A Taste of Fall

I LOVE this time of year! And yes, I did use every possible way to make "love" stand out in that sentence! Fall is my favorite. Not just because my birthday is in September (this weekend, actually!) as is hubby's, but also because I love cooler weather, pumpkins, apples (and cider. Oh, apple cider!), cooler weather, crunchy leaves, fall holidays, cooler weather... oh, I mentioned cooler weather already? :)

I also love fall decorating. I start putting things out September 1st. I know, technically not fall yet. But I don't care! I put out plain old orange, red, and yellow fall things for September, then add in some Halloween in October, then put the Halloween away and bring out a little Thanksgiving in November. It's the season that just keeps giving!

So here's a little taste of fall around our house. It's different every year, because I get most of my decor from things that my mom grows in her garden. This year, there were not as many pumpkins (sad!), but tons of little indian corn.

Outside and the porch:

I had all the things below split up between this cabinet and the patio table, but the dog learned how to jump on the table and thought pumpkins sounded like a yummy treat :)

Here's the kitchen:

And some from the living room:



So there's some fall fun at our house. Hope you're enjoying fall this year, too!

More Thrifty Organizing

To continue my organizing kick, I picked up this pretty, vintage dish rack at the antique store for, I believe, $2.50!

I just love how it curves on the right side! So retro! I was inspired by this great idea on Pinterest:

Source: cozylittlehouse.com via Abbey on Pinterest

Such a smart idea! I used Mod Podge to cover some folders with scrapbook paper, and spray painted the dish rack with some paint I had on hand.

Of course, these can be used for anything, but I use them to organize my newest hobby: coupons! Yep, I'm one of those people now. Really though, I'm not going to be extreme couponing or anything, but I'm hoping to save our family a little money, since I'm not working currently. So now my hobby is organized! I found a spot for it in the kitchen island so it's close when I need to get coupons out or put them away. It's fun, pretty, and organized, all my favorite things!

Organized Bathroom: Check!

In the midst of the chaos that is our house right now, I've been on a serious organizing kick. Whose idea was it to remodel 3 rooms at once, anyway? Oh yeah. I guess I shouldn't answer that. But there's just something about living in a constant mess that makes me want to control and organize some part of our home. Earlier I shared my most recent Pinterest obession, organized cabinets. Here's my version, in our bathroom.

I've seen these berry baskets at antique stores all over the place, and I love them, but didn't know what to do with them. So I finally picked some up, 10 for $5! They're so vintage and cottage-y! I'll be showing you the plan for the dish rack later on.

And I apoligize, I'm terrible at getting "before" pictures. I just get so excited to start that I jump in without taking the time! But imagine that this cabinet was previously filled with piles of stuff that I tried to organize, but never quite managed. And half of it wasn't even in the cabinet yet, because it came out of the old medicine cabinet. Here's what some little baskets and some paint can do:

And I added some little labels, because, well, I can't seem to help myself!

I'm beyond thrilled that I got what was in the cabinet, plus everything from the medicine cabinet in there, and there's still room on the top shelf! I got some wire baskets from Dollar Tree to corral all those bags on the top, but I didn't get a picture of it.

So there you have it! A project for those cute, super affordable berry baskets! Next time I'll show you another Pinterest-inspired organization project with that dish rack from earlier.

Some Pinterest-Style Organization

Am I addicted to Pinterest? Of course not! I doubt it. Uh, maybe sometimes. Ok, probably. But really, where else am I going to find ideas for all of those super cheap, cute, random things I see at the antique store and think "gee, I love that, but what could I do with it?" Really, it saves me money because I find tons of ways to repurpose cheap old things, or things I already have. Or that's what I tell hubby, anyway!

But to get to the point, I love organizing. Like, I could put every single little thing in our house in a container and label it and be madly in love with the whole thing. Containers and things in neat rows just make me happy. I've been on a kick recently with putting things that are already in a cabinet inside containers so the cabinet looks neater. Maybe useless to some people, but delightful to me! And here's my Pinterest inspiration for this trend:

Source: thehouseofsmiths.com via Abbey on Pinterest

Um, seriously, I could die from how gorgeous this is. Just. Die.

Source: bhg.com via Abbey on Pinterest

Source: thediyshowoff.blogspot.com via Abbey on Pinterest

Source: greenwellies.tumblr.com via Abbey on Pinterest

Yes, yes please let that be in my kitchen :)

Source: dengodefeen.blogspot.com via Abbey on Pinterest

Aren't those lovely?! I've been inspired to tidy up my own cabinets, particularly the kitchen pantry and the built-in bathroom cabinet. I usually just throw things in those cabinets and it starts to get to me after awhile. So, in honor of my new inspiration, this week I'll be posting about two organization projects that I've recently completed and love. I hope you'll find some inspiration, too!

A Weekend Project

I tend to get the project urge on Sunday afternoons. Am I the only one who gets that now and then? I'm not sure what it is about that day, but after church and lunch are done and the kitchen is cleaned up, I must get a burst of energy or something. The urge to create is uncontrollable! So, a couple weeks ago, I was hunting for a project. Now, I'm trying super hard to keep my projects on a strict budget (read: free), so I searched the house up and down for something I could throw together. Here's what I found:

I know, it's a terrible picture. This is an old kid's chalkboard. When I found it at an antique store, it didn't have the back part of the frame, just the front. So it didn't stand up on it's own. But it was in good shape, and for $5, I loved it!

