An answer to prayer

A few months ago I found myself in desperate need of some extra income to pay off some medical bills and for costly prescriptions that my insurance doesn't cover. I remember praying that if God would provide another job for me, I would be a faithful servant and do the work required.

A co-worker had given me the number of two companies she tutors for, but I had hesitated to call. I knew that tutoring after school would keep me away from home and wipe out the little time I have with my husband. (Our schedules don't always line up so great.) Around the same time another co-worker of mine suggested I take some of my ideas and make my own units on TPT, which I honestly hadn't given  much thought to before. But she believed in my creativity and drive, and it was the push I needed to get started.

Three months later I just received my first check from TPT to the sweet tune of $2,001. I know compared to a lot of you that is a drop in the bucket, but not only is it more than I ever thought I would make..... it's more than I needed to cover the bills and prescriptions! So instead of comparing myself to others I am going to thank God for providing for us in a difficult situation.

I LOVE making units for TPT. It is time consuming, and a LOT of work. But it's work I can do at home. While watching TV with my husband, or even playing fetch with my dogs. In all honesty, at the end of a long day, it's kind of nice to sit down and put my creative side to work.

For all of you who have supported my, my store and my blog. THANK YOU. From the bottom of my heart. You may never know just how much this means to my family. <3

The Office

You all know I love a good pop culture reference :)

One of my goals this year was to organize our office space, which is really just a corner between our living room and stairs. We previously had an L shaped desk their, but it was a little worse for wear after moving.

notice any problems? Look closer....

If not for these wood stumps, the entire thing would collapse onto itself. Not exactly safe. Or pretty for that matter. Their other issues with the desk were a) no drawers or cabinets, which required everything to be out in the open and look cluttered b) no shelves for storage and c) I didn't like the L shape, I wanted something a little more streamlined.

So we started watching the sale ads and when nothing turned up we ventured down the street to office depot one Sunday to see if we could find anything reasonable. We ended up with THIS desk and hutch for a reasonable $200. Lucky for us the desk came in about a million pieces.

It took us a good three days to put the two pieces together and during that time desk building became a new spectator sport for our pups.

The desk went together relatively easy once we got an electric drill and stopped torturing our selves with all those little screws. Some of the steps didn't seem to make any sense, like assembling the whole thing flat on the floor and then picking it up (causing screws to come back undone) so we figured out our own way to do some of the steps that made more sense to us.

Eventually we got the basic structure together enough for it to be functionable as a desk and over the next few days put together the drawers and cabinets. The dogs had long since lost interest by then.

While my husband was putting the finishing touches on the desk I started thinking about that blank space between the top of the hutch and the ceiling. Besides the cats, who love to lounge there, I wanted something decorative. I decided on some canvas prints after seeing this picture:

Michelle's Living Room

So I picked out a few prints of us and our dogs that I love and then debated for a few days with what size to get and where to get them printed from. I eventually decided on 4 12x12 canvases after doing some very "rustic" measuring with a ruler. I landed on Color Inc. because it's been so highly recommended by the Pioneer Woman. A little pricey, but good quality. I ordered the prints and then we went on vacation and I forgot about them. A few days after our return this large box was waiting for me when I woke up from my afternoon nap ( a summer essential!). I contained our prints of course and I wasted no time laying them out above the desk so my husband could hang them as-soon-as-he-got-home-no-you-don't-need-to-change-your-clothes-first.

 Berore I show you the finished project let me share a few things I really love about this desk. It had all the things I wanted but didn't have in the old desk.
1. Shelves

2. cabinets for storage

3. A file cabinet.

And here is our finished office area!!!!

Suds and Duds

When I say laundry time at our house has been a real drag the last year.....I mean it literally. When we moved into our house (now ten years old) we knew that the appliances were new with the house and had not been replaced since. Being new homeowners we didn't really know what that meant. Apparently not all appliances have that long of a life and can get costly to fix. We first discovered this when our dishwasher died. We replaced it and went on our merry way.

