Chevron, take two

Hey everybody! Happy Thanksgiving week! I won’t be posting much this week, and today’s post is short and sweet. I’m taking most of the week off and hope you’ll get plenty of family and rest time in too!

So here it is – my second attempt at chevron. If you remember I tried it a few months ago with my chevron Frogtape:

WELL. Funny story. When I was cleaning out the garage a couple weeks ago I realized I used the WRONG chevron tape. I work with Frogtape and they sent me their new shape tape before it even came out in the stores. This one must have been an early prototype that they didn’t use.

I grabbed this one off the shelf and didn’t even realize it was different from the others. The actual chevron Frogtape is actually much more chevron-y and less Charlie Brown-y.

I laughed out loud when I realized what I had done. Leave it to me. So last week I decided to do another little redo to that trash can.

I spray primed it and then spray painted it white…again. :) Then I played around with the tape to figure out the design I wanted. I was originally planning a thin line of chevron around the top and bottom but decided on a slightly different design instead:

I just offset the second line a bit to make it not exactly chevron.

I rubbed some gold rub n buff in between the tape and that was it!:

I decided simpler was better. :) Much better. This I love!

Their shape tape comes in three different designs – chevron, scallop and wave. (I showed you how I used the scallop design here.) As you can see you don’t have to use them as they come -- play around with them a bit to make your own look!

Want to try them out yourself? (You can see the designs here.) Leave a comment here this week and let me know which one you’d like to try! We’ll give away three of each design. I’ll announce the winner next week!

P.S. My friend Marty at A Stroll Thru Life has a lovely blog and highlighted me last week – go here to check it out!

Put a wheel on it

Hey there! I’m back today with a super easy update that I seem to like…a lot. I started thinking about all the times I’ve made this little change to an item and they added up fast.

I think it’s a fun detail that also adds some functionality to a piece you already have. If it needs a little something -- just do what I do…put a wheel on it. ;)

These small castors are so cheap at the hardware store – I think two or three bucks for two of them. If that? You can get the plastic ones for even cheaper.

I added them to a little shelf I found at Goodwill years ago:

It’s easy to wheel it around wherever and they add a bit of height to something that may be too short otherwise.

I got an inexpensive ottoman for our basement last year that was super functional (there’s storage space inside):

But I wanted to be able to move it out of the way easily, so I picked up four of the slightly larger castors and screwed them into the bottom:

I love the copper color on those. :) They come in this copper color and brass. I think silver too?

Awhile back I added them to the coffee table in the family room so we could push it around if needed:

Still can’t believe the difference a new rug made in there. ;)

I’ve been thinking about adding them to my next victim for awhile. A couple years ago I made over a clearanced caddy for the kiddo’s markers and crayons in my office:

I wanted to add wheels to this too, but it was really deep underneath (the bottom wasn’t flush), so I didn’t do it back then because I’d have to add some wood to make them work. (I thought the wheels would have looked awkward because they would be so deep underneath there.)

Well, my wheel obsession continues and I decided to make the little update to this finally. The bonus was that I found four wheels in the garage clean out, so it didn’t cost me anything!

I emptied it out (this also gave me a good reason to go through the markers that seem to multiply) and measured the length I needed for the scrap wood:

See how deep that is? That’s why I wanted to make it more flush on the bottom. And yes, there’s a cat in there. There’s always a cat.

See the paws?

He likes to “help.”

So anyway, I cut down the wood and just used wood glue to secure it to the bottom:

I could have used a nail gun but I didn’t feel like dragging it out and I didn’t want to risk the nails to come up through the bottom of the caddy. I couldn't tell how thick that bottom shelf was.

Not helping:

And yes, there were a lot of markers in there.

Here’s the little castors I used:

They have more of an antique brass finish. Love it.

You’ll want to make sure the spacing is fairly equal when you install – I just eyeballed them:

And that’s it! You just want to make sure you have some kind of wood for them to screw in to. If there’s not you can always add some scrap like I did to make it more secure:

If you don’t have to mess with adding wood or anything it should only take you ten minutes or so to install the wheels. Or 30 if you have a cat helping.

