Quickie

What a week! We have been insanely busy at work (which is a good thing), and there's been a lot going on in my family, as well. Some good, some bad. My husband's grandma has been moved to a rehab facility, which is good because it means she's improving. She'll get therapy twice a day and hopefully will be coming home in 4-6 weeks. She's got a long road ahead of her, though, so she still needs prayers.

My uncle was diagnosed with cancer last year and has been very sick ever since. He started to get better, and actually got a positive report from his doctor just a couple of weeks ago, but he wound up back in the hospital last weekend, and he's gone downhill very fast. I think the doctors said today there's nothing else they can do. Its pretty sad. :(

On a happier note, my cousins had their baby boy yesterday! I went to meet him today and he is gorgeous. The only bad thing about that is it doesn't help the baby fever I already have....hahaha!

I have so many posts floating around in my mind, but no time to sit down and type them up! I'm not even gonna tell myself it'll happen this weekend, because I know the next 2 days will be crazy. Well, tonight, too. Tonight, C and I are going to a party. This one is Initials, Inc. I've never heard of this company, but from what I can see its a lot like Thirty-One. It'll be hard to sway me from Thirty-One! We always have a great time at my friend's parties, though, so I'm looking forward to it. Tomorrow, DH and I are going to a wedding - sans child! He said it'll be our date night. Not quite what I had in mind, but I'll take it. The wedding is at 4 and the reception is at a country club, so it should be nice. I've got a hot little number I'm wearin and I can't wait! (I love to dress up, haha.) And then Sunday we'll be at a baby shower. DH's cousin is due in a few months. I'm looking forward to that, but once again, all those teeny tiny baby things will be terrible for my baby fever! ( ;

One last thing: today I learned how to make a hair bow! Well, almost. This is somethin I've been wanting to do for a while, but never took the time to learn or even get the materials. I'm slightly obsessed with hair bows (for C, not me!), and they can be expensive. I found a great tutorial online the other night and it was so simple. I can't wait to perfect my technique and make a ton of more bows!

Not bad for my first try, huh? I was pretty pleased with it! Its not quite finished, though. Right now its just the bow, no hair clip. My friend is giving me some alligator clips tonight at the party (she used to make hair bows but doesn't anymore), so I'll have to finish this little project later.

Once I attach the bow to the clip, I'll post more pictures and a tutorial (along with the link for the one I followed). I'm so excited! (And how sad is it that hair bows excite me?!)

A Quick Kitchen Project

For a while now I've been looking for a good solution to a problem we have in our kitchen - how to corral all the loose papers, mail, magazines, and newspapers. Since we got married and moved into our house 4 years ago, we've just dumped all the mail on a corner of the island, like this:

I actually took this picture on a day when we didn't have many papers stacked up. This stack is usually several inches high - no lie. DH is good about taking the bills to his desk in the office,  but everything else has always just camped out in this spot for weeks or months. Every once in a while, DH and I would go through all the papers and end up throwing most of it away. Coupons end up in that pile, and by the time we find them again, the coupons are expired. One of us will print off a recipe at work and bring it home, where it will go into the island pile and be lost for a while. I don't know why this spot has been so hard for us to keep organized.

I asked DH a few weeks ago if I could get a mail organizer to hang on the side of the island. He said no, because he didn't want to drill holes into the island. I understand that. The island is an antique and DH worked very hard to add that bead board to the sides! (I should have told him we could use Command strips but for some reason I didn't think about that at the time.) DH likes to keep some mail in the kitchen because he likes to look through it and read a magazine or a newspaper while he eats breakfast every morning (he has to get up much earlier than I do). So I knew we wouldn't be able to just say no more mail in the kitchen. I needed a solution.

Enter the Thirty-One Hang Up Family Organizer!! At a Thirty-One party a while back, these were on special. If you spent so much money ($31 I believe), you could get one for 1/2 off. So for $12.50, I figured why not? If I didn't like it in the kitchen, I figured I could find another use for it somewhere in the house. It finally came in last week, and Friday I bought some Command hooks to hang it on (didn't want to be puttin any holes in the walls just in case!).