Our Dryer has been dying a slow death in the past year as well. I can't remember a time when we only had to run one cycle to get a load of laundry dry. It used to take two cycles and has grown to three. Laundry was an all day process. Throw in a load.... wait an hour.... switch it to the dryer.... wait an hour.....turn the dryer back on..... wait an hour.....turn the dryer back on..... wait an hour. It took for-e-ver. We tried to fix it, tried to patch a hole in the coils.... and they desinigrated...likely a fire hazard.

The washer, though technically in working condition, had it's own flaws. Namely that I couldn't reach the bottom of it without leaning my entire body over into it kamikaze style. Should I end up pregnant sometime down the line,  I would be unable to do laundry, and that is not kosher with my husband :) In other words, our washer and dryer are the duds referenced in the title of this post.

The duds.

 With all this in mind we decided to start watching the Sunday ads in hopes of finding a great deal on energy efficient front loaders. Memorial Day weekend we found such a sale. Home Depot and Lowe's were running the exact same sale..... Home Depot on a set of Maytags, Lowes on a set of whirlpools. The Maytags had the better reviews by far, so that's what we went with.

We were told the set would be delivered Saturday (today) between 8 and 12. In our experience that usually means we wait around all day and they finally get delievered in the evening. Those little weasel delivery men woke me up (on the first day of summer vacation!) at 7:30! They were outside our neighborhood and needed the gate code to get in...... by 8:30 these bad boys were installed and they were on their way! We've already done two loads of laundry and LOVE them!

One cycle is all that is required and I love the wrinkle free option. Somewhere down the line when we have children in diapers these will make cloth diapering much easier thanks to the pre-wash, stain rinse, and air dry options. Plus they are going to save us money being energy efficient!

Laundry at our house is pretty easy since there is only two of us. We keep two baskets in our closet, one for towels and one for clothes.

Tall for towels, short for clothing

 Please don't judge me by my color coded closet..... I do my husbands too..... see?

Rainman?

When they get full we tote them downstairs to the garage and into the wash. We keep our supplies on this little rack since the one on the wall is out of my reach and I do most of the laundry.

Can you tell we got a steal on Purex?

We also keep a drying rack for things that can't go in the dryer, a wastebasket for dryer sheets and lint, and some dryel bags for anything that is dry clean only. It works pretty well for us!

By the way, we are plugging away at our garage.... I think we've made about three trips to goodwill with stuff we no longer need and we are starting to clean and organize. Here's where we started (oh the shame!)

And here's where we are now.....

We're getting there! One of my main goals for June is to finish it!! At least we can see the floor now....

First Quarter Update

We're approaching the end of March, so it's time for.....

An Update on Goals

First Quarter: Jan, Feb, Mar

Does that sound professional or what? Reminds me of the meetings our church used to have :)

Here's what we've accomplished -

Getting Organized:
Jan - Organized the shoes
Feb - Organized the cookbooks
Mar - Organized the dogs

Second Quarter Goal: The Garage!!! This project is going to take us awhile, and we are waiting for a good sale on garage shelving.

Getting Out of Debt:
No new purchases on credit cards - I cheated a little. I put our anniversary cruise on a card, but I then paid it off using some of our tax return. We also paid off two other cards!! We have a few more to go but it is definitely a good step in the right direction.

Use the Debt Snowball to pay off as much as we can each month - definitely working and we are seeing bigger results now that we have paid off two cards and can put that money towards other debt.

Limit Grocery Spending by menu planning and couponing - I haven't been so good with the coupons (Hopefully I can do better and stock up over the summer when I have more time) but I've been diligently menu planning and have been able to keep our grocery budget around $50 - $60  each week. A definite improvement from $75-$80.

Limit frivolous spending - We saw one movie first quarter "Tangled" and rented two "Waiting for Superman" and "Despicable Me" so I'd say we did pretty good there. Otherwise, we watched movies on HBO and used free time to catch up on DVR'd tv shows. We've been trying to limit eating out  but we've had birthdays and anniversaries and what not. After our anniversary dinner I plan on cutting this out more. I also find I need to work a lot harder on not spending little amounts of money here and there. It may not be big amounts but it adds up fast!

