Friday, May 10, 2013

Easy Closet Makeover

When we were first married, we lived with Rob's grandparents in the upstairs of their farmhouse. I think the entire family would agree that one of of the worst features of their house is the lack of an entryway. The door opens right into the "one-butt" kitchen (as its 92 year old owner is fond of saying). There is no room for shoes, coats, or any other item it may be nice to have handy.

So, when we bought our house, I was pretty excited about the mudroom and to not to have to store all outerwear and my shoe collection (quite large because I buy almost all at $10 or less...) in the bedroom closet or somewhere equally inconvenient. I thought it was serving us pretty well until this past fall when I pulled out all our winter gear and started the annual purging/reorganizing. To make things easier, I had the curtains down. I began to realize how they were kind of a nuisance, though, admittedly not as bad as the dumb sliding closet doors I removed the first weekend we were here. (The whole idea of those doors is so silly. Half of the closet is always hidden!) Obviously doors, and curtains, hide messiness though so I needed a plan. With so many different surfaces, I decided it just might work to paint it all black. So I did.

I learned painting with black paint is harder than it seems. Painting closet shelves and rods is hard too. It was definitely worth it though! The collection of old wooden crates helps too of course. :-) I'm pretty much in love with the little tags I created after not being able to find any kind of free printable that was just right.










Thursday, May 2, 2013

One of My Favorite Things

Wow, the days just fly by. I can tell already that the best approach for our new blog is not a weekly post. Maybe it'll go in spurts, although that is against every suggestion on how to run a blog. :-) With the weather finally acting somewhat nicely here in MN, we've been outside. Sorry my pretty little blog.

Now I made time to decompress a little bit...LONG day at school!

It makes me so happy to share with you something I made awhile ago but still love just as much! (Which is good because it took me at LEAST 3 days to make. This will not be the first time I mention how much I love iWorks Pages software. Fancy graphic design, the thrifty way!) It was and still is a wonderful and useful piece of decor in the kitchen. It's a measurement reference chart! We use it at least once per recipe! I decided this should be the next post because I just visited a friend's new house and saw the one I gave her hanging in her beautiful kitchen! That was fun! I will post the PDF (as soon as I figure that out) so you can hang it in your kitchen too!

Have a great night!



(Then go get it laminated at an office supply store with nice, thick film. It'll cost about $2.00)