What I did this weekend

While most Coloradans are probably out enjoying the wonderful weather we're having (and always have) I've been inside fighting with my allergies and working. Woo thrilling, I know. BUT! I did sneak in a couple of fun things between work proposals and events for my folks' paper (www.desertexposure.com).

This may not be fun to most, and normally not for me either but the thought of cleaning with vinegar reminds me of my Norwegian roots and my stingy grandma. So when I saw this on pinterest I had to do it (click on the picture to go to the recipe over at Nature's Nurture, btw I emailed Sarah at Nature's Nuture about cleaning my baseboards and she emailed back RIGHT AWAY, more on that later).

Mike cleans our floor constantly and whatever he is using seems to attract more dust. I ran to Dollar Tree at got everything for this floor cleaner and went to work. It is amazing! Easy peasy and 24 hours later (in a house filled with a dog and a cat) the floor still looks great. 

Also, this cleaner works great on our NASTY baseboards. I don't think they've ever been cleaned, they were sticky. So I asked Sarah at Nature's Nurture what to use and she said "the floor cleaner is now my go to cleaner, try that and let me know if it works." So I did and IT DOES! With a little elbow grease our baseboards will soon be white, not brown (ew). I also snuck over to Joann's and got all the supplies I need to make a ton of these:

I'll let you know how they turn out. Oh and I'm also finishing some booties for a friend of our's new baby girl AND designing our wedding programs. 

It is time to organize

Some days I find it increasingly difficult to work because I just want to go home and organize and clean my house. More specifically, I want to go home and label everything. So tonight, as I sit late in my office, waiting to go to a meeting, I emailed Mike, my annoyingly-neat soon-to-be-husband, that I was going to organize our whole house:


"Honey, you know how I love to bust out my label maker and label everything and organize stuff, like the hall closet. I'm thinking I'm going to deep clean and organize our whole house. Throw out a ton of stuff, organize and label everything. I'm telling you this, so that you aren't surprised when I start throwing shit out, because I want your support, AND because I'd love to someday join the society of professional organizers.  http://www.napo.net/default.aspx

I'm REALLY good at organizing things, staying organized is another issue. But I figured this will be a good start. 

I'm going to need a lot of baskets and more tape for my label maker. This will require trips to ikea. 

Plan of attack: room by room!

Purge: get rid of stuff

Pile: group like items

Place: put into place
Label (why can't that start with a P)

I think I'll start by cleaning my craft room again

then the guest room

then the bedroom

then the bedroom closet

then the downstairs entry closet

then the pantry

then the kitchen

then the basement closets

then the mother of them all: the garage. 

I think we'll feel so much cleaner and simpler. I'll need your help going through stuff to see what you want to get rid of. 

Also, I really want to take down the bed in the guest room and just have the frame. That bed takes up a lot of space.

Also, let's put a closet system in the basement closet (the one as you come down the stairs) like the one I have in the craft room. 

this summer I'd like to put in shelves in the garage too btw. 

One more thing. If you want to go get your new desk we can move the black desk that you have downstairs upstairs. Where the bench is we should put that desk and one of our dining chairs and use it to finally have a place to organize our finances, house documents and mail all in one place. 

Ok I think that's it. What do you think?"

So that's my plan... what do you think? Tips? Tricks? Keep up to date with my organizing finds via my pin board http://pinterest.com/fryxie/time-to-organize/

My Craft Room

I get a lot of compliments on my craft room (thanks friends!), so I decided to blog about it. I'm lucky enough to have a room all to myself where I can be creative make all sorts of things. 

It also serves as my office and my desk and I had a long stint of togetherness when I was finishing my Master's.

Recently, I went on an organization melee and after a rather extreme weekend of sorting, labeling, and putting in some thin shelves, I'm pretty satisfied with my room. I declare this room: DONE! 

I knit, sew, paper craft, and a bunch of other random crafts. Lately, I've been making a bunch of wreaths (not just for the holidays!), glitterfying everything, putting bling on the jeans of my butt. All sorts of things. I like to dabble in a lot of different crafting mediums (when I want to be taken a little more seriously, I bust out a mixed-media collage) and I needed a room that let me explore all the sides of my creativity. Now I have it! Take a look! Let me know if you have any questions a bout the products I used (most everything for storage is from Ikea and The Container Store)

Oh and my craft room also has a comfy chair and a big closet filled with bigger things, including all my wedding organizing. 