Ain't it precious? ( :  I kinda wish I had gotten it monogrammed at the top, but oh well. I hung it in an out of the way spot in the kitchen. This little space is kind of a hallway that leads to the laundry room. You can see it from the table, but you can't see it when you walk into the kitchen. (DH is not crazy about it being "so far away" from the island, but I figure he'll learn to live with it eventually!) I thought about hanging it on the pantry door, but wasn't sure I'd enjoy seeing something so office-like in the middle of my kitchen. Though it may end up there, who knows.

Just a slightly different angle. Here you can see my meal planning area, too. Its just a simple dry-erase sticker-thingy. I never use the blank one on the bottom, so I really need to just take it down. (And I'm not 100% thrilled with this method of meal planning, but until I figure out a method I love, this'll have to do.) I was pretty excited when the hang up organizer fit perfectly on that wall. Its like it was meant to be. ( :

And there she is all filled up! We didn't have any bills on Friday, just some magazines and newspapers. I plan on using one of the top pockets for bills, though it might just be easier to go ahead and walk those to DH's desk in the office... I did end up putting some pens and notepads in the very top pocket, for grocery lists and stuff.

This is where those pen and notepads used to live (along with a bunch of other mess):

Woah. I forgot to take an "after" picture, but the microwave looks much better now, trust me.

The only thing I'm not crazy about with the organizer is that the pockets are super deep. This is perfect for storing magazines and newspapers, but smaller things get lost in there. I have to come up with a solution for that if we end up storing smaller papers in it. For now, I am just tickled that we got the corner of our island back! (Again, I forgot to take an "after" picture, but its really not that exciting - just a bare countertop.)

Who knows if this new system will work for us. I may decide next week that its not working and try something else. Thankfully, I've learned to not be stubborn about my ideas when they don't work. And I already have an idea for using the organizer in C's closet if it doesn't stay in the kitchen...!

I like quick projects. I'm not really a DIYer cause let's face it, most of those DIY projects take forever to finish. If I can't do it in less than 30 minutes, I'm probably not gonna do it. I like fast results. I don't like to prime something, wait half a day, paint it, wait another day, paint it again....you get the idea. I've done plenty of big projects (hello, both bathrooms in my house), but I have to really discipline myself to get through it. This little project took me about 5 minutes after work Friday. That's my kinda project!!


Looking at the microwave reminds me of the next project I want to tackle: creating a recipe binder. If you look closely in the picture above, you can see a manila folder stuffed full of papers. Those are all recipes that DH and I have collected over the years. No organization whatsoever. Some of them we've tried and some of them we haven't. Whenever we need a recipe that we know is in there, it takes forever to sort through that huge stack to find it. So I want to organize them all in a binder, separated by category (like desserts, main dishes, etc.), and even maybe have a section for recipes we haven't tried yet. This will be a super simple project to complete, I just have to make myself take the time to do it!

High 5 for Friday!

Seems like the only time I am able to blog is Fridays! But that's alright. ( :

I've had a pretty good week. I've been extremely tired since my child has not been sleeping well (except for that blessed Wednesday night, when she slept all night long in her crib!!), and I've been staying up way too late. I am determined to start going to bed earlier, though! 12:30-1am is way too late for this workin mama.

 So, without further ado, here's my 5 highlights of the week!

1. Sunday night we went to the local Olive Garden for my niece's 18th birthday party. It was my first time at that location (they just opened last summer) and I was really looking forward to it. Turned out, I wasn't all that impressed with the food. Olive Garden is one of my favorite places to eat, so I was pretty bummed this one didn't live up to my expectations. But the fun time with my family more than made up for the food! We had a great time. I don't get to hang out with my sister and her kids that often, so it was nice to get that opportunity. And of course, C kept us all entertained!

2. Last Saturday, I rode my horse Wiley. I'm trying to ride every weekend now. I just feel so much better when I get to ride. Wiley did pretty well. I didn't have high hopes since the last time I rode him he laid down....yes, he literally laid down on the ground while I was on him! Luckily I was able to get off before he crushed my leg, but woah. Kinda scary. Crazy pony. Anyway, Saturday he was good. We had some discussions when I asked for the canter, but I was prepared for that since we haven't cantered in a really long time. Like over 2 years. (Long story.) In the end, I won (of course) and he gave me a nice little canter, both directions.