There are also locking castors so you can secure something you don’t want floating around the place. :)

Now we can easily roll the caddy around my office:

Or take it all the way to the kitchen table for projects. This thing is heavy so being able to wheel it around is helpful.

Cute eh? I think it’s a fun little detail. I’m always looking for ways to make store-bought pieces more unique and this does it. Do you ever do this in your home? It’s such an easy and cheap project!

P.S. If a wheel doesn’t work you could always put a bird on it.

Taming the paper clutter beast

So…there’s one thing that’s an ongoing struggle for me in this house. Every year I go through a decluttering process and try to figure out a better way to make things work in our home. And I think it’s normal that it’s an on going process – maybe?

I’ve mentioned a few times that after nine years in our home, I feel like I’m finally finding a spot for everything…slow but sure. Even with that there will always be stuff to purge. ;)

But for years I’ve tried to figure out the solution to my biggest nemesis, and that’s the paper. I’ve blogged about it numerous times and every time I think that solution is the one that’s going to work for me. And little by little it does help – but it’s never a perfect fix.

Here’s the thing – the older I get the more I know what processes I’m going to stick with. When it comes to the paper clutter, a perfectly organized routine is not one of them. And the older I get, the more I’m OK with that. ;)

If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a million times – the key to keeping the paper under control is touching it once. Getting it out of the mailbox or the back pack or the purse and dealing with it immediately. But it’s just not in my DNA. I mean, really. It’s just. not.

Now that the Bub is in school it brings the paper insanity to a whole new level – and even though my process is never going to be a perfect one, it’s mine and I own it. For me that means I have piles and I have hiding spaces (for the paper, not me) and I procrastinate. But I have learned some things along the way that I know will help some of you who have the same struggle.

Step 1. Stop it from coming in.

This is KEY for me. Muy importante! The biggie, in my opinion, is to cut down on what even comes in your mailbox. A few minutes on the computer will help quite a bit. First off – you know all those monthly bills for things like the mortgage, the utilities, the bills? Most of them would rather not send you something in the mail, honestly. It saves them money and makes things easier for you if they can email it. So mark that little box on your bill that says “stop sending me paper statements.”

Of course this one comes with the added stress of remembering eleventy billion usernames and passwords, but I can only fight so many battles. ;)

Another big one for me is cutting down on the catalogs we get in the mail. I mentioned this one years ago, but it’s worth telling you about again. The site I use is Catalog Choice – you sign up and then can search hundreds of catalog titles to unsubscribe. You can also do this by calling the company directly, but this is a much more time efficient way to do it, especially if you have more than one.

Yesterday I updated ours again – this time unsubscribing from American Girl (uhhh…I have a six-year-old boy) and Restoration Hardware (have you SEEN their catalogs? A bit crazy – they are SO thick, like a phone book!) I feel like I may have saved a tree with that one. ;)

And along the same note – you can opt out of receiving unsolicited mail (like credit card offers) by going to this site. It will take you to another site where you’ll have to enter some personal info in order to do so. We did this years ago and it helped a ton but we need to do it again.

Step 2. Find a spot.

So this is where I struggle. I don’t have a perfect spot to put all the incoming paper every day. It ends up on the island and on my desk, and that used to drive me crazy. Well…the island part still does. ;) But I’ve come to terms with the fact that having a small (key word) pile on the side of my desk is just fine…for me. Once I hide things away I tend to forget to deal with them.

I have a box on the dresser in my office where I keep a pretty storage box, and honestly I think I may just get rid of it. I’m learning the more places I have to put the paper the less I deal with it:

HELLO. That’s a big thing for me – I think I just had a break through. :) I used to have about five places to put the paper before I actually filed it away. I’m getting closer to that whole “touch things once” mantra and have it down to maybe two or three. ;)

Now if the pile is on the island I move it to the desk. If it’s in my car I move it to the desk. I just focus on keeping that pile under control. Once I’ve gone through it, it goes into one of two spots in my little hanging file folder I showed you here:

Our big file cabinet is down in hubby’s office, so when the folder gets full I know it’s time to take a trip down. (Which is every few weeks.)