My desk, a view from the door. To the left are two bookshelves and my tv on the wall. Oh and that's Lucy, my ever-so-helpful cat.

My desk is set on three 3x3 bookcases from Target. 

Each bin is labeled. The front shelving unit is filled with all my yarn sorted by color. There is also another 3x3 underneath the L of my desk. 

A close up of my fabric boxes from Target.

The tags are card stock that I cut into rectangles, used my corner rounder, a hole punch, and attached with cheap ribbon. 

The shelf to the right of my tv. 

Simple Billy bookcase from Ikea, filled with container store mini-boxes (I think they are $1.29 each) and Ikea boxes. I got the small Ikea boxes for $1.99 for 2! Thank you close out.

This is one of the shelves on the bookcase to the left of my TV. 

Those boxes were such a great deal that I bought 16 of them! 

I saw a craft room on Pinterest that had super thing shelves like this and I had to have them. 

I used a 3/8" bit on these 1x2s and drilled 1/3 of the way in. Then I used my regular bit and drilled right into the studs. Counter sinking these screws made drilling straight a wee bit more easy! Total cost for this project, by the way, was 8 bucks!

I went a little label crazy. I bought those clear bins for  A DOLLAR at container store. They are normally $18 but they were on the clearance wall and the guy who is in charge of the clearance area was there and he said to me: what do you want I'll make you a deal. I cleaned up! 

So that's my craft room!

My Mom is awesome

My Mom was in town last weekend and helped us TRANSFORM our house from 1990's stock gold fixtures to 2011. We love our house on Jackdaw, but you could totally tell it was put up at the same time as all other houses in the subdivision. The green paint that was put on the house a few years ago (before we moved in) upped it a lot from the original cream (I found pictures online). 

Mom and I tackled a ton of projects. We ripped out the wall in the dining area and installed an awesome built in bookshelf that looks like it was original to the house. Thanks to the new midre saw Mom got me, it was a breeze! 

Mom scoring the drywall before we jigged it out (that stuff is dusty!)

The hole! That's the vent for the fireplace and the back of the tv hole. 

Mom brought me a tool belt, it made me feel pretty badass. Here I am framing out the shelves. 

The finished product! Be impressed. 

It was really dusty, so I put Mavi's doggles on. 

Oh, and he got in the paint. 

We got a new TV for the man cave and wanted to put the LCD above the fireplace. We thought about taking out the entire built-in for a 1990s TV, but instead we decided to build an amazing mount for it. A couple of two by fours, L-brackets and a tv mount later and it looked like the TV was meant for that spot!

TV hole before (with the new mount!) 

TV above the fire place! Woo hoo!

 We also installed a ton of new light fixtures, which really updated the house! Mom and I took out the boring dome light and awful flourescent light box in the kitchen and put in amazing new light from Ikea.

I do love Ikea! These are Ikea Tidig series

And we took down the hateful, builder standard, 1993 gold chandelier. That thing was so stuck in there we didn't think it was going to go back in well... and we were right. After, primer, 2 coats of textured black spray, new black chain and 2 hours of trying to reinstall the damn thing, we finally got it back in. I'll deal with the 2 hours of hell (and accidentally smacking my Mom in the nose in the process) for a Pottery Barn look for only $5.

Hello Pottery Barn, goodbye crappy gold. 

We took the front entry from these lights:

To amazing wood textured lights:

Then we had an extra shade (they came from World Market as a set of three) and I really wanted some reading light in the corner above the chaise, so Mom and I took the metal from the fluorescent light box we ripped out in the kitchen and turned it into an almost invisible arm for the other shade. We took the light kit from the old entry lamp and spliced it with a extension cord to create another hanging lamp. It is probably my favorite project we did all weekend because it was completely unexpected and creative.

The perfect amount of glow for reading, watching TV or napping puppies. 

I couldn't have done all of this without my Mom joining me. We had such an awesome weekend of power tools, Lowes trips and knocking down walls.

About time

It is about frickin' time that I start a blog, well start a blog and keep it going. In 9 months I'm getting hitched and in the mean time not only am I letting my creative juices go extra crazy, I'm actually going to document what I'm doing. I live in Denver with my wonderful fiance Mike, our crazy blue tick coonhound, Maverick, and our insane cat, Lucy. We just bought a house in July and we are constantly working to make it feel like our home.

I'm a Pinterest addict (the tab above takes you straight to my pin board), Ravelry lover and have a problem with always having to be doing something-- so I might as well be blogging about it!

Thanks for stopping by :)