Tuesday, October 18, 2011

A Little Organization

When life is crazy busy and I feel like I have no time to even pick up the dirty socks on the bathroom floor, it feels great to get a little corner of that crazy life organized. So, yesterday I did a tiny thing - hung up our photo cork board that we had up before we remodeled the kitchen. Months ago I spray painted an old frame white and framed the fabric covered cork board with the intention of hanging it up, but never got around to it. We like to hang Christmas card photos on it each year and I also had baby announcements piling up on the counter and side of the fridge so I got out the hammer and nails and got it done. Beautiful.
My other little bit of organization was inspired by my favorite blog Young House Love with their similar project found here. When I saw this project the other day, I though, "I can do that! And I even have all the supplies already." So tonight I got out the supplies and set to work to organize this corner of the kitchen.
This is the counter that our microwave used to sit on. Now that we have the microwave over the stove this counter is free to become the "dropping zone" for things that come into the house. I hate clutter and therefore hate this counter, so I wanted to try and organize it a little bit more.
So for this project you need the inside of a cabinet door, cork board squares, utility knife, glue, and a ruler. All of which I had on hand. I think I picked up the cork board about 5 years ago at either a thrift store or garage sale. There are 4 thin squares of cork in the package.
I started by measuring the inside of the door, cutting a sheet of cork, and dry fitting it in the opening.
Perfect fit. The other perfect fit was that 2 sheets was exactly the height of the door so I have minimal cutting to do. The cork did come with double stick mounting squares, but when I tried to use them I knew they would not hold up. So I just used hot glue. Yes, that will be a real mess if I ever want to take the cork down, but I don't see that happening.
YEAH! for a great place to pin up coupons, schedules, and recipes I want to try. I love it and it makes me feel a little bit more organized!
I also worked hard at finding a better home for most of the stuff that was collecting on the counter. I know that this will always be the "catch all" place in the house, but it feels good to clean it up for a while. I still don't like the phone charger cords "hanging around." Still looking for a good solution to keeping those under control. Please share it you have a good way to do that.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Projects

We've been pretty busy this Fall! (One reason we haven't blogged much). Here are a few of the projects that we have been working on:

On Sept. 13, Dan's brother Andy and his wife Carol welcomed twin girls into their family. Carol asked me to make dark purple curtains and crib skirts for the girls' room. I used the crib skirt my mom had made for me as a pattern and whipped out two crib skirts in no time! If only all sewing was that easy :) I did not have a pattern for the curtains, but with a few measurement of the window, it was pretty easy too. I excel at sewing straight lines. 


Not the best pictures, but  you get the idea.

When I told Dan that I was going to blog about my sewing, he said I also needed to blog about his welding. Because according to him, it's really the same thing - creating something new from scratch, we just use different materials. And I guess I have to agree :)

Dan has been hard at work building a feed lot at a neighbors farm and part of that feed lot is a crowding tub and chute to work cattle in. He bought steel pipe and built custom gates for the project. A little dirtier and smellier than my sewing, but just as impressive :)

Here is Dan with one of the gates he welded.