.

Want a closer look at how I’ve sorted out her toys? This is by no means finished or final. Her room is still VERY MUCH a work-in-progress.

On the tall shelf, one of her new baskets holds all her baby doll stuff, while the other is her new barbie doll storage.

The wide shelf holds her music (she LOVES music)…

…and all her American Girl stuff…

I’m really torn on her huge pink Disney Princess framed poster (on top of the shelf). On the one hand she likes it. A lot. In fact, she’s totally in love with Belle.

But on the other hand, it REALLY is NOT the look I’m trying to obtain while decorating her room. I’ve been planning on hanging the poster above these new shelves, but I just can’t stomach it! I am NOT a Disney Princess type of person. In fact, I am opposed to pretty much any character decor of any type.

She loves the poster though, so I will probably end up sucking it up and hanging it for her (I mean, it is her room after all!).

Here’s what her room looks like with her new Lack floating shelves and Expedit shelves.

And from the hall when you are walking into her room, this is what you now see….

Instead of this huge disaster:

Ah, much better already!

My next big goal with her room is to get her a new bed.

(If you want to know why you can read all about it in this post.)

I know this isn’t as exciting as a huge “reveal” and before and afters. But at the rate I get things done around here (really slow) if I waited until her room was finished to blog about it, I’d probably never blog ever again. lol

I figure I’ll just share the progress of my house as I go along the way. This is real life after all, and in real life, things don’t move as quickly as they do on a 30 minute reality show.

One last thing I want to mention…

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Have fun shopping and saving money.

The past few days have been cra-aaaaa-zy around here. I’m so sore and tired. My joints are aching.

Wanna know why? Well, too bad, I’m telling you anyway.

Besides deciding to start a rigorous running program (I’m serious, don’t laugh!) Ben and I spent the last few days flip-flopping the office and the guest room. For a point of reference, here’s our floor plan with each room marked.

Before the ol’ flip-a-roonie, the office was “bedroom 5″ and the guest room was “bedroom 4″.

Before we started, our office (bedroom 5) looked like this:

Okay, okay, that’s on a good day. Most of the time the office really has looked like this:

and this…

Aaaand this.

There are names for this. Hoarder comes to mind. Slob. Pack-rat. Um, ya.

…which is why we wanted to flip rooms with the guest bedroom (bedroom 4). You see, the guest bedroom is a lot bigger than the office, which is obviously our biggest issue with sharing an office – we just flat-out don’t have enough space for all the crap.

And it’s also on the 2nd floor instead of the first, so visitors can’t glimpse inside it as easily as they can on the 1st floor. (Most guests don’t go upstairs, but they do go to the bathroom which is right next to the current office, allowing a horrified peek inside the office.)

Only problem with doing a big flip? If you thought the orange office was uninviting, the guest room is far worse.

We’ve affectionately named the guest room, “the smurf blue room”. Can you guess why?

I pretty much quit going into the office as much as possible because the orange was so horrible to look at. I just couldn’t work in there. But now, smurf blue? There’s an even smaller chance I’ll go into that room!

I’ve been wanting to flip rooms for awhile, but besides the daunting task of carrying an overflowing office full of crap upstairs, and the guest furniture downstairs, I also knew there was no-way-in-hades I’d agree to move rooms until we painted the smurf room first.

By some fate that can only be described as a miracle, I actually talked Ben into painting again. And so it began. The great guest room/office flip.

Doesn’t he look so thrilled to be painting?

Ben and I have a pretty good system worked out. He rolls, I cut.

Fortunately we had a 3rd helper to make the job go quicker.

After about a day we were totally finished puttying, painting, cutting, rolling, and edging.

This kind of overhaul really tears apart the entire house though. Here’s the piles of crap we had to maneuver around for the past few days. Matter of fact, we are still maneuvering around all this crap.

Why do things have to get worse before they get better? Check out or b-o-r-i-n-g bathroom off the gameroom (bath 3).

It usually looks like this (extra boring, I know):

But the past few days it’s been spiced up:

I’m sure Silhouette would freak if they knew I was storing my Cameo next to the sink. ::bag over head::

And while I’m talking about random stupid crap totally unrelated to painting, can I just point out the main reason this room was never even considered for either kid?

Hello sneak-out-route! Please don’t tell me you never crawled out a window and jumped off a 1st story roof. This is just asking to be snuck sneaked out of. So ya, hopefully my kids won’t ever read this post and figure this out. Because my Travis, he’s a monkey and would probably jump off the roof tomorrow (at 9 years old) if I let him.

So, back to the post. Where was I? Oh, painting. Right. In case you are wondering about the color, I chose it in about 5 minutes off the Martha Stewart paint card. I wanted something similar to my gray in my living room, but even lighter and super neutral.

So, are you dying to see the big reveal? Ya, me too! I wish it were done! ha. But for now, I’ll at least show you the not-as-messy “progress” report. Here goes nothing.

progress:

before:

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One of the new additions is this hutch that I just stuck on top of my current ikea desk. So far it has worked out great and I’m really diggin’ it.

It is suppose to go on top of my son’s dresser, but I got sick of cleaning piles and piles of legos off it, so I took it away and moved his dresser into his closet. He loves it because now he has more floor space for even more lego messes. The hutch has sat in the guest room unused for a few months, so I decided to try it out on the desk, and I love it!