Step 3. Decide what to keep.

For years I kept a shredder by the mud room door from the garage and decided I would take care of junk mail before I even walked in the door. Well, when 90 percent of the mail coming in is stuff that needs to be shredded, that meant I was standing there for a few minutes, feeding everything in. (I shred anything with our name and address on it, even the back page of catalogs.)

Well, I got things to DO people. It wasn’t working. Then I would let the piles and papers add up and this would happen:

OK, well that time it was a little extreme, buy you get the idea. Ain’t nobody got time. For that.

So now I use a small recycling bin and fill it up and once every few months I spend $10 and take it to a local shredding place. It’s SO much easier, for me anyway. The ten bucks is so worth it – they take care of it and I know it’s secure and done and I only have to deal with it a few times a year.

And then of course there’s figuring out where the paper you’re going to keep will stay. Like I said we file most everything away in our file cabinet, and most household bills and statements we keep for a year. Anything tax related we keep pretty much forever.

Things like the Bub’s school stuff, magazine tear outs, blog stuff – it all goes into binders I keep in my office, just so they’re within reach and easy to access:

It’s helpful to have it right there when I need it – especially stuff for the kiddo.

My process has changed over the years and I’ve given up on it being a perfect one. I will always have piles of paper – it’s IN MY SOUL. I told you, I’m a piler. I guess the biggest point here is that someone else’s method may be pretty and organized, but you gotta do what works best for you. (Small) piles…they work for me. As long as I can stuff them in a drawer when company comes over. ;)

Do you have a method that works for you? Does it involve piles? Have you just come to terms with that like me? (It’s OK to pile, I swear.)

Within reach (organizing the paper)

Hey hey! Thanks for all the love on my blue buffet in the foyer yesterday! If you try out the color send me a pic of what you do! ;)

I told you last week that I’m on a mission to get clutter control around here – one little project at a time. Today I’m sharing a little purchase that has already helped me a ton. We’ll see if I can keep it up. :)

Anyone remember that post about the PAPER and how I had come up with an idea to keep it contained and organized in my house? Well, that’s SOOOO not happening anymore. It was a nice few months. I am a piler, I’m embracing my piling and I’m proud of it!!

OK, not proud at all.

The paper is really my biggest clutter foe in our house. It’s mostly contained downstairs, usually in the kitchen and the office. OH, and the CAR. Oh. The car.

I’ve tried a few different methods and I finally succumbed to the fact that I just suck at organizing the paper that comes into our house. I know, I’ve heard the whole ‘touch it once thing’ -- I tried that for a few days and then laughed and laughed because it just wasn’t happening.

Anyway, it ends up in piles like these in my office:

 

That whole box is full by the way – that’s why there’s a stack on top, duh.  ;)

And then there’s the desk pile:

Honestly? That pile is not usually a pile. Usually it’s just spread out over the desk. And then that sweet kitty up there (looking so innocent) ends up swiping half of them off the desk onto the floor. She thinks it’s fun. I think she needs a new hobby.

Thing is, my desk doesn’t have a lick of storage. That’s what you get when you use an old farmhouse table as a desk. I love how large it is, so I’m happy to trade storage for the large surface. Also, we keep our file cabinet downstairs in hubby’s office. There’s just more room down there and we’ve had it in the basement for years, even before we finished it.

So I realized a couple months ago that I don’t have a spot handy to put paperwork that needs to be filed. I sit at my desk, go through the paper and mail, sort it into piles (recycle, shred, to do, file) and then it seems nine times out of ten at least a couple of those piles seem to just sit on the desk. And then the next day I’ll put something else on it, and then again, and then the sorted pile isn’t sorted anymore and I needed to stop. the. madness.

