Everyone Else Is Doing It!

So you & I should too! No I'm not talking about jumping off a bridge, I'm talking about the Sproost find your style quiz, I saw Katie over at Bower Power had taken it & now John & Sherry at This Young House have done it so I jumped on the bandwagon so to say.

I have to say I tend to agree with this quizzes' results more than others I've taken in the past. Here are my results:





Nantucket Style

Oh how you love the beach! Who doesn't, right? And so your dream home is either perched in your favorite beach town, or you've brought that favorite beach town into your house.

Your art and accessories speak directly to the activities that are found at the beach. Pieces of driftwood you found here, pictures or paintings of the amazing views there. Things that remind you of the coast - surf boards or fishing boats - are found throughout the house.(not so much!) The feeling of the seaside is both abstract and literal in the design of your space. The fabrics are natural, cottons and linens and are light in color and touch. Much of the furniture is wood or wood framed (the lighter the better, think driftwood!) and wicker, when done right, is a must.

And since your true inspiration is the sea, the colors and textures in your home are the same that you would find at your favorite beach: white, light beiges and grays of the sand and driftwood, a variety of blues for the ocean and sky, and greens and vibrant blues of the sea glass� but the key is white! Your space should feel light and airy and give off the mood one has when at the beach: laid back!

Your furniture is comfortable and the layout is cozy. The more it reminds you of actually sitting on the warm sand, the better! And what do you do at the beach? Hang out with family and friends - and your home is just an extension of this play place. And though the space is filled with large white furniture, it somehow manages to feel both durable and casual.

**This pretty much describes the way I want my home to feel and the look I'm going for!**

Day #4 Household Goals

Welcome to the last day of goals week! Hopefully each of you has taken something away from this and maybe even set a goal for yourself! Or maybe even felt more motivated to achieve your previously set goals. I know it's hard to stay motivated all the time but as my husband says "you have to keep your eye on the prize." You can do this in many ways you can put a picture of something you are saving up to buy somewhere where you see it every day, or put a little reminder all over the house of what you are really working toward. Also, always try to encourage yourself and tell the ones you love to encourage you also, because if you know that those around you are wanting you to achieve your goal also you will be more likely to in the end!

So here are my household goals for 2009!

Keep in mind that I am a new wife that comes with a whole new list of wonderful things to achieve!

1. Learn to cook properly: I'm tired of cooking things from a box I want to be able to cook from scratch the way my grandmother does. Now there is nothing wrong with a meal from a box every once in awhile but it is certainly not healthy to have it often. So learning to cook from scratch will help me provide better more healthier meals for my husband and I.

2. Join FLYlady and stick to it: there are so many wonderful things about this program, she is like your own little motivator in your email inbox! Everytime you open it she is there cheering you on and encouraging you to get things done! How great is that?! She's not all about house cleaning anymore she now covers exercise and budgeting also.

3. Decorate my home simply and fugally: as I said in my post below that we are currently saving for a new house sometime in 2011. So I don't need to go out and buy a whole bunch of things that I think look good in our townhome right now, when they might not work for our new home. I tend to decorate in a neutral color pallate so hopefully anything that I do acquire can be carried over into the new house.

4. Create a budget: I think this should have gone on yesterday's post but owell, when we return home J will be deploying almost immediately so we are allotted a certain amount of money each month for certain things like living allowance for housing and subsistance (food)so since it will most likely only be me living in the house I'll only have to feed myself which shouldnt cost an arm and a leg (hopefully)so since we are saving to buy (or build) a new house I don't need to go and spend a lot of money on clothes or household stuff and crash our savings right into the ground like i've seen some women do when their husbands deploy (this is not the way to go ladies) I believe deployments are a great time to save save save! Not only for us National Guard families but for active duty families too! You see NG doesn't make a lot of money all the time, only when they are on active duty do they make a good amount. So we need to save our pennies to use for those times when the money isn't so good. But during deployments NG soldiers are making the same amount as their active duty counterparts. With active duty soldiers they are making a bit more than usual because of family seperation pay and hazardous duty pay. So save it don't blow it!

5. Keep a clean house that is always ready for company: much like I want to keep myself always ready for company or ready to go I want to keep my house in the same situation! No more rushing around to pick up all the crap laying around so my friends can come over for lunch or being embarassed when a friend stops by unexpectedly and there is a huge mess in the kitchen/living room.

Hope everyone has a good and prosperous New Year!

Day 5 & 6 of the Fall Cleaning Challenge

Ok for yesterday we had to clean up our main living area which was hard for me because the boys have a 4 day weekend and all they wanted to do was watch movies and drink their beer and relax & I kept getting in their way and making noise. But it is done. Once again no pictures because it's not pretty and it's already messed up again.