 

3. Last night, C and I went to a Thirty-One party at my friend's house. We had so much fun! Thirty-One is kinda a big deal here in the south - not sure if that's the case all over the country. They have all kinds of cute bags, totes, purses, baskets, etc. in really pretty prints, plus everything is monogrammable! Monogramming is another big deal here in the south. We like our initials on everything. I haven't really jumped on that bandwagon so much, though I do appreciate a nice monogram. I have a Thirty-One skirt purse and one of the skirts has my initials on it. (By the way, the skirt purse is the absolute BEST purse I have ever had - seriously! Its the perfect size, very comfortable on my shoulder, and I love that I can change the look in about 15 seconds, without having to move all my junk.) Last night, I ordered another skirt for my purse, a cute scarf to use as decoration on my purse (I know, I know, its another southern thing), and a camera strap in a really fun print. I also qualified for one of their new products at 1/2 off, so I got a hang-up family organizer. I can't wait to it to come in and I can put it to use! 

4. The Premonition series by Amy Bartol. Love love love!! I'm a huge bookworm, even more so since I got my Kindle. I can't remember how I stumbled across this gem of a series, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. I think the series is geared toward a younger than me audience, but I don't care. I am also obsessed with the Twilight series, so there ya go. ( :  (Oh, and I loved the Hunger Games series, as well, though not as much.) The Premonition series starts off with Evie, a college freshman looking to make a new start. In time she discovers she's half angel, and other angels - both fallen and divine - are out to get her. Of course, she gets a love interest (two actually - an angel and a human) and makes some great friends. They all go through some intense events together, which I won't talk about because it'll ruin the book for you! I was hooked from the first page of book 1. I just finished book 2 this week (which is why I have been staying up way too late - its hard to put down!!), and I purchased book 3 yesterday. Though I need to read my book for the women's church group first (more on that at another time). For some reason, the books are super cheap on Amazon - like $3.99 or so each. I can totally see this series becoming a movie series, and if that happens I will be all over it, haha.

this was from 2008 - I used this pic as my entry for the RTF competition

5. Finally, an important part of this week for me was the Rock the Frock competition. Just Becca Photography hosts this competition every year. Its for any woman who can still fit into her wedding dress (whether she's still married or not). Its basically a chance for you to wear your wedding dress again! Since I am still in love with my wedding dress, I am all for anything that lets me put it on again. The contestants campaign for votes (which is done online and is free), and the three women with the most votes become the finalists. Those three get a free photo session in their wedding dress. You can do anything you want in your session. Some girls have done a trash the dress session before, some stick with more traditional stuff, really whatever you can dream up Becca can make happen. My dream was to get a picture of me galloping in a field on my horse. I did use Sunshine in my bridal portraits, and I did sit on her, but we were all so worried that I'd ruin my dress that I couldn't relax and get exactly what I wanted (though I was very pleased with my pictures, and still love them). Anyway, after the three photo sessions, a panel of judges will select the winner, who gets to appear on the cover of Down Home Magazine, which is a local magazine. There's a story on each of the finalists inside the magazine, but the main focus is on the overall winner. The winner also receives other smaller prizes.

I entered Rock the Frock last year and did pretty well. I don't know what place I ended up in, but until the last day I was staying in the top 5. My cousin ended up winning last year and her pictures were absolutely breathtaking. This year I decided to try again. Next year I might not fit into my dress, who knows! Well, the contest started at 6pm last Friday and ended at midnight Monday. I campaigned hard! I was so overwhelmed by the amount of support I had. People for campaigning for me and every day someone had a facebook status about me. It was so heartwarming. I stayed consistently in the top 5 every day (Becca did updates twice a day). Unfortunately, I didn't win. I finished FOURTH! So close! I couldn't even be upset though, because of all the nice things people were saying about me. I updated my facebook status to show my appreciation for everyone's support, and people were commenting on how I was the winner in their eyes and all this nice stuff. Almost brought tears to my eyes, and I am not a crier!

What was really amazing happened the next day. Becca e-mailed me and said that someone contacted her and said that I really deserved to win the competition, so they were paying for me to have my own Rock the Frock session! I was shocked and so grateful. It was my best friend and her husband, who live in England right now (he's in the air force). I couldn't believe someone would want to do that for me. I'm still kinda in shock about it. So, sometime soon I'll have a photo session in my wedding dress! I'll get my dream of having my picture taken in my dress on my horse. I am SO excited!!


So that's my exciting week in a nutshell. I am linking up with Lauren at from my grey desk blog. Welcome to any new readers that come over from Lauren's! ( :