So I found this at Staples:

Isn’t it so pretty? It’s just a small hanging file folder from the Martha Stewart line, I think it was $5.99? I had never seen that line of supplies until recently and it was heavenly.

I added some labels with my label maker that usually has hearts fluttering out of it (because I love it so):

And I wanted to put it within reach – where I could just file away stuff as I sat at my desk. Thing is, the spot where my desk sits isn’t really conducive to doing that – it’s all windows.

So I went under the window:

I’m a function over form girl most of the time, but I gotta admit I wondered if it would look goofy there. But you really can’t see it:

It’s mostly hidden by the drapes (that I just move aside when I need to access it) and I have to say, I think the little pop of color hiding out is kind of fun.

I don’t notice it when I walk in the room, that’s for sure:

Now, when it gets full (like now), I can just take a big pile of paper down and file it. That and the to do pile are no longer on my desk all the time, which is HUGE to me.

Now…we’ll see if it works. Most times when I try to keep the paper corralled it works great for a few months and then I get lazy. If I made resolutions I’d make one to keep the paper under control. But I don’t…so I won’t. ;) But I will TRY.

What are your paper organization tricks? Any simple solutions that help you out?

Office deets and show off yours!

Hello all! Welcome to the first Show Us Your House party! I can’t wait to see the rooms for this month – your craft spaces and offices!

I had intentions of getting this first house party up last night, but we had a bit of a family crisis that was my priority. Around ten last night we noticed one of our kitties was looking just…not right. Her sweet face didn’t look like her and right away I knew something was wrong. I picked her up and took her to her food and water and tried to get her to eat something, and that’s when I noticed she could barely stand up. She couldn’t eat, drink, or walk without struggling.

I kept an eye on her for a few minutes, then noticed blood around her mouth and we knew immediately that the night was not going to end well. We took her to the ER doc at midnight and as the minutes ticked by she got considerably worse – I’ve never seen anything like it. I still can’t believe how fast it happened.

We found out she was suffering from kidney failure and it was taking her incredibly fast. The night before she was her old self…cuddling up with my on our bed (the fact that she could still jump up on our tall bed at 18 years old was crazy), “talking” to me before bed like she always does.

She went from her old self to horrible health in 24 hours. We only had about an hour to wrap our heads around it and then there we were saying goodbye to her. When they brought her back into the room so we could hold her, she was pretty much comatose. Her beautiful bright eyes just were not there anymore.

We held her and said goodbye and cried and cried. It was heart wrenching. I’ve had this baby girl since the day she was born…our kitty gave birth to a litter and she was one of them.

I haven’t had time to find recent pics of her, but you can see she was a stunner. :)

I love this one because you can see her “smile”:

She was the sweetest, best girl in the world. I miss her terribly. We’ve been moping around the house all day today…still kind of in shock. This is the second cat in about six months that we’ve lost. We’ve gone from four animals to two in a very short time. Our last cat is so sad today…it’s just awful. My heart hurts. I’ve had that sweet girl for half of my life.

So, it’s been a sucky few days…hubby has been sick with pneumonia and now this. (He’s doing much better but still feeling yucky.)

Anyway, that’s my very long story for the reason I didn’t get this up last night. I couldn’t help but show off our sweet kitty to you all before we got going with the post. :) Thanks for letting me share her with you.

Sooo…it’s time to move on to some details on my office reveal from earlier this week. First of all, I just want to say THANK you for all of the wonderful comments. I truly appreciate them and appreciate that you take the time to comment. It makes my day!

There’s a lot I want to share, so bear with me!

First, more about the layout. This room was tough for me because it’s like every other room on our main floor…very few full walls. The space is only about 11 by 11 feet, two walls have windows (which I LOVE), and two are cut off a bit by the angled doorway. 

You might remember that for a long time, I had the desk and light on the left side of the room. First it was facing the doorway, then I changed it to face the wall.

It just felt weird to me though…awkward. So in the end, it was moved over by the windows:

For a while I had it angled in the corner facing out, but that was awkward too. In order to get around it to sit down, the table had to be too far out into the room.

One day recently I was cleaning the floors and moved the desk over a bit. I realized it worked great!:

I love it! And it only took forever to figure it out. :)

This way if I ever want a different view, I can just turn it the other way, and I’ve still got all that natural light!

Speaking of the desk, this was my third option for the room. It was EXACTLY what I wanted – a “real” vintage farmhouse table. I totally lucked out when a friend of a friend was selling it.

Unfortunately it was covered with lead paint. :) I had it professionally stripped down and then I painted it a very light blue. (Paint colors coming at the end of the post!):

I also changed the orientation of the desk so the legs went with the width. It is a HUGE surface and perfect for crafting or sorting mail.

Speaking of mail, I showed you how I figured out a process for controlling the paper that comes in the house here. All of my office supplies are organized in the Craigslist dresser (that I LOVE).

The mail and stuff that I need to go through goes in the box on top, then the papers that need to be filed in the basement go in the top drawer:

The binders hold everyday stuff I want close at hand – house stuff, inspiration files and manuals for games and toys. This way I don’t have to run to the basement for every day things I need.

The other drawers hold lots ‘o stuff. Before I put a drop of paint on the walls a long long time ago, I did a serious purge of my office supplies. Did I really need four rolls of tape? Did I need ten packs of post its? Did I have to have 45 random pens and pencils?

No. :)

One drawer holds what office supplies I do use in pretty holders from HomeGoods:

The drawers are REALLY wide but very shallow, so these work great! I can fit a ton of stuff in there!

The next drawer holds my Silhouette machine, and all the fun stuff that I use with that, as well as my “junk drawer in a drawer” –  it holds my go-to stuff like address labels, stamps, envelopes, my label maker and just STUFF:

When I sit down and go through mail, I pull this out and put it on the desk so I have stuff at hand.

The bottom drawer is dedicated to the kiddo – three more bins corral all of his goodies:

But most of his stuff is in the caddy to the left of the dresser:

And his sticker books, magazines, coloring books and Lego magazines have a spot in the book bin:

It was a Goodwill find years ago and used to sit in his nursery:

I put some castors on the bottom ($4 for four at Lowe’s) because it’s SUPER heavy and this makes it easier to move around the room.

The basket to the right of the cabinet used to house our little shredder and the cords:

We’ve since moved the shredder out to the garage, so now this holds bulky stuff like my tripod, camera case and laptop case:

Everything I need on a daily basis is organized in this room and I love it! I mentioned that I moved some of the bulky stuff to the basement (like the filing cabinet) and I’m so thrilled! (We already had one down filing cabinet down there so this way everything is in one spot.)

The printer/scanner is also in hubby’s basement office. This works great for us because he uses it WAY more than I do. It’s also wireless, so I can print from anywhere in the house, then file items right away.

At first I hid the modem and router under the dresser (you couldn’t even see them – YAHOO!), but when I moved the dresser I didn’t have access to the cable jack. So instead, I moved them to a spot in the house that has a free cable jack -- the guest room. :)

That room is hardly used, so it’s worked perfectly! (We have no problems accessing internet from anywhere in the house.)

OK, onto some pretties. :) The gallery walls around the room are probably my favorite part of the room, but they also took the longest. OH EM GEE.

If you can believe it, I already had every frame, but that’s because I had been collecting them at Goodwill for about a year. They were all different colored frames, which I liked initially, but it got to be too busy. And I wanted the art to shine!

So I sprayed them all white, which took FOREVER. I had to take the art/photos/glass out of each one, clean them off, prime them twice and then spray them satin white twice.

FOR.EV.ER.

And hate me, but I didn’t cut out paper the size of each frame (like I’ve seen in mags) to figure out where I wanted each one on the walls. I just piled the frames in the room, started at one end of each wall, then picked different sizes that worked here and there.