Here’s the dresser/hutch combo in Travis’s room before I took it all apart and moved it around. (I’ve never showed his room before, so this is a first!)

I love having easy access to my craft supplies.

As for the previous office/future guest room, it’s lookin’ like a fool with it’s pants on the ground still needs a lot of work. And a lot more moving.

So there you have it. Besides a nice dinner, this is pretty much what Ben and I did for our 13th wedding anniversary – we painted and moved. Good times.

before:

progress:

I’ll update as I continue to get this mess cleared up and organized. I so want to paint the orange room now (previous office/new guest room), but I have been promising Kinsey I’ll paint her room *next*, so until her room is painted, I’m not painting any other rooms!

What did you do over the weekend? Hopefully something way more fun than painting and moving!

* linking to Thrifty Decor Chick’s house party

  
Travis; 4 months and Kinsey; 10 months

Aren’t my babies beautiful?

(Portraits compliments of Kristen Duke Photography)
Travis; 9 years and Kinsey; 6 years, 2011

Travis is now 9 (and a half!) and Kinsey turns 7 on the 18th. How time flies!

Before I became a mother, the most received advice from seasoned mothers was to try to enjoy the moments because they pass by so quickly.

They do pass quickly. Even in those moments of solitude, sleep deprivation, crying and whining, and sheer frustration and depression, I knew I’d look back on these little babies and miss them so much!

  
1 month old

And I do miss them. What I’d give to hold my little babies in my arms again, just one more time.

  
2 months old

I wanted a way to remember them and celebrate their little lives, so I decided to have their portrait taken every month for the first year.

  
3 months old

Most people thought I was crazy. I wasn’t crazy, I had vision.

  
4 months old

I tried to explain my big plan to everyone, but most people thought my idea was dumb.

How can me wanting to take as many pictures of my children during the time they grow and change the most in their lives be dumb?

  
6 months

So I kept trudging over to JCPenney, month after month. Sometimes I questioned even myself. It was such a hassle to get the baby ready, go over there, have the pictures taken, go back two weeks later to pick up the prints, and then two weeks after that do it all over again.

  
7 months

But I forged on for a full 12 months. Twice. Good thing I only have two kids!

  
8 months

JCPenney, as well as many other discount photography places will offer coupons for a package of images for around $6-$7. This is the only way I could afford to do this at that time in our young lives.

  
9 months

I absolutely love seeing the transformation in my babies each month. They grow like little weeds the first year, and you can really see the changes after just a month.

10 months (I can’t find Travis’ 10 month digital image anywhere)

I am so glad I stuck it out and had these pictures taken month after month. Though it was a pain, the end results are so worth it.

  
11 months

Finally their first birthday!

One Year! (Can you believe I can’t find Travis’ one year picture either?! We’ve changed computers several times in 9 years and I suppose it just got lost in the shuffle.)

At the end of their first year, I took each of those monthly portraits and had them framed into a one year portrait collage.

I was fortunate to find these frames with the perfect amount of squares already cut from Costco several years ago.

After living in our new home almost a full year, I’ve finally found the perfect home for my childrens first year photos.

I don’t know why it took me so long to decide on this space. I wanted the pictures hung downstairs so I can make sure to see them as much as possible.

The spot between the bookshelves and the laundry room door (that leads to the garage where I go in and out every day) is the perfect spot. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized the frames would fit perfectly in that narrow space.

Even though those baby days are long past and our house is now filled with soccer balls and ballet flats, it’s such a blessing to get to see my children as they once were. My children also love looking at themselves as babes and talk about how “cute” they were.

I know it’s a pain, but from personal experience, it was so worth it!

And all my friends who thought I was dumb for dragging myself to JCPenney each month? Now that I’m finally able to show them the finished product; my vision, they wish they had done monthly photos themselves.

And just for fun, here’s a few random cool facts about my first year with each of my babies:

After Travis’ 8 month pictures were taken, JCPenney loved this one pose so much that they asked us if they could print a large one to display in their studio! They had it up for *I think* about a year. Once they were finished with it they called me and gave me the picture for free! It now hangs in Travis’ room.

This picture of Travis and his daddy is just too sweet to not post for you guys to see. Travis still has this picture framed in his room as well.

And now, to answer the questions you are probably going to ask…

* What is that bump on Travis’ head?

Travis was born with what is called an atypical hemangioma. We did not know about it before he was born. It was about the size of a golf ball, but here in his one month photo it’s already smaller than at birth. It’s a very long story, which deserves it’s own post one day. Travis narrowly escaped surgery as a newborn, and today he is a healthy thriving child with almost no bump left on his head. He does have a bald patch though that will never grow hair.

* Tell me about the hair bow headbands Kinsey is wearing…

When Kinsey was born I wanted hair bows. Hair bows are expensive, especially adorable custom ones. So I taught myself how to make them. Everyone loved them so much that I started an online business selling children’s hair bows and accessories. It was very successful right off the bat, but because of Ben’s job we moved a lot so I shut down shop. Now I blog instead.

* Um, your frames have 13 squares, not 12. And the first square is empty…

Ya, I kinda suck. Those first squares are for their birth picture, which I have yet to print and add to the frame. Hopefully I’ll have it done before they turn 18 and move out.

So, how do you make memories? Do you like lots of photos? Do you have any crazy photo stories?