Hanging out...

This weekend Jonathan and I took on our first wood working project together. It was definitely a beginner project, but it turned out great. I'll start from the beginning...

A couple of months ago, I was on my favorite home decor blog - www.younghouselove.com. They were featuring another blogger who basically can make furniture look exactly like furniture you can buy in a store, and she posts plans on her website. Her blog is www.knock-offwood.com and on there you can find plans to build so many awesome things. This was our first project, but I'm hoping to talk the hubby into a couple more down the road.

Our goal was to end up with shelves that look like these from Ikea



Here are what Ana's (the plan maker and blogger) shelves look like in her house



We knew we weren't professional woodworkers, so ours were probably going to look a little more "home made" than Ana's, but it was worth a shot. On Friday evening we went out to Lowe's and bought all the supplies, only spending about $30. Just to put it into perspective, we got the supplies to make 2 shelves, and one shelf costs $30 from Ikea. So we were definitely saving some money in the long run.

Friday evening when we got home, Jonathan cut the wood so we would only have to put them together, sand them, prime and paint them on Saturday.



Saturday morning we started putting together the frames and sleeves and doing all the sanding, priming and painting.



Once I was into painting, I realized we weren't going to have enough paint in the garage to paint both with 2 coats of white paint, so we have only hung one of the shelves so far. The other one is waiting for one more coat of paint, then we're planning to hang it in our master bathroom above the bathtub for some nice storage.

The finished one we hung in the kitchen above the new buffet sideboard. I was thinking we would put both above there for even more storage, but if we had done that, I couldn't have reached the top shelf, so we decided to just hang one there. Here's a close up before I accessorized it.



So now the question...what to put on it? Well I had multiple options, but my favorite idea for now are some vintage glasses passed down from Jonathan's great Aunt. They are super cool and have etched "C"s on them, and I have been wanting to display them somewhere. This seemed like the perfect place!





So there you have it...a quick run down of our little weekend project. If you're interested in making the shelves yourself, you can find the plans here

More Hours in my Day?

Last weekend when Jonathan and I were home visiting my parents, my mom gave me a book called More Hours in My Day by Emilie Barnes. I am only part of the way through it, but the basic idea of the book is to give readers ways to organize themselves and their families. Now, with only Jonathan and I, there isn't as much to organize, and I'm sure many of her ideas I'll put into practice when we start a family. But reading this book got me thinking about things we already do around our house to keep things somewhat organized and save a little time each day.

First of all, I should say that I love organization. Seriously, if I could be a personal organizer and go to different client's houses and organize their spaces, I would have the dream job. There are certainly places that need more organization in our house, but there are a few things that we have started that work well for us.

One thing that I absolutely despise is laundry. I hate it. When we first moved into our house last year, I got a label maker, and I thought it would be a good idea to label our laundry baskets and place them above the washer and dryer like so:





Jonathan has really gotten into a routine of putting his dirty clothes in the labeled bins as he takes them off, which helps tremendously when it comes time to sort the laundry. It may seem like a small thing, but I bet it saves me about 10 to 15 minutes on laundry day...whenever that happens to roll around. I try to put it off as much as possible.

Another thing that we started awhile ago is sorting mail as we bring it in the house. I am one of those people that hates having anything on the kitchen counter, so I like to sort the mail each day and get it off the counter. We have this bin on the desk in the office where we sort the mail - one slot of bills to pay, one slot for Jonathan, and one slot for me.



This really is great for knowing when certain bills are due, because we keep the bills paid section sorted by due date. I normally glance at it near the beginning of every week and make sure I know what's coming up. Also, we each go through our individual stacks and file them in our filing drawers about every week or two, to keep down on the amount of paper out on the desk. We each had a filing system when we moved into our house, so it has sort of stayed separated, but eventually I'm sure we'll combine forces in this department.





My drawer is on top, and Jonathan's is the picture on the bottom. Both look different, but they each get the job done just as well - the key being keeping paper out of sight and where we can easily find something if we need to.

Lastly, I am a little crazy about my pantry. We have a small pantry in our kitchen (oh how I wish it were bigger), so a couple of weekends ago, once we had moved our new sideboard into the kitchen to create a little more storage, I was able to move some things out of the pantry and onto a lazy susan, leaving me alot more room to play with in the pantry. I like to keep the canned goods and boxes on the lazy susan, and the spices, baking supplies, etc. in the pantry. Here's what it currently looks like:



My favorite two shelves are the spice shelf and the dry baking goods shelf.





With both of these shelves, I love that I can see what I have of each item at a glance. Spices are a little tricky, since they come in so many different sizes and shapes. I had thought about storing them alphabetically, but for me it made sense to store them by size so I can read what each thing is without rummaging through 15 difference containers. The same is true for the dry baking goods. I can open the pantry and tell in about 2.1 seconds if I need to buy sugar or flour.

Those are just a few of the simple organizing techniques we have started using in our home. I do believe that those small things will help to create More Hours in My Day.

Things I'm Loving...

Let's be honest, I always have a long wish list of home decor items I'd love to see in our home at any given time. Some things I'll get, and some things I'll probably never have...we can't always have everything we want :). These are just a few of the things I'm oogling over lately.

The first item is from www.nameyourdesign.com The color scheme pretty much goes perfectly with our living room, and for only $20 for a personalized 8x10 print, you can't beat it.



