A New Collection Obsession Ensues!

This weekend Jonathan (with much protesting) and I went to check out an antique shop that I discovered existed through this yummy blog.

It was a dream of a shop!

There were so many things I could see myself taking home. We ended up with a Dr. Pepper box that was made in our home town in the 60's and a bottle. We are now on the hunt for the rest of the bottles to fill up our little box. I say we because even though he protested about going there Jonathan actually enjoyed the store and the idea of completing the bottle collection!

Are You Feelin' Lucky...Punk?!

The answer is yes I am!

My whole neighborhood could hear my squeals of delight this morning when I read the email from the fabulous Ariana of the Becoming Mom blog site.

I won her give away for the adorable Hoppop toddler tub! I chose lime for it's gender neutral quality and I am waiting on bated breath to get it!

Thanks so much Ariana for doing this wonderful giveaway! 

Spring Cleaning: Day Two

Today me and the boy tackled the kitchen and the dinning room/laundry room/room-that-holds-the-deep-freezer.

I started before he woke up this morning because the kitchen is quite a project which involves me climbing up and down on a step stool (because I am short and the cabinets are tall and that's just not a good combo) and he likes to get under foot. 

I started with the "pantry" cabinets. I threw anything away that was stale or past the expiration date. After that I  scrubbed down the cabinets and organized all the like things together.

Next was the junk drawer (isn't it funny how we all have one). I dumped it out and threw away some of the ridiculous things that were in there.

 Next I cleaned under the sink and organized the bottom cabinets.

Then came the fridge and freezer.


























I finished just in time. Little man woke up shortly after and of course he wanted to help.

After the boy got up we completed the following:

• Washed the windows in kitchen and dinning room. 
• Vacuumed the dinning room rug. 
• Dusted on top of the fridge. 
• Cleaned out the microwave.
• Cleaned the stove and oven. 
• Swept and mopped the floor. 
• Cleaned the baseboards. 

In the afternoon we cleaned out Jonathan's and my closet. The rest of the bedroom is clean since we just got all new furniture, curtains, and bed spread.

Just one more room (the bathroom) and the inside will be all clean!

Spring Cleaning: Day One

After one last cold snap from good ol' mother nature spring has sprung for good! Outside little buds are blooming on the trees, flowers are opening up towards the sky and a soft spring rain is falling. Meanwhile, inside I have started my bi-yearly (spring and fall) ritual of deep-cleaning.

Some people like to work the whole house in layers, ie. clean up all the surface dirt all through out the house, then do all the closets, then do all the cabinets, etc.When I deep-clean I like to do one room at a time and today I am going to start with little mans room.

Another thing I do when spring cleaning that a lot of people don't is I do the hard things first and work my way inside out. What that means is I organize closets/drawers/dressers/cabinets first (the "inside" stuff) and then I do the dusting of furniture, scrubbing of baseboards and windows, and straightening  of knick-knacks (the "outside" stuff).

I do this for two reasons 1) there is no need to surface clean if I am just going to dirty it up again when I declutter/organize and 2) it's easier to do the hard stuff at the beginning when I have a lot of energy then to wait till the end when I am wearing down.

I started with the dresser.

• One at a time I pulled the drawer out, sat in on the floor and went through it.
• I pulled out what didn't fit anymore and what was the wrong season and packed those away in a Huggies diaper box.
• I then neatly folded all his clothes 
• Each drawer is dedicated to a certain thing.
• First drawer is diapers and wipes. 
• Second drawer is onesies and long pants
• Third drawer is short sleeve shirts and shorts
• Fourth drawer is blankets
• Fifth drawer is burp clothes, receiving blankets, and sheets.

Next was the closet.

• I pulled all his clothes out of his closet and weeded the ones that didn't fit anymore and the ones that were the wrong season. 
• I packed those clothes away in an old Huggies box and sat it out in the hall.
• I then pulled everything off the closet floor, this included his toy bookshelf and his black drawers. 
• I vacuumed the closet and then put the bookshelf and the black drawer back in. 
• Next, I weeded his old toys (ones for newborns) and packed them away for the next child. 
• I organized his toy bookshelf with the remaining toys and filled up his black drawers with his bibs, washcloths, hats, etc.
• The shelves in the top of his closet hold plastic storage containers. I took those down and organized those. 