Here is the list from day 5:
Living Areas:
-Wash inside of windows
-Change HVAC filter (don't have one)
-Flip sofa and chair cushions (I just vaccummed them well as they only have one "side)
-Clean and scrub down baseboards and moulding.
-Wax floors if needed (not necessary)
-Shampoo wall to wall carpeting and air-out area rugs(I don't have a shampooer so I just vaccumed really well)

Here is day 6:
Outside

-Wash outside of windows with water and vinegar solution
-Clean screens
-Power wash porch areas
-Clean out grill
-Clean and store outdoor furniture and accessories

It's a good thing I don't have most of this stuff since I got a rush job to do on a map book (it has to be ready to go by Tuesday) and I'll tell you guys more about this later but it is $200 to pad my pockets!

Spotless Bathroom

Here is our latest challenge from Katie over at Hyper Homemaker for her Fall Cleaning Challenge

Finishing up the bathroom

-Throw that shower curtain in the laundry (plastic curtains come out perfectly clean when laundered, just don't put it in the dryer!! Hang it dry)
-Shine and degunk the sink (you know how to do this from the kitchen)
-Scrub all the tile grout (YES you can do this! Magic Eraser, I hear, is a big help)
**If your tile hasn't been sealed in a while, it's worth doing to help you clean it easier.**
-Mop the floor
-Wipe switch plates, doorknobs, and doorjambs
-Empty and disinfect wastebasket

All done, but no picture because even clean once again it's too hideous for pictures!

Medicine Cabinet Revival

Our challenge for yesterday from Katie for the Fall Cleaning Challenge was to clean out the medicine cabinet & organize it.

Well I don't exactly have a medicine cabinet but we use the area under the sink to keep all of our toiletries and personal hygine products and medicines so I cleaned it out and boy did it need it!

Here is the before:

Yikes!

This is during & after organizing it into "his side" "her side" and "our side"


After all of this I still wasnt happy with the results so I ran to the dollar tree and picked up 3 white buckets to put stuff in and keep it from being so all over the place.
So this is the final product:


Not as pretty as some people's but it does it's job!

Nice Clean Kitchen

OK well as you know I have been following Katie's Fall Cleaning Challenge over at her blog Hyper Homemaker and we finished giving our kitchens a good scrub down yesterday so I finally decided I guess it is OK that I can post a few pictures of the finished product.

Now I promise you it isn't pretty but this place is a rental and for what we are paying (and putting in the bank) each month is worth it since we were only going to be here for a little over a year anyways.

OK so are you ready? Sure ya are!


See that little brown cabinet over there, that my friends is my pantry! (Katie & Bryn I win for having the smallest pantry EVER!) Oh and PS: all of this furniture is included in the rental so it's not ours and we had no choice what got put in here but I do have to admit that some of it is nicer than what we have at home!


This is the sink area, like my little checked and watermelon curtain? My mother-in-law made that for us so I just had to hang it.


There is the refrigerator. I worked my butt off cleaning that thing on Saturday (more pictures of that further down!)


And here is the microwave and all my cookbooks (I love them all!)

Finally here is the inside of the refrigerator.


See the boys have a habit of putting a beer in there to get nice and frosty and sometimes (well not all the time) forget about them and they freeze and explode leaving our freezer full of frozen beer and glass shards. Nice huh? So Friday night it happened (again) and I had just had enough! On Saturday morning after they had woken up (both of them) I said no more beers in the freezer and if I catch one in there again and it explodes they will clean it out! So hopefully they will enjoy having a nice clean freezer and refrigerator for their food. Hopefully being the keyword there.





I swear this thing probably hadn't been thoroughly cleaned since way before we moved in. It was disgusting! So as you can see I live in boy town where the fridge is constantly full of beer and pizza. Oh and BTW that amount of beer has since shrank by about 2 six packs!

So I hope you enjoyed this tour of my "loner" kitchen!

Now it's on to the medicine cabinet today!

Let the cleaning begin!

Ok I mentioned yesterday that I was going to start a cleaning challenge with Katie over at Hyper Homemaker. So I got on today to pick up the list and see what I had to do today.

Here it is:
Pantry
- Take everything out of the pantry.
- Wipe down shelves.
- Toss old items and donate unused good items.
- Repackage all messy items into nice containers.
- Place all items back into the pantry in an organized fashion.

Fridge
- Take everything out of the fridge and freezer (placing items in a cooler with all the remaining ice.
- Scrub down the inside and outside of the fridge, shelves, doors, ice maker and freezer.
- Replace water filter if you have one.
- Clean fridge condenser coil.
- Toss old or useless food.
- Place everything back into fridge in an organized fashion.

Cabinets
- Take ALLL your items out of all your cabinets and drawers. Yes... ALL!
- Wipe down the inside of all cabinets and drawers.
- Wipe down the inside of all containers such as utensil holders.
- Store items not used in over 6 months, or summer seasonal items.
- Thinking logically (ie - potholders next to stove, towels next to sink), try to put everything back in a more useful and purposeful place, and in an organized fashion.
- Scrub down the cupboard exteriors, from to of the kitchen to bottom.

Now I'll admit that seemed like a lot to me at first but I did get it all done and I felt a sense of accomplishment. J & our roomate thought I was crazy and kept asking me "what are you doing that for?" obviously men do not understand the importantce of a clean house!