I actually bought it for our wedding. Hubby built the back part of the frame and attached it so it would stand up and we painted it white. Here's what it looked like in the lobby at our reception:

My dear sister-in-law wrote out the schedule the night before the wedding at probably midnight. And it was a morning wedding (I got my hair done at the church at 6am!), so I was very thankful for the bridesmaid and family members who helped me with last second stuff so late!

But anyway, since the wedding, the chalkboard had just been sitting in the finished but nasty and unused basement and I'd write on it every once in awhile, but mostly it wasn't used for much. But a Sunday afternoon, some scrapbook paper, hot glue, and twine turned it into this:

Now it's a cute memo board, complete with pictures of my adorable nephew! I have it in my laundry room, which I'm working on sprucing up a little until we get around to finishing the walls and making it a real room. Makes me smile every time I walk in!

A "Duh" Moment

Do you ever have one of those moments? You know, the ones where you suddenly look at something in your house and go oh, that is perfect for {insert project here}? And you've been wanting to do {previously mentioned project} forever? No? I'm the only one? Ok then :)

Well, I've been dying to have an island in our kitchen from the very beginning. It's a great kitchen with lots of floor space, but not a lot of counter space, so it's pretty ideal for an island. Of course, with all the other projects we have going on, buying something to use as an island isn't high on the priority list.

When my husband moved into this house, the family of the older couple who owned it before us had left a few little things around. A cheap bedside table. A nasty old lamp. An ancient vacuum that didn't really work. And in the laundry room, a cute little metal cabinet. Now, there's tons of storage in the laundry room, so I wasn't really using this little guy:

It needs an update bad, although it doesn't look too bad from this far away. But it just wasn't doing much good, until I had that lovely "duh" moment and realized it's pretty close to perfect for a kitchen island, at least for now! So I convinced hubby to bring it up an incredibly steep, uneven staircase the stairs into the kitchen. He's so sweet and helpful.

So much more useful now! I love having it here. I think we may paint it....RED! I'm so excited about that part. Someday when it's painted red and I get my white cabinets, it will all look stunning :)

Menu Planning Project

I'm so thankful that after weeks of ridiculous heat, today is just beautiful! I was even chilly last night when I took the dog outside before bed! Wonderful!

So I'm going to share a project with you that I've been excited about for awhile, but it took some time to finish and I'm just now ready to write about it. The hardest thing for me to learn when we got married and I suddenly had to cook for two every day was how to pick what we would eat each day. I didn't want to choose something hubby didn't feel like having, and most of the time I can't decide what I feel like eating. It was a huge stress for me. And at first, I didn't have many recipes to choose from, which didn't help. But now that I've built up a good selection of meals I know we both like and that fit in our budget, I wanted to work on not waiting until 5:00 to choose what to make (and then usually end up making hubby choose anyway!).

I saw this on Pinterest and was totally inspired by it:

Source: bhg.com via Abbey on Pinterest

This is right up my alley, with colors and categories and everything in one spot. I'd been wanting a new dry erase calendar anyway, and most of them now are also magnetic, so it was perfect! This idea is from BHG, and you can download the printable labels free, so check it out!

Of course, I wanted my own color scheme, because I'm crazy like that, so I made my own up real quick, and I typed out most of our meals into them in a font I love. I also printed out some blank ones because I knew I was missing some meals, and I'm glad I did. I've already filled in all the extras!

Anyway, I just printed these out on regular paper, then glued the paper onto a magnetic sheet. Then I just cut out each label. It really didn't take long at all! The next part did, though. I wanted to keep mine in something, rather than on another board like in the picture. And I wanted to make it easier to make out my grocery list while I was at it. Seriously, making that list takes me hours! After some thought, I realized the perfect container would be an old recipe box that I never use. Anymore, I print or write out recipes and keep them in a ring binder so I can just flip through them.

I have no idea where I picked this thing up, but I've always just kept it full of blank recipe cards and little recipes I've cut out of magazines and never used. So, some craft paint gave it a nice update, and the useless recipes got cleaned out. I took the recipe cards and wrote down just the ingredients for each meal we use, except obvious things like hamburgers or chicken nuggets. I know what we need for that. Then I glued a little plastic baggie on the back of each card to hold the magnet that goes with it. There's probably a much better way to do that, but I had little baggies and just wanted to get it done :) For the meals that don't have a recipe card, I just took an extra card and glued a couple little baggies on it to hold all of those magnets.

There's the back, and then the front has the list of ingredients and the name of the cookbook and page number so I can find it to make the meal!

And here's the box with the cards and magnets:

I really can hardly do a project without chalkboard paint these days! Please ignore how messy that paint is, I really need to go back over it! I might also get some ribbon to glue on it or something. It just doesn't look quite finished...

So every two weeks when I make out my grocery list, I just have to look through the cards and magnets and pick my meals, write down the ingredients, and shop! Then the magnets go on my new calendar so we have an idea of what dinner will be each night. I didn't do side dishes like the BHG version because I didn't want that many magnets on the calendar, but it isn't a bad idea.

In these pictures you only see a couple days lined up, but usually I do it for two weeks at a time, since that's how often I shop. This week the whole process went so much faster, and it's really been less stress for me!

Along with this, we're doing a complete bathroom remodel, just short of breaking out walls. We're getting so close to being done! I thought I'd leave you with a tantalizing look at what we've been doing....

Why yes, that is a giant hole in the wall straight through to the spare room thanks to pulling out this monstrosity and the lack of wallboard in the other room:

 



Can't wait to show you all the amazing finished product! We're so close!



I'm linking this up over at Remodelaholic! Check out the other great projects over there!