I think we've made good progress and I'm excited to move even closer to being debt-free and organized next quarter! I'm sure April, May and June will be good months for us :)

Getting Organized: Putting the Puppies in their Place

Our dogs play a large part in our life, and also a large part in our cleaning routine. Every day when I come home one of the first things I do is sweep up all the cat/dog hair. I do this daily and there is always a huge pile! Lately the dogs bowls and toys have become an increasingly large mess as well. Bags of food covered the floor, the  bowls were mismatched and Layla's bowl needed to be elevated since she is so tall. Dan took my step stool to put it on which means i could never reach the spices I need. Add to this the fact that both food bowl and water bowls were in the middle of our kitchen and getting knocked over daily spilling water everywhere.... and you can see how this has become a huge problem!

I've had my eye on this elevated food stand for awhile, and finally decided to take the plunge and order it.

It arrived in pieces so Dan and I put it together.

We then cleaned out a corner of the kitchen to put it in, along with the food tupperware so that nothing would get tripped over.

I like the new stand so much, I plan on ordering the little one for Leo. The nice thing about the tall one is that it has storage under it for extra food, and treats. Putting the dog and cat food in the plastic bins makes things not only look nicer, but this way their food stays fresher.

Moving on to the toy bins, you may remember what they looked like before : random red tub from target, and aqua bucket from my wedding.

In case you were wondering, red and aqua are not colors I've decorated my house with. I picked up a nice dark brown spray paint at Michael's and went to town.

The brown paint made a huge difference, but the paint chipped whenever it was touched. And the dogs touch these buckets ALOT. So I was back to the drawing board looking for something better. I headed to Home Goods looking for brown buckets and found this instead:

Right there in the pet section, the perfect solution. How adorable is that paw print? It holds all their toys nicely and eliminates the need for a second bucket.

I picked up a few other things at home goods as well, including another basket that fits under our kitchen shelving to store random dog odds and ends that don't fit under the food bowls, like their fur brush, doggie bags, and other goodies.

I also picked up some items for a bathroom revamp that I will post about in the future :)

In conclusion, I love HomeGoods and everyone should shop there for their organizational needs.

The Garage will be our next major project.

The Garage - it's a disaster zone.
The Dogs - their bowls, food, toys, etc.
My Cookbooks - which are currently cluttering up a corner of my dining room
Shoe Storage - our current situation makes my head hurt every time I look at it.
The Desk/Office area - which is going to have to include an eventual new desk purchase
The Closets - Bedroom, Linen, Coat, Pantry, etc.

Getting Organized: Tackling the Cookbooks.

On SuperBowl Sunday I decided to TACKLE the cookbooks. They have been driving me crazy cluttering up a corner of my dining room :

I once again turned to Targets ClosetMaid line, their expresso color matches all my furniture

Dan helped me build it, and now the corner looks so much neater! It gave me a space for my vase and branches and there is even room for me to get a small basket to hold odds and ends on the top shelf.

So much better! So to keep myself up to date my 2011 organizational list now looks like this:

The Garage.
The Dogs
My Cookbooks
Shoe Storage
The Desk/Office area
The Closets

The dogs are next! Waiting on my Mommy to get here to help me!

Getting Organized : One Step at a Time

I just love a good play on words. You see this post is all about shoes. This is what our shoe situation looked like prior to Saturday:

It made my head hurt everytime I looked at it. The bucket didn't match the house, nor was it big enough to hold all the shoes. As you can see having shoes on the ground also leaves them within reach of the puppy,  the teething puppy. No good. Saturday Morning I set out to fix this mess. I bought one of each of these:

 I built the drawers (ALL BY MYSELF!) and loaded them up with flip flops:

Then we left to go watch the Bears/Packers game. Packers won. I may or may not have left 15 minutes before the game ended to run across the street to get cupcakes before the bakery closed at 6 pm. When we returned home I set right back to work and built (MOSTLY BY MYSELF!) the 15 compartment shelf. My husband hammered in the last few nails because I had already hammered my thumb twice and was getting very upset. Our shoe storage now looks like this:

MUCH better. I am a much saner person when I walk by it. So to keep myself up to date my 2011 organizational list now looks like this:

The Garage.
The Dogs
My Cookbooks  
Shoe Storage
The Desk/Office area
The Closets

In February I plan to tackle the dog issue. One thing at a time.