Yes, I had to move a few along the way, but it’s just holes people. Itty bitty holes. You can’t even see them, can you?:

;)

Most of the art is the Bub’s or my photos. Here’s the lowdown on the art and other stuff on this wall, left to right: 

Art by stepdaughter (of the Bub)
Angel by Bub
Circle art by Bub
Statue of Liberty shot
”S” from old sign – Midland Antiques Indy
Blue/yellow art by Bub
Bub by me
Bouquet art by Bub

Left to right:

Hubby and I photo
DIY printable
Photo of Bub and Daddy
Photo of Hubs and I on the first flight he took me on.
Sweet stepdaughter
Art by Bub (Christmas tree but it’s staying up – I love it)
Poster I cut up to fit into frame (You can see more of that art here.)
Target mirror I spray painted metallic color

(Still looking for something tall and skinny to put over to the left!)

Left to right:

My little pirate at Halloween (arrrgh)
Vintage sign from late father-in-laws business
Art from this post (LOVE)
Cherry blossom photography
Family photo
Photo of Skyscraper Lunch sculpture from Ground Zero, January 2002
School photo of my late brother-in-law (beautiful frame was from fil’s house)

Left to right:

Clock from Garden Ridge
Goodwill oval frame
DIY silhouette in GW frame
Sunflower photo that used to be here  
Photography from here (Gorgeous! Matches the room PERFECTLY.)
Butterfly photo
Photo of the kids in NYC
Flower photo

I wanted to have something on each wall that wasn’t art and wasn’t white, so that’s where the clock, industrial “S,” mirror and the Modern Bird art (absolutely LOVE it) come in.

I couldn’t be more thrilled with how it all came together. :)

That cutie little aqua table above started out as a table I found at my late father-in-law’s house. It was rickety and in bad shape – I took it apart, cleaned it up, tightened it up:

Because it was round, it stuck out into the room quite a bit:

So I used my jigsaw to cut it down, then reattached that piece with “L” brackets so it looks like a drop leaf table:

It saves us about six inches of space right there, and I’m all about that!

Whew!! Almost done!! :)

The drapes are a Waverly fabric I found from Joann’s forever ago. It is still there though. :) The striped fabric on the DIY memo board goes with it perfectly, and they were the very first picks for this room. The whole space was designed around them!

I made the drapes myself – lined and everything. ;) They aren’t sewn perfectly, but you can’t tell, right?:

Now I wish I would have picked a different fabric for the pendant light, but that was one of the first projects I finished, and I had planned on it hanging on the other side of the room away from the drapes. Oh well…I’m not touching anything in here for awhile, so it’s good. ;)

Here’s a rundown of a few ton more details…

Paint colors

Desk: True Value, Soft Hearted
Kid table: Valspar, Pond
Memo board frame: Dutch Boy, Purify
Walls:  Ralph Lauren, Sisal, lightened 25 percent
Ceiling: Dutch Boy, Purify

Sources:

Lamps, large basket: Target
Organizational items on and in dresser, chair and pillow: HomeGoods
Binders: Nakedbinder.com
Fabrics: Joann's
Dresser: Craigslist
Knobs on dresser: Hobby Lobby
Frames: Goodwill
Rug on chair back: IKEA

And here are links to the long list of projects that made this room happen!

Desk redo
Priming the formerly dark room
Painting the walls
Installing crown (I later chunked it up a bit by adding a piece of molding two inches down, then painting in between.)
DIY memo board (made from insulation board and a GW frame)
Board and batten how-to
Organizing the paper
Desk chair redo (from a pleather parson’s chair to a no-sew covered chair)
Spraying the board and batten
Pottery Barn art caddy redo
How to make your own printables tutorial

(Live Writer is hating me again, so those links are not highlighted right.)

And if you missed it, the full reveal is here!!

Dang, I’m tired!!!

So let’s see YOUR spaces! I still don’t have a button for this shindig, but I would appreciate it if you would link back here in your post! Thanks so much!