New Site!

I'm excited to share a new, simpler site to find www.myloveforwords.com
I hope you'll visit for all of my new updates and pictures of the finished office.

Office Inspiration

This is my current inspiration board for the office. The walls are close to the soft blue background color (on my monitor anyway), and the stenciling is in the light blue and white as opposed to what's pictured below.

 

I received the lamp (from PB Teen) a few days ago and adore it! It's so bright and colorful and adds a lot of fun and personality to the still-in-progress space. It's also currently sitting on the floor (unplugged) so the baby's getting a kick out of crawling over to it and banging all of the dangling little circles.

 

I decided to go with a metal tray table (from Ballard Designs) because I already have a lot of white furniture in this space. I thought the metal would be a nice accent and give a little more visual interest. Two chairs will flank the table, but those are supposed to arrive in early March... like I can wait that long!

 

I have some other things for the space including floating shelves, artwork, and cute little decorations, which I'll hopefully be able to share soon in my after pictures. Until then, here's what I've been working with...

 

 

 

 

Let the remodeling begin!

It's hard for me to believe that we've already lived in our new house for 9 months. Time is flying by (how is it almost February already?!), and we haven't done nearly as much in this place as I'd assumed we would by this time.

We did remove a border, paint, and organize the kids' play area, and our kitchen walls now look like a patchwork quilt because we've tried at least 10 different paint colors in the kitchen in hopes of finally covering the bright green walls.  (I think I've finally stumbled upon the perfect color. More on that another day... just in case I change my mind.)

But other than those little changes we haven't gotten around to much else. In my defense, we do have three kiddos and another on his way so I did lose about 2 months to morning sickness, but I'm the kind of person who wants everything right now. For better or worse, waiting has never been my strong suit. I want this house to finally feel like us so we started a new project this past weekend: the office.

I spend a lot of time in the office between my personal organizing (and now etsy) creations, taking online courses here in and there in hopes of finally finishing this degree, and pinterest. However, I didn't want our office to just be a glorified computer room. I wanted to make a functional space where I can scrapbook and be crafty too. A little mom sanctuary. I'll share my inspiration board with you soon, but here are some before and during pictures until then.

See, obviously something had to be done about this place. The walls were a fine shade of green, but it wasn't the color I was looking for. As for the curtain, I've been dreaming of the day when we could take those down. Once again, they're fine but not for us (I feel guilty putting down the previous owner's decorating choices).

Grace was determined to help me paint. She did a very good job.

Here you can see the focal wall has been painted white, soon to be stenciled, and my desk before and after. I was toying with the idea of buying a new desk because I love white furniture and wanted a clean, crisp, coordinating look, but all of the features of this desk are perfect for us. It has storage for the computer tower, printer, supplies, and a pull out drawer for the keyboard. The only thing wrong with it was the color so we saved a ton of money and just decided to paint it.

I'm really happy with how it's turning out, but it still needs a coat or two of more paint. I'm also going to look into getting a piece of glass to put on top of the desk to protect it. I love it! Not bad for my first time painting furniture. :)

Sticker Chart

At the request of a friend, I've made a new printable! It's a sticker chart for positive reinforcement. For my kiddos stickers are an always welcome and exciting reward. I'll just have to replace "potty" with something else for use around our house. Given all the fussing the kids have been doing lately, I think an "I cleaned up my toys" chart is in the not-so-distant future.

I put one up in my etsy shop too. Stop by for a visit by clicking here.

What could go wrong?

I love our new house. I do, but one thing I didn't really pay much attention to before we bought it is that there's a lot of wallpaper in this house. It's everywhere.

It's in the:
Dining Room
Half Bath
Laundry Room
Basement Wet Bar area
Movie Room
Basement Bath
Basement Bedroom
and quite possibly some other little nooks and crannies I've forgotten about.

It wasn't until this past summer, when my husband and I removed a border in the kids playroom, that we realized what a mess we'd gotten ourselves into. The project seemed to take forever, and we had plenty of gouge marks to repair afterwards. Obviously, we aren't the most skilled wallpaper removers.

I'm definitely not considering putting any wallpaper into this house, but I would love for some of the walls to have a little personality so when I found this website I got very excited. I've never applied a stencil before (I'm not kidding when I say I'm new to this do-it-yourself stuff), but I want to give it a try.

I'm thinking about this Aspen Stencil for our home office but in a light shade of purple and white. Honestly, I'm a little scared to do something even remotely bold, but it's just paint, right? That's easy enough to fix if something goes wrong.