The next item will have to wait til we have hardwood floors in our living room (maybe a year or two...I'm keeping my fingers crossed), but I think the design on this rug is just gorgeous. It's from www.shadesoflight.com



Then there's this chair from www.target.com that would go perfectly in our master bedroom. I really like the shape of the chair, which is more modern than many things in our home, so it would be a nice addition, without being over the top.



Here's a more practical thing I've been looking for. I cleaned off a space on our counter to put a bread box, but I just haven't found the perfect one yet. It's kind of a "traditional meets modern" item that we could really use...putting bread on top of the refrigerator is just not cute, and it goes stale so fast! Anyway, this one is from www.amazon.com and I think it could definitely work in our space.



Speaking of stainless steel, how great would this look in our kitchen?!?



I've been eyeing the bottom freezer refrigerators for awhile now, and stainless steel would be perfect in our kitchen. Buuuut, as soon as I change out the refrigerator, I'm going to want a matching stove and dishwasher. Let's just say for now, stainless steel appliances are just a dream of mine.

Now, on to something a little more realistic. I'd love to make our guest room more plush and welcoming for when we have company, and I think adding a swanky luggage rack would help add more of the "hotel vibe" to the room. This one from www.stacksandstacks.com is adorable, and I love the bamboo.



Those are just a few of the things I've been eyeing over the past few weeks. Of course I'll never have everything on this list, but it sure is fun to dream :)

A Fresh Coat of Paint

Along with probably two thirds of America, I am constantly feeling like my kitchen doesn't have enough storage. A couple of months ago, I started seriously looking for a sideboard buffet for our kitchen to help with our little storage situation. We had a completely empty wall, just waiting to be occupied. The only thing was...I knew what I wanted. And when you know what you want, sometimes it's hard to find exactly what you have pictured in your head.

We looked online, we looked in stores, we looked everywhere. Finally, I was bored one day and decided to check out Craigslist. Well, low and behold, I found the perfect piece of furniture! It wasn't exactly what I had pictured in my head, but I knew Jonathan and I could make a few changes and it would be absolutely perfect.

So off we went to a stranger's house to check out this sideboard. At first glance, I was in love :) Jonathan made the deal and shook on it (that never happens anymore), and we were back in the car trying to figure out how in the world we were going to get this thing home! It was a pretty hefty piece of furniture. After a couple weeks of deliberating, planning, and working some magic (well Uhaul actually came to the rescue), we had this gorgeous hunk of wood in our garage:



She's a beauty, huh? Okay, so she was definitely going to need some work. First of all, nothing in our kitchen is natural wood color except our kitchen table, which is a very light maple. So we new the color would have to change. We thought about staining it to match the table, or staining just the top and painting the rest white, or painting it entirely white. In the end we decided to paint it all white. That option just seemed to go best with our kitchen.

Not only would we need to put a coat of primer, 2 coats of white paint, and 2 coats of poly on the entire thing, but the drawers were also looking a little shabby. There are drawers at the top for silverware that looked like this inside:



And the insides of the other drawers definitely needed to be lined so I wouldn't have to worry about scratching up the wood with whatever I decided to put in it.

We also had to replace those awful cabinet pulls...seriously, they were awful. That was a job in itself! We wanted to find pulls we liked that matched with the holes already in the drawers so we wouldn't have to fill those and redrill new ones. After many trips to Home Depot, Lowe's, Wal Mart, and every store in between, a few purchases and a couple returns, we ended up with the perfect cabinet pulls too. In my head I had pictured brushed nickel pulls, but I actually love the black.

In the end, it was alot...I mean ALOT of work, but the result was better than I ever could have pictured:










Those pictures were taken the first night we moved the sideboard into the house from the garage. Since then I've accessorized the top a little, and currently it looks like this:



I still want to add a floating shelf above it to display a few more things, but all in all I'm happy with the outcome. I don't think we're planning to redo anymore furniture in the near future (it's really more work than it looks), but I do have a couple more posts planned, so stay tuned!

Sweatin' to the Oldies

This past week, Jonathan and I decided it was high time we joined the local gym. Personally, I have put on a few pounds since getting married last year, and it's about time I work on getting those few pounds back off. Jonathan, on the other hand, hardly ever gains weight. He could eat junk food for days and not gain a pound. But he is being a nice, devoted husband and is going to the gym with me, because let's be honest, it won't last long if I have to go alone. We signed up on Wednesday, and have worked out for 2 days now. Now, I can't tell much difference or weight loss in two days (if only that were possible) but I'd say if we keep it up, then we'll see some results. In college, Haley and I got on a pretty good routine of waking up at about 7:00am and heading to the gym on campus. It was great to have a routine and know when we were going to work out, so Jonathan and I are trying to do the same thing now. The only different thing is, now that we're out of college, it seems alot harder to fit in things like working out. There are so many things I'd love to do more, like scrapbooking, baking, organizing things in the house, but it seems like there just aren't enough hours in the day. I guess we'll have to work on prioritizing, and make working out somewhere near the top of the list. For now we're doing good (I mean we're only on day 3 haha), but in a month or so, we might start coming up with excuses to not go if we don't get a schedule in place. Any suggestions on balancing normal everyday things you HAVE to do (like eating, sleeping, working) with things you'd like to do? We'll take all the advice we can get!