Category

Before and After

Category

March Before And After – How I Organize My Linen Closet

Well, if you’ve been following me at all over on Facebook or Twitter then you know I’ve been working on a couple of big projects around here that have taken far more time than necessary. You forgive me right? ;)Anyway, tonight I finally get to share one of those projects with you! I’m so excited about this because I’ve been meaning to show you my linen closet organization for awhile, but then the holidays hit and well – the linen closet wasn’t at it’s best. Let’s take a look at the before:She’s definitely not her best in that picture. 😉 Good thing I cleaned her up a bit. Here’s what I did:Zone 1 – Linen Storage – The BeforeSo as you can tell, I’m kind of into home linens and I’m constantly getting more of my mom’s stuff with each visit from my dad, so things were kind of getting…

Homemaker’s Challenge – Kitchen Reorganization

Hey y’all! I know it’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted and I gotta tell ya, I’ve been one busy girl. I’m a tutor “in real life” and I have been crazy busy. Add to that some personal business that needed to be taken care of and it’s been a mess over here. But I will tell you this: I have been so incredibly blessed by Homemaker’s Challenge – 31 Days to Clean. It has kicked me into high gear and I have needed that kick.This week I spent time catching up on the more “Martha” stuff…you know, the chores. One of the first things I tackled as a blogger was my kitchen, showing you how you can make a small (painfully small) rental kitchen functional. You can find more information on that here and here. They were two of my most successful posts ever! Who knew kitchen organization was such…

A Mid-Mod Makeover

A couple of weeks ago, I posted briefly that while walking through our favorite antiques mall my husband and I (well ok, mostly I…) found a gorg mid-century modern dining room set with table, leaf and 6 chairs (SIX!). It was advertised as a Drexel “Dimensions” table and priced at $645 for the set. Yeah, the set. That was insane enough, and I wanted it, but it needed love and honestly, I knew that “love” would consist of at least a few hundred dollars worth of refurb so I inquired about contacting the dealer to work out a better price. He called me back a few days later and I was able to talk him down to $475, again, the set. Seriously? Yes. Here it is the way I found it:Crappy cell phone pic, sorry. The crazy star ashtray was not included…I’m sure you’re heartbroken…Also, I just know you love…

March Before and After: Dollar Store Picture Frame Dry Erase Boards

Hey y’all. I am sorry for the lack of posting, but I have been asleep for most of the weekend. I guess I’m coming down with something, or caught whatever The Hubs had last week. It certainly Knocked. Me. Out. I had so many crafty projects I wanted to get to this weekend but my body had other plans. Go figure.Anyway, I did manage to get one project done that I’m excited to share with you. Recently in blogland I’ve seen so many DIY chalkboards and dry erase boards. I thought they were cute, and felt inspired to make one so I ran out to one of my favorite stores, Dollar Tree to pick up some of their $1.00 (of course!) document/picture frames. I had recently used these to make Christmas gifts and decided to try them out with this project. Here’s what I made for Christmas:I thought it turned…

Master Bedroom Closet Decrapification…

Also known as “The Great Goodwill Donation”, but we’ll get to that in a minute.I’ll fully admit to you that when you see the “Before” picture, it won’t look all that bad. It’s only upon closer inspection that you’ll see how truly grody the closet really was. Please keep in mind the following:I really do clean my house, I swear. Here’s the before:Doesn’t look too bad now does it? Sure it could use a little organization, perhaps some purging here and there, but you could live with it right? Right? Uh huh…(Author’s note: That bag on the door is my wedding dress that’s never made it to the dry cleaners in the year since I got married…)Anywho, if you want to purge, reorganize and for heaven’s sake clean your closet you’ll probably want these things before you get started:A couple of boxes, your vacuum (with attachments), a marker, and a good quality microfiber…

February Before and After: Can’t Paint? No problem!

Hey y’all! I don’t know about you, but I hate (with a deep, searing passion) white walls. I grew up in a home that had color on the walls. I owned a home that had a nice beige (oddly the builder’s color wasn’t bad…I was pleased) throughout but even then I added my own touches with a chocolate brown accent wall and a nice retro blue bathroom. Basically, I love color.Well, enter the Hubs. Back then he wasn’t The Hubs he was The Boy. And I loved him – still do, just much, much more. Anywho, he loves color too…but when we moved in to our apartment it was white. As in all white. Seriously. Everything. Walls, carpets, trim, ceilings. It’s like living in that white box challenge on HGTV’s Next Design Star. I think you get the point. And we can’t paint. Well, that’s not entirely true. We can paint…

Office Decrapification the Before and After

Before the holidays, I started reorganizing our home office. Actually, I kind of ambushed my husband when he walked in the door one afternoon and basically told him I couldn’t take the unorganized, never fully unpacked, clutter bomb of an office anymore. (I may or may not have been that nice about it. 😉 You decide.)The office has gone through several transformations since we moved in, but it had up until now, never really been functional. For a long time we didn’t even have bookshelves, which is saying a lot considering we have many, MANY books. (The previous office breakdown garnered those. Hehe.) To say the room was a mess was well…generous. This is what it looked like before:And this:And this:Do you see why I was ready to tear my hair out? Let me just tell you that weekend there was much gnashing of teeth at my house! My hubby…