Cash Wallet

Today, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, IHeartOrganizing, where author Jen was discussing how she and her husband organize and keep track of their family budget. Then she mentioned this adorable etsy shop, and $20 immediately disappeared from my wallet. An impulse buy... that's something my new purchase is, humorously enough, designed to prevent.

I've been wanting to transition to a cash only, or mainly cash, system for a while now in hopes of making impulse buys more difficult due to limited funds or simply the pain of handing over the cold, hard dollars and cents. I'm hoping this cute new addition will help me make the transition. It has 6 dividers inside that can be categorized for different things. Groceries, dining out, and entertainment will be a must for me.

I am beyond thrilled! Ever since we moved into our new home (9 months ago now!) I've wanted to make it feel like our home. Unfortunately, our previous house didn't sell as quickly as we anticipated so we were stuck paying two mortages for months on end. That was a painful, scary, and expensive lesson, but I can confidently say that we will never again buy a new home while still owning the last.
Thankfully, we were able to sell it a couple months ago, and I finally feel like we can focus on this house now.

The only room that really feels finished at this point is the master bedroom, and my current goal is tackling the craft room/office. I've noticed lately that my taste in decor seems to be transitioning more towards modern, crisp lines, bright colors, and a clean, fresh feel. I want our home to feel cheery and inviting, and I'm ready to try some new styles... so off to Ikea we went.

Honestly, as we were packing up the three kids and heading out in the snow all I could think was, "Do we really need to go to Ikea today?" Despite the fact that the trip was my idea, trucking the entire crew 90 minutes round trip for nothing in particular is not always the most exciting task. Now, I'm so glad we went. Today, I finally started to see the finished space in my head. I've never made a mood board before, but I think I'm going to make my first one soon to see how everything ties together outside of my thoughts.

One addition will be this new folding table that we stumbled upon while shopping. It's meant for dining, but this is going to be the perfect addition to my crafting space.

I'll be able to pull it out when I need a large surface to work on and fold it up and put it away when I don't want it in the middle of the room. I'm beyond excited about this... really probably too excited given that it's just a table, but I guess it finally feels like the room is starting to take shape, and after 9 months of feeling "blah" about our new home it's nice to feel energized and excited.

Click here to visit Ikea's website for more information on this piece.

Clean Freaks

I would like to take a moment to personally thank HGTV for making me feel like the laziest slob to ever walk the face of the Earth.  How did this happen, you may ask? I watched Clean Freaks online last night, and it left me feeling like a complete failure as a person. Alright, that might be a bit melodramatic, but it did leave me feeling pretty inadequate in my homemaking skills.

I like to think of myself as a fairly organized person, even if sometimes that organization never really makes it out of my head and into reality. I remember speaking with someone before my husband and I got married about why I didn't have him over to my house as much as he would've liked. My reason? I wanted my house to look like a magazine, and if it didn't meet that standard (or as close as I could get anyway) I didn't want to let anyone in. This was met, perhaps understandably so, with laughter and a reassuring, "You better get over that if you want a lot of kids!" How right they were.

Now I frequently feel like I live with a bunch of evil gremlins whose sole mission on this planet is to destroy any sense of order I'm able to create in this house. Of course, these gremlins are some of my favorite people in the world, and I also happen to think they're the sweetest, most amazing things since sliced bread, but they do love to create a good mess. It's hard to make much progress in organizing and decorating this new(ish) home when I have three little ones running after me knocking over everything in sight.

Having a house that resembles a magazine is still my goal though. In preparing our old house for sale, we finally decorated and used spaces that had been empty for years. I don't want to wait until we're trying to get rid of this place to make it into a space we love and enjoy. It's a daunting task though. Our old house was the first my husband and I shared together. Most of our furniture was purchased for specific rooms, and we basically had a blank slate. In our new house, none of our furniture really seems to fit. Unfortunately, we don't have a great budget for furniture this time around so we're just going to do our best to make things work and maybe diy the rest.

Here's a link to HGTV's page Clean Freaks... watch if you dare! (And in all seriousness, there are some really great ideas in this episode. The gentle lights and music to wake up would be amazing!)

My Helper

I mentioned in my last post that I greatly dislike grocery shopping, but two things do make it better: 1) an organized list so I can breeze through the store (my most recent trip took only 35 minutes for a week's worth of groceries. Without an organized list it would've easily taken an hour) and 2) a wonderful helper!