     

• Next I took down and washed the curtains. 
• Washed the windows. 
• Made the bed.
• Used furniture polish on the crib and dresser. 
• Dusted the baseboards. 
• Vacuumed under the crib and the rest of the room. 
• I also took this opportunity to clean out and organize the diaper bag.  

And of course little man helped. After I got all his shorts folded he decided that I didn't do it right and so he climbed in the drawer and proceeded to throw out all the shorts one by one. 

In the afternoon me and the butterball tackled the living room.

Keeping in mind the "inside-out" rule, I did the drawers and the stacking baskets first. Taking one end table at a time I did the following:

• Removed the drawer and sat it on the floor. 
• Dusted inside the drawer pocket (I'm not sure what it's called, but the place where the drawer slides into the end table). 
• I removed everything from the drawer and separated them into three piles. 
• a trash pile
• a goes somewhere else pile
• a stays in the drawer pile
• I put everything that goes in the drawer back in an orderly manner. 
• Did the same thing to the second end table. 

 I then cleaned out my stack-able storage boxes that reside over by the book shelf. It doesn't look like much after but the wires were all tangled together before.

 Other things I did was:

• Wash and iron the curtains.
• Wash the windows.
• Dust and polish the furniture. 
• Wipe down the light switches and door handles. 
• Move the furniture and vacuum under it. 
• Straighten up the bookshelf. 
• Clean the couch with my hand steam cleaner. 
• Vacuum the rest of the room. 
• Dust the baseboards.
• Cleaned the glass of the entertainment center and the TV. 
• Dusted the knick-knacks.

Here is the after of my bookshelf...I forgot to take a before so just imagine it really dusty (black furniture shows dust really well) and the books slightly more askew.

And of course little man helped in here too. After his diaper change he went to the wipe box, got a wipe, and proceeded to crawl into the living room with it. He then climbed up on his feet and started to wash the glass of the entertainment center like he saw me do. In reality he just made a lot of streaks and fingerprints that I had to go back and clean up but it was too cute. I have a feeling making more work for mom will be his MO for the rest of his life.

Bedroom Redo

The husband and I plan on staying in this house a little longer then first anticipated in order to save enough money for our forever home. We still want at least one more kid, so the choices were a) to wait and have the next baby when we move (making them about 4-5 years apart) or b) try to make this house work and have them closer together.

We picked b.

In order to make 2 kids in one small house work we decided we needed new bedroom furniture so we could  have room for a crib. Little man slept with us for about 5 months and I am sure the next one will too.

When we get pregnant I will nest our bedroom instead of a nursery but for now we went and picked out a good foundation in terms of curtains, bedding and furniture.

I think it looks so much better. I can't wait to finish it! Here is the before for reference.

The Last Room

This is the last room to post. This room is where we do all our living, especially in the winter because it's so cold in the house. I turn the heat down to 60 and we close the door and turn on the little space heater (because our electric is cheaper then gas) and hibernate. It's the biggest room we have and since we do all our living in here it is also the messiest room we have. Little man loves to spread his toys out and crawl all over the place. This is also the room that holds his jumparoo most of the time. You can just call this the bed/main living/computer/play/hibernat- in-the-winter/craft room.

The Bathroom

This is little man's favorite room. He could be the crankiest of children and a nice warm bath in his little duck tub is all he needs to soothe his weary soul (he's 8 months so I don't know how weary his soul is but you get the gist). In that respect he is just like his mama; a cup of tea, a book, and a bubble bath sounds like a great night to me. Our bathroom is incredibly small (it's a running theme in our home) with only enough room for one to fit comfortably (semi-comfortably) but we sometimes fit all three of us in there and while cozy it's not too bad. The color is atrocious, I picked it out soon after we bought the house and it wasn't what I imagined at all. When I get enough energy I am going to paint it a warm gray color.

The Boy's Room

When we first moved in this was a storage room, it then morphed into a make shift craft room. We always knew it would be a baby's room but we didn't know how long it would take. We started trying for a baby in October of '07, we bought the house in February '08 but it wasn't until June 2009 that it officially became a nursery. The boy didn't sleep in it until about the end of September and that 300 dollar crib was just a really expensive changing table for the first four months. The little elephant painting on the dresser is hand painted by me. As you can tell, I jumped on the hang-lanterns-over-the-baby's-crib trend. The room is very small at about 10x9 or close to it. I know that I can't lay down twice in that room and I am 4'11". I have measured it a couple of times but those increments are forever lost in the sink hole that is my memory. I am always toying with the idea of painting one wall in there a green accent color but I don't know if that is still trendy? Does anyone know? I mean we want to sell this house in a couple of years and I don't want to have to paint twice. Anyway, I love it! It's so bright and airy and cozy at the same time.

Welcome To The Worlds Smallest Living Room

Ok, well maybe the worlds smallest is a slight exaggeration. It is quiet...cozy. It is 7' wide and a lot more then 7' long. I think I have done the best I can with it to make it look quite nice considering. This is where little man spends a lot of time learning how to crawl and hanging out while mommy cleans the house. The dog loves to sun bathe when the sun is coming through the west window and the baby loves to yell at the dog while he does this. I am thinking of getting white sheers for the windows instead of the red curtains but I am not sure.

Another Look Into Our House: The Kitchen

I thought I would get around to blogging more of our home. It is time to peer into my windows and look at the kitchen. (Peer into my window's is in reference to how my mom thinks blogging is just a high tech way to allow people to be peeping Tom's or noisy Nancy's or what have you, but I digress.) My kitchen and my dining room/laundry room/ place-where-the-deep-freezer-is-kept is basically the same room there is a small wall with a pass through that divides the two areas but that hardly makes it two distinct places. The cabinets go to the ceiling which is nice for storage but bad for a 4'11" housewife. This is the reason the step stool is kept in the kitchen at all times, but I don't know if you can see it in the pictures...
The fridge is some what tiny, technically we could fit a full sized one in that space but when we first moved in we couldn't afford a bigger one and now that we are scrounging and saving every penny we still can't afford a bigger one.
There is no dish washer and so, with the baby, I usually find myself doing dishes about 2-3 times a day while Jonathan is at work. On the weekend I don't do them as often. It's not as bad as you would think. I dread it but once I am in the process I find that doing dishes by hand is fast and easy, it's just the thought that sucks. That being said I do look forward to having a dishwasher just because they are nice place to hide dirty dishes.

Tuesday Tours ( on Friday) The Dining Room

I was trying think of something cute and catchy to title this post. Something that had to do with Friday and a tour of my home but all I could come up with is Friday Flapjack which has something to do with today's day but nothing to do with touring. Anyway, those who know me can attest to me being a neat freak. When I was a little girl I would spend the week before Christmas pulling everything I owned out of my room and into the hallway, vacuuming, and then putting everything back into my room one thing at a time, in a neat and orderly fashion...I am sure my mother love that. Spring cleaning is one of my favorite things to do and organization supplies make me squeal with delight. I also love to decorate but we are on a strict budget because we are saving money for a new house so we can have another baby, so please excuse all the particle board furniture. I say all that because I am very dissatisfied with my home. I am glad we have a roof over our heads and all that but I don't think older homes are for me, every imperfection drives me insane...it's wearing on my heart. So as I dream of greener pastures  I thought I would take pictures to document little man's first home and  while I am at it I will do a look into our tiny place on my blog for all my two of my readers (hi mom and Jonathan), haha. Here is a little info about my home: it is a 763 sq ft, 2 bedroom, 1 bath house built in 1935 and without further ado here is our first look into home. 

The Dining Room/Laundry Room/Room That Holds the Deep Freezer:

The jars sitting on my deep freezer are one of my favorite things that I own. I kind of want to put up a floating shelf to set them on. Anyway, so there you have it.

My Mason Jars Came Today!

I posted a few days ago that I wanted (no NEEDED) blue vintage mason jar. Well, I found a great deal for 6 for $8 plus shipping. They are from the 1920's and 1930's and they are fabulous!!! I took a picture of them in my window.

Some color inspiration

1. Lemon Cupcakes, 2. Untitled, 3. Untitled, 4. pastel cups, 5. Jars, 6. happiness, 7. Lemonade and Ice, 8. Italian Pastiglies, 9. HALP!, 10. Yummy, 11. something blue, 12. Day 31 - How lucky was I to find this!, 13. lemonade closeup 2892.jpg, 14. Day 6 - of June - Baby blue, 15. January's Daydreams, 16. Sakura ^_^

I love color! I am thinking these colors for my dining room.