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Back in September, I shared with you the beginnings of my craft room. Now that my husband and I are empty nesters, I am turning one of the bedrooms into a room where I can sew, craft, blog and do all kinds of projects to my heart's content without having to clutter and clear off the dining room table!
As the holidays came around, things were standing still in there and I hadn't decided what to do with the floor. I couldn't move on without getting the floor taken care of. Thank heavens my husband took things in hand and told me that laying the floor and working on my room would be his Christmas present to me this year! What a great gift, and he has worked so hard!
To begin with, he took me to Lowe's and had me pick out the flooring. After much deliberation, I chose this wood laminate flooring! We chose Quick Step Brand. It is a very DIY friendly click-lock system and the underlayment pad is attached, saving time and money! I chose the Restoration Oak color, but there are many other colors available. I love the look of this one.
If you remember, there are a bunch of built in shelves on one side of the room which are going to be great for my craft supply storage, but the previous owner who built them didn't remove the baseboard when he built them in. So, while the rest of the room will be getting taller baseboards, we had to put a 3/4 round strip along the shelf wall to hide the raw edges of the flooring. But, since it is under the desk, it won't really show anyway. As you can see in the picture, we also have to replace the wall socket plates.
For the sewing desk support, my husband and son-in-law took a trip to the building recycling center and purchased those two banks of drawers. They are well made and in great shape. You may notice that the drawer banks are slightly different from each other, but I think that adds to the charm. The drawer pulls are slightly different, and I may or may not change them out to match. What do you think? Husband and SIL painted them white, after sanding and priming them and built a frame to hold the melamine top of the desk. The edge will be finished white and the top around the wall will be trimmed out. Since I took this picture, hubby has drilled the hole in the top of the counter for the cords to go through.
He rounded the corners for me because I am a klutz and didn't want to have perpetual bruises on my hips. Plus, if my grandchildren are in there with me, I didn't want sharp corners for little heads to hit.
What do you think? I have to tell you that I am thrilled so far! I have even already used my sewing machine on that desk! (Here is the post!)
Here is what is left on the to do list:
It sounds like a long list, but I don't think most of it will take long. Except for maybe the organizing part! But, I am so excited to do it because organizing that room will lead to others becoming more organized as I move my craft supplies to their permanent home. I can hardly wait to show you it as we move farther along in the process!
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This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking them, we will be compensated, but there is no additional cost to you. All opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for your support. Last year, about this time, I did some self evaluating and wrote this post about goal setting. It is a really good post (If I say so myself) with good ideas about setting and achieving goals and how I was going to try to be more successful in 2018. It is now time for me to report to you how I did and how I plan to improve in 2019. After writing the post about goal setting, I shared another one with you about my own, specific goals. I started out stronger and for longer that I have in years past, but I did struggle after my schedule changed when I started taking care of my granddaughter. But, I did see a lot of progress in many areas, so I am calling my method a qualified success! After all, any progress is a success and since it was my first year trying my planner method, I can give it a few tweaks and keep trying. My 2018 Goals and Progress Made: Personal Goals-
Spiritual Goals-
Preparedness Goals-
Home Improvement Goals-
Blogging Goals-
So, all in all, I feel like I was fairly successful last year and hope to make this year even better. I mean, who says that you have to have a year deadline on your goals? No one, that's who! I am going to hone in on my goals and keep at them! This past week, we found Happy Planners at Micheal's for 60% off! This is the time of year to look for deals on calendars and planners. Alicia got a large planner and mine is the smaller one. I found them on Amazon, and I also found that you can get a hole punch that fits the Happy Planner pages so that you can add your own personalized pages to your planner. That would be perfect for me to add journaling pages to my planner. I also love how each month has a place to list goals. That will be great for making short term goals that will lead to being successful on my larger goals. How did you do on your goals this year? Have you had any successes that you are really proud of? Let us know in the comments!
This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking them, we will be compensated, but there is no additional cost to you. All opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for your support.
Last Sunday was Organize Your Home Day, which seems like an appropriate day for the month of January. When you put away all of the Christmas trappings and new gifts, it is the perfect time to organize your goals and your home at the same time. It takes me more than one day to do all of this. January should be Organize Your Home Month!
The 4 of us here at 3 Winks Design are all in different stages of life that require various different types of focus when it comes to organizing our homes. Alicia and her husband and 2 children live in a tiny little apartment in the expensive Bay Area in California. Lindsey and her PH have a brand new baby in a new home. Maddy lives at home with my husband and I in a small bedroom with millions of clothes and shoes. Plus she eats vegan, so she has different food items that need to be stored in our pantry. My husband and I are about to have a home with only 3 people in it. (My son and his family are soon re-locating to his new job!) We are going to be re-purposing some of our rooms in our house. Because of all of these needs, we have decided that, for today's Friday Faves, to share with you our current favorite tools and products that we are using to help us be more organized.
Helen's Faves
If you have been following along with me at all, you know that one of my goals for this year is to go through all of the books in the house and weed them out and organize them. I have always wanted to have a library area in my home. To help me with this, I have purchased 2 new bookcases. I love them! They are the Target Threshold brand and they look so nice. They come in a variety of colors, they do require assembly, and they are sturdy and budget friendly.
Another tool I use for organizing is something I made for my pantry. It is an inventory method that I use to help me know what I have in my food storage and to keep my pantry stocked with the basics. I used word strip charts that I purchased at the Target One Spot to make them. I don't see those available right now, but they are usually there at the beginning of the school year. Many people have asked me to share my method and I will on another post in the near future. In the meantime, here is what it looks like. It hangs on the peg board wall of my pantry.
Lindsey's Fave
Lindsey and Austin are furnishing their new house from scratch! They have of course spent a lot of time and effort in the nursery, getting it ready for Baby Emily. It was really nice when they received some Target Gift Cards as wedding gifts and were able to purchase this beautiful dresser with them for her. Their crib is also grey so this goes so nicely with it and goes so well with the Where the Wild Things Are theme. (I talked about that here, as well as her adorable letters of her name!) The 6 drawers give lots of space to hold all of a baby's many article of clothing and supplies. It is a dresser that will grow nicely with her over the next few years.
Alicia's Faves
When I tell you that Alicia lives in a really tiny place, I mean really tiny. They actually rent a 2 bedroom, 1 bath guest house that just had a kitchen added. (For awhile, they lived with a hot plate, microwave and mini fridge. Their only sink was in the bathroom!) It is super cute, though and is helping them to save money for the future. Alicia has worked really hard to make it as organized as possible and to use as much wall space as possible to make it work for their family.
Recently, Alicia shared how she made a hanging diaper stacker from a t-shirt. It has been extremely popular, which leads me to believe that many young mothers are needing some of her space saving tips.
There are some other clever ideas that Alicia has used as well.
She ordered these plastic containers from Dollar Tree. When you order them online, you get 24 of them! At first, she thought that was going to be way too many. But, surprisingly she started using them at a very quick rate! They are perfect for nuts, crackers, cereal and other dry goods. When her kitchen was added to her apartment, they put in a nice long pantry cupboard. Look how organized she is making it with her plastic containers! Another great buy from Dollar Tree are these cloth boxes for organizing shelves. Baby Sofia has a cabinet instead of drawers for her clothing. Alicia uses these fabric boxes to hold her clothes.
There are a couple of kinds of these boxes. There are these with grommet handles, and these collapsible cubes. When you order the grommet handled ones, they come in units of 24. When you order the cubes, they come in units of 4! These boxes also look great on shelves and bookcases to keep things tucked away neatly.
One last thing that Alicia loves are her library style bookends. They work very well to hold up a lot of books and although they are plain, they are very hard working! Alicia has ideas for decorating them if you would like to to that. But, in the meantime, they fulfill her need to keep her shelves neat.
Madalynn's Faves
Maddy also uses the fabric cubes for storage in her room. As I mentioned before, she has a ton of shoes. One of the best ways to keep them organized is by using a shoe rack. Here are some choices from Target.
Maddy also uses some Dollar Tree items to store some of the grains and things that she uses in her healthy diet. We love the decorative glass storage jars for storing chia seeds or other grains. (Do you know that chia seeds never seem to run out!)
Dollar Tree also has these nice canisters! When you order them online, you can get 4 to a unit! That is perfect for flour, sugar, brown sugar, marshmallows, rice or any other thing you may want to store!
So, those are our suggestions for storage and organization around the house! We hope you can use some of our ideas. Is there a product you love that you couldn't be organized without? Let us know down in the comments! We'd love to to try them out.
This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking them, we will be compensated, but there is no additional cost to you. All opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for your support.
I know that sometimes it seems cliche to make resolutions at the New Year. I mean, you can set goals anytime of the year and keep them. But, I think the reason I actually use the New Year to make my resolutions is because after the holidays and I have put away all of those trappings and the house is cleaned up and fresh again, it seems like an appropriate time to make a fresh start with many things. Not only that, it feels good to look ahead to an entire year that is full of promise and already divided into times and seasons to use as incremental deadlines to keep myself on track. It is easy to remember that I began something in January. If I begin a new goal in May, I may not recall when I started it. That is just me. Finally, It is nice to reach the holiday season and look back over the year and feel peace about what was accomplished during the past year. That adds to my feelings of thankfulness.
Last week, on this post, I told you about the great calendar/planner that Maddy gave me for Christmas and how I was going to use it to help me keep my goals for 2018. (That link is to the customizeable planners at Minted. There are other choices listed on that other post.) I also promised to share my goals with you when I had them all decided upon. Soooo.....
Happy New Year!
Here are my 2018 goals and how I plan to actually keep them this year! If you haven't made any resolutions for yourself this year, maybe my ideas will jog your brain to come up with some of your own. :) I hope that by recording them here, it will make me more accountable for them as well.
As I mentioned in my original post, I took the time to reflect and ponder on the things that I wanted to improve on in the coming year. I divided my goals into 5 categories:
Personal Goals:
Spiritual Goals:
I only set one goal in this category because I feel like many of my other goals will ultimately help me spiritually as well. (Such as journaling and healthy eating.) 1. Scripture Study-I used to always read my scriptures in the morning. Now, that just isn't working for me. Since my children are all going different directions and my husbands work hours are changed, I am finding many things changing in my life and I have to change old habits to fit these changes. I need to carve out 30 minutes a day for scripture study and I am going to try for the early evening. If that doesn't work well, I will try something else until I find what works. Another part of making my scripture study more successful is remembering to pray before and after I read. This goal is very important to me. I will be sure to journal about my progress and insights as I work on this goal.
Preparedness Goals:
It is very important to my husband and I to try to be self sufficient. In the event of a job loss or some other emergency, we want to be prepared. This can lead to needing financial goals and preparedness skills. Financial goals are something we have together and work on all of the time. This year I have included some skills goals that I need to work on.
Home Improvement Goals:
This is one of those areas where I have continued to make the same goals year after year and I always get side tracked and never get as much done as I hope to. This is also an area that will have to wait until my son and his family are gone in order to accomplish them. Although, we did get somewhat of a start in organizing rooms in order to make room for my grandchildren to sleep! There is always a silver lining!
Blogging Goals:
There are so many goals that I could make for my blog, and I know that there are things that the girls and I will do over the year on the blog that I am not even listing. But, here are two goals that I really want to be sure to do!
Those are my 2018 goals! Surprisingly, I do not feel overwhelmed, but I feel excited. I just discovered yesterday that my new planner came with stickers that I can use as I plan and journal in it. One of the stickers that I just put on my goal page says, "Don't Call it a Dream, call it a Plan!" That is how I feel about it! Please let me know if you have any suggestions or if you want to share any of your resolutions for this year! Here is wishing everyone great success in the coming year!
Helen |
Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
April 2024
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