Meal Planning

I made these weekly meal planning and grocery shopping papers to help me plan our meals and make my grocery shopping trips as efficient as possible. I love grocery lists that are organized by product type and store location. I don't particularly enjoy grocery shopping so I enjoy it even less when I reach the end of a trip only to realize the last item I need is at the other end of the store where I started my trip. Such inefficiencies pretty much guarantee that my little ones will have meltdowns in the check out line, if not before, and I like to avoid those at all costs. By organizing my lists by type of food I'm able to grab everything I need as I go and get out of there as soon as possible.

Another great feature of these lists, they increase husband efficiency too! I love to have my husband at home as much as possible because: 1) I love his company and 2) I'm a stay at home mom so any help and relief I can get is much appreciated. The sooner he can get home from a errand the better.

I made a general list:

And one that's personalized:

Interested in getting a copy? Click HERE to visit my etsy store.

I'm always looking for better and faster ways to do things so I'm curious, what tips and tricks do you use to meal plan and keep grocery trips as short as possible?

Soccer Cookies

I really enjoy baking. Cakes, cupcakes, brownies... basically anything with a ton of sugar is great in my book, but my favorite thing to bake is by far sugar cookies. Our family recipe is amazing and supposedly from a bakery that closed decades ago. How we got a copy I don't know, but I'm glad we did!

When I have the opportunity to volunteer to take something to one of my kids events sugar cookies are always a serious contender. These were for Daniel's end of soccer season celebration. The kids and parents gobbled them up (and I snatched a few for myself too). Yum! The only problem? Now I want to jump in the kitchen and make a batch.

New House, New Bed

This bed used to be at my mom's house, and Grace was always very excited to sleep in it. However, when we moved into our new home my mom decided to give it to Grace for her new bedroom. It's been a huge hit as it has space for her Dora toddler bed below and a twin size mattress on top. It also has the lovely bookshelf and some storage compartments on the side, which has helped with organizing her books and many stuffed animals.

As you can probably tell, she was over joyed. My original plan for her room was to paint the baseboards white and do some kind of mural on the walls. I was thinking a pretty nature scene, but now that we know we're having another boy, and he and his older brother will only be 16 months apart Grace will probably be moving to a different (smaller) room soon. I don't think this news is going to go over too well, but her bed will go with her, of course, so hopefully that will soften the blow. Anyway, my home improvement ideas are currently on hold until we figure out where everyone's going to go.

Thank you, Ikea!

The entryway from our garage was always a mess of shoes, jackets and backpacks. Despite having an open rack shoe organizer in the closet, the shoes always ended up in a pile in front of the rack. "Closet filler" was not exactly its intended purpose. So, when I stumbled upon this gem online buying one as soon as possible was a no brainer.

Ikea's about 45 minutes from our home, and while that's not too horribly far, I like to buy as much online as possible. With two little kids and another on the way the idea of tackling a 90 minute round trip drive and shopping was not very appealing. There were a couple available on ebay, but I wasn't about to pay twice of what they were asking in the store so off to the store we went.

Thankfully, my mother met us there and was able to help us. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her.

Jack made quite a few purchases.

These made it all worth it! Now our shoes are beautifully organized and off the floor. Wonderful.

Painted Ornaments

This year I decided to give painting ornaments a try after seeing some beautiful pictures online. Unfortunately, there was no tutorial provided with the pictures so I tried a couple different techniques on my own.

The first technique was "squirt the acrylic paint in, replace the top, and shake." Needless to say this didn't work very well. If I was lucky, half of the ornament would end up with paint, but the other half became impossible to coat no matter how hard we shook them.

The second technique was "add a little water and shake." This was when I learned that water and acrylic paint are not friends. They don't like to socialize and will be unkind to one another if forced to do so.

The third technique was "squirt the paint in and smear it around with a brush." The worked pretty well and gave a interesting, impressionistic look to the ornament, but given the size of the brush handle it because impossible to paint the top half of the ornament.

Unsatisfied with half painted ornaments, I grabbed a few cotton swabs, bent them as necessary, and was able to finish all of the ornaments with complete coats of paint.

Grace, my three-year-old, helped me. We used a variety of colors, and let them dry in a muffin pan.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. The blue and green one was my favorite; it reminded me of Monet's Water Lilies. Sadly, they never actually made it to the tree. The season was over before I knew it, but I'm planning on putting them up next year.