They'll thank me later!

Sad to say but I didn't take any pictures I still haven't worked up enough guts to be proud of this place (it's a trailer for crying out loud its not pretty in the least little bit) *sigh* I'll try and take some tomorrow after I stock the fridge because I got yelled at for taking all the beer out (it's quite full of beer and pizza boxes right now but it's all clean underneath!) It looks quite bare with out all of that in there but it's not pretty! LOL

So how did you do today?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you have a great night of trick-or-treating or partying or what ever you do with your halloween!

Me, well I suppose I'm going to get all gussied up and go out with J. (who doesnt have a costume grrr!) so it's gonna look funny! But maybe we'll go out with a couple of friends or hang out somewhere who knows! It's all up in the air right now!

I'm gonna be a pirate yarg! How about you?

PS: I might be starting a cleaning challenge with Katie over at Hyper Homemaker doing her Fall Cleaning List tomorrow. She encourages us to post pictures of our houses all clean but I'm not so sure I could do that This place is ugly even clean! It would be quite an embarassment to show. Maybe I'll just post about what I complete each day...



Anyone wanna join us?

Meal Planning part Deux

In my pursuit to plan perfect meals for 2-4 people (myself included) every week I work hard on my meal plan every Sunday morning, while trying to at least make one new recipe per week to "broaden my horizons".

Usually I write it down on some little random piece of notebook paper that I find somewhere or a piece of printer paper that I messed up the print on just to "conserve" (like my green effort there?) Most of the time I write both my meal plan and my grocery list down on one piece of paper (once again going with the conserving method) but by the end of my shopping trip the list is all bent torn and marked all over and not something pretty that I want to display on my refridgerator!

So, thanks to Kimberly Michelle I have found the ultimate meal planning/grocery shopping sheet! How awesome is this handy dandy little piece of paper?


Courtesy of Russell & Hazel

Not only does it have a slot for every day of the week, but a slot for every meal of every day! Very nice! Also, my favorite part is the "detachable" grocery list that is seperated into categories. Oh my organizational mind is going bananas over this little beauty!

Because everything is coming up roses

While I was home a couple of weeks ago I attempted to make my trial bouquet to see if I could do it. I wanted to make sure it was fairly simple and quick since I was pretty sure I wanted to do the flowers myself for the wedding.

Well I'm here to tell ya ladies. If I can make something that looks this pretty outta walmart flowers then a monkey could do it!

I followed the directions from this site.

What you will need is
25-30 long stemmed roses in the color of your choice (you can use more depending on the size of bouquet you are going for)
Some gardening gloves
Floral Wire
Floral Tape (I used both to give it extra hold)
3-4 yards of pretty ribbon of your choice
And maybe a pretty pin or brooch?


I just grabbed a couple of dozen roses from walmart and stripped them of all their leaves and thorns cut the stems and grabbed a rose and started putting them together. All in all it was easy and I think that even if you are already married this is something nice to know because you can create regular floral arrangements for your home in this manner also. It's easy to find ideas and tutorials on floral arranging on the web. Just Google it.

So here is what I came up with....
















Not bad for a first time armature huh?

There are a couple of things that will be different. I will have all white roses and a much wider white satin ribbon for the wrap (I used what I had on hand) and I am in the works of trying to find a pretty brooch to put on it to give it some "bling"

My mother still insists on me having a florist do it for me but I'm not willing to pay $500-$600 to have someone do something that I can do myself. She said she's worried about the time constraints but you know what it took me less than 30 minutes to do that, and the part that took the longest was stripping all 24 roses. Plus, I'll have all 4 of my bridesmaids and my mom there to help me! We should have all the floral arrangements done in less than 3 hours! We'll do it while pigging out on junk food and watching sappy wedding movies!

After the wedding I plan to give you guys a full budget break down of our wedding costs. So then you can see how much it would save you by doing it DIY.

Beautiful & Clean Rooms

So today while I was taking a break (procrastinating) finishing school work I made two things. I've been thinking a lot about what to do with our extra bedroom at our home after my roommate moves out in May of next year. I've been talking with J. about it and he said we should just turn it into a guest room/office so I made up an ever so popular mood board for the room today.

I wanted to go for a cozy and comfortable space using neutral colors and greens and browns. So here is what I came up with...



Then I also made a cleaning schedule to help me keep the house always looking presentable because I have someone over nearly every day and I dont want to have to work so hard to get the house clean after I invite someone so here it is....click to enlarge.



I hope everyone has a good weekend! I'm off to have some German food! Yumm!

A great start to the day

OK, I don't know about many of you but there is something about getting up in the morning and going into my kitchen for my breakfast and looking in the sink and it being empty. To know that I don't have to rush to do the dishes before having a meal just really makes me happy and makes my day a whole lot better.


Another thing that really makes me happy in the morning is getting up and making my bed. I love getting into a freshly made bed after a long day. It's just comforting to me; and it feels different.


How about you? Is there anything that really gets your day off to a great start? Something you do in the morning that just makes your day smoother and leaves you in a better mood?