2013 Mission: Organization

I'm very excited to share my new daily planner for 2013. I've always loved organizers and color coding events (which is becoming a necessity with our growing family), but it's been difficult for me to find a planner that works well for us. So this year, instead of searching high and low only to finally settle on something mediocre, I decided to just design one myself that will perfectly suit our needs.

(If you'd like your own personalized version visit my new etsy site. The link is on the right side bar.)

The cover:

My Weekly Pages

I wanted to make sure I had enough room for our various daily activities, notes, and a to-do list. 

I included the meal planning portion of the page because it's something I'm currently horrible about tracking. Every once in a while I do a good job planning out meals for the week, but we spend way too much on restaurants because of the convenience and usually poor planning on my part.

I also made a page for special dates so I can easily track birthdays, anniversaries, 

and other important events.

I'm also thinking about printing out a separate copy for family activities.

 I also made pages for contacts, notes, and a calendar for each month.

 

I also love that if something happens to the pages I can print more. Here's to a more organized 2013!

Hello Smiles

With the new year comes the exciting task of planning, organizing, and baking for the various upcoming birthdays we will soon be celebrating. Within the span of three weeks we celebrate three birthdays, and now with our newest little addition on his way that number will increase to four. So if you want cake this spring now you know where to go.

Last year, my daughter requested a Hello Kitty cake. I also made Hello Kitty cake pops inspired by those I found on Bakerella's site. (Click here to visit her site. Just prepare to be amazed, inspired, and create a fun mess in the kitchen.)

These were my first attempt at cake pops, and while the first couple looked a little gruesome Grace didn't seem to mind at all.

After a little tweaking they got better.

As for the cake, I started by making my own fondant. I've used store bought fondant before, and I found it hard to color and difficult to work with so making my own seemed to be the only way to go.

 I added pink food coloring to create a pink ombre surprise for when the cake was cut.

And here's the final result.

 Grace now refers to her third birthday as her "Hello Kitty birthday" so I'll mark this one as a success. This year she wants to have a Tinkerbell birthday... let the planning begin!

Counting Down to Christmas

We still haven't completely settled in from our move, but that didn't stop me from breaking out my Cricut machine and getting crafty for Christmas. I haven't used it nearly as much as I anticipated when I bought it last year, but given that we moved and have three (soon to be four) kiddos I'm not going to beat myself up too much.

I can't take credit for the design as I copied one I saw online (with a few of my own tweaks here and there), but it was a great addition to the Christmas season and a nice, new tradition for our first holiday season in our new home.

My three year old, Grace, was kind enough to play Vanna White for a picture.

The aftermath...

This project took a lot longer than I expected, which meant that by the time I was finished I was exhausted. Unfortunately, the crafting fairy never arrived to clean up after me. This is just another reason I'm anxious to have a craft room/office set up and organized. Once everything has its own place I'll be able to work in a cleaner fashion... or at least shut the door and not have to look at it.

I'm Meltiiiiiing

These are the cookies I made for my son Daniel's class Christmas party (inspired by, where else, Pinterest). I was pretty happy with how they turned out. I did the white melted snow and detail work in royal icing, which I realized a couple days later wasn't the best choice when I almost chipped a tooth. For the first day or two the royal icing was great, but when it solidifies it doesn't mess around. It's like a confectionary concrete. Now I know why cakes at bridal shows always look so gorgeous.

Board and Batten

I'm excited to share that my days of dreaming about and lusting after board and batten have finally paid off. We have installed some in our new home! The entryway from the garage is somewhat tight. There are two closets and two hallways. One hallway goes straight into the kitchen and the other to the laundry room. We are using one of the closets as a makeshift pantry (one of the few desired features our new home is lacking) and the other for coats and shoe storage.

Given that we have young children, I really wanted a place for hooks so they can hang up their jackets and bags without assistance. A 3M hook sufficed for a little while, but that wasn't really the look I was going for so when pinterest was kind enough to introduce me to the idea of installing board and batten with hooks I had to oblige.

We aren't finished with it yet. We still have to do some additional sanding (it's amazing how some imperfections really pop after a coat of white paint), repaint it a time or two, install the hooks, and decide on a paint color for the wall above, but just seeing board and batten installed in my home, and knowing that we did it ourselves is very exciting. Trust me, I'm the girl who would've paid someone to do this just a couple years ago. We actually got an estimate to have it installed in the dining room of our old house and couldn't believe it when the quote came back for $4,000! Needless to say, our walls stayed bare.

So here they are, the before and almost after pics: