Make a room feel brand-new... for free!

A blog I've recently fallen in love with is the Thrifty Decor Chick. Her tagline is "Sharing simple, inexpensive ways to decorate your home." She'll find something she likes on other sites, or at Pottery Barn, etc. and do it herself for less than half the price of the original. Or she'll just come up with amazing decorating ideas on her own. Her house is a work-in-progress, and she takes great pictures throughout the process. I think my favorite part is that her work is just my style. Often I'll see decorating ideas (especially in my BHG magazine), and think ewww... But Sarah is a girl after my own heart.

When I started writing this post, I was sure I'd gotten the following idea from her. But I searched and searched the last few months of her blog and can't find it anywhere! *blush* Now I'm feeling silly for attributing this idea to her when I really have no idea where it came from... But you should still check out her blog. It's amazing.

Anyway... the idea. I read and saw pictures somewhere about decorating the master bedroom.

We have a pretty simple, semi-small bedroom. This picture was from shortly after we moved in, in October 2009. The bed is against the east wall, a window on the north wall, the closet and outer door on the south wall, and door to the bathroom on the west wall (behind the photographer). Yes it's only a full-size bed, it's what we've always had, and we like it. :)

Fast forward a year and a half. We still have this exact same layout. I'd never considered anything else. Then I saw a post (somewhere...) about using a window as a headboard. Really? The window? We don't have a regular headboard, so I looked at the room, rotated everything 90 degrees in my head (or is it -90 degrees, Rocky?? :), and thought maybe it would work.

No pictures of the redecorate-in-progress. Not even of the full-length mirror that crashed against the cedar chest and broke into a bazillion pieces (thanks to the crazy cat...).

And here is what we ended up with:

Tada! Our full-size bed fits under the window PERFECTLY!! Since my nightstand is smaller than Rocky's, there was quite a bit of extra space to the left of it, and so I went downstairs and found a working halogen lamp. And as I moved the cedar chest I remembered it had all our extra pillows in it, so I took a few out to buff up the "headboard" space. Look what you can do to make a space brand-new, without buying a single thing!!

Of course now we have a huge blank wall...

Hmmm what to do with it... Any ideas??

Five Minute Friday: Home

GO.

Home is something we take for granted. A home is different from a "house." The word "home" has a sense of emotion, belonging, more than just a roof over our heads. When we moved into this house a year and a half ago, we knew it would be a place we'd stay for awhile (at least 3 years or we'd have to pay the homeowners credit back! ;). But how do you make a "house" a "home"?

By being there. If your home is just a place to sleep at night, it's just a house. You need to hang out there, play games, run in the yard, invite people over.

By keeping it clean. Most people feel uncomfortable when walking into a messy house. Granted, it does feel "lived in", but if there are dirty dishes all over the counter and dust bunnies in every corner, it makes both you and your guests feel a little tense.

I could spend more than 5 minutes on this topic, but I'll stop there for today.

STOP.

I wrote another post recently about point #2 above.

Want to participate in Five Minute Fridays? Just write for 5 minutes and not worry if it’s just right or not.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement for the five minuter who linked up before you!

Dave Ramsey would be proud

Well I'm finally taking the time to do it. I used to be so good at keeping up with our finances, tracking where our money went. Then life got busy, and we were doing fine financially, so the tracking got pushed to the backburner.

Then I started buying gift cards through the TRIP program at the school I work for. And I made a new year's resolution to start keeping track again. But the gift cards made things tricky. Would I record when I bought the cards, or when I used them to purchase things, or both? How would that filter through my nifty Excel formulas to tell me how we spent our money? So the tracking stayed on the backburner.

Well today I got inspired. I don't like not knowing where our money is going. If every dollar has a name, I'm less likely to spend it somewhere else under another name. So I made a brand new spreadsheet:

I totaled up the gift cards I have, ones I've bought from TRIP and ones we've gotten as gifts over the years... holy cow we've got a lot of $$ in gift cards waiting to be used! That's encouraging! So we'll see how things go. If I just force myself to take the time to do this, it WILL happen. We WILL find extra money to save for Abby or finish the basement. We WILL pay off our house early. I just need to put my organizing-perfectionist-beaver-type personality into it!

What about you? Do you live on a budget? How do you track where your money goes?

How to Feel Good About Your House 101

At the end of the day, do you feel good about how your house looks? I'm a mostly-stay-at-home-work-two-days-a-week mom. I have time for housework. I've even worked out a system this new year for what chores to do on what days. Monday is laundry, bathroom, sweep. Tuesday is mop. Thursday is vacuum and sweep. Etc. But there are certain things that really do need to be done EVERY day. And I've been a slacker.

When you walk into my house, it's a split-level, so you take the stairs down to the basement (please don't! still a work in progress!) or take the stairs up to the kitchen-dining room-living room. So the first thing you see is the island and the kitchen counters. Since the island is the first surface you come to, it becomes a dumping ground for mail, random things from coat pockets, and items we want out of Abby's reach... There are also a few candles and a potted plant for when I try to make it look nice...

Then you look past that to the kitchen sink and surrounding counters. For some reason, dishes is one chore I really don't like to do. I've never figured out why. Yes we have a dishwasher, but often that will even get run and then just sit there until we need a dish or run out of spoons in the drawer.

When Rocky comes home after a long day at school, these are the first things he sees. And if nothing has changed since he left in the morning, he wonders what I've done all day... Now I've probably done a lot of other stuff around the house and spent time with Abby, but doesn't what you see when you first go somewhere set the tone for the rest of your time there? Whether it's a home, a store, a restaurant, etc.?

So my new goal is going to be to clear the island every day before Rocky gets home, and do the dishes AT LEAST every other day, if not every day... Or at least unload-reload the dishwasher and put other dirties in the sink so they're not cluttering up the counter.

I think that will set the tone for anyone coming in to my home.

One other quick thing. I read/heard somewhere that a bed will often take up 80% of your bedroom space. So when your bed is left unmade... you get the picture. It only takes 2 minutes in the morning. Just do it.

Do you have any little tips for feeling good about your house?

Project Simplify: Hot Spot #1

"Even though it may not be high on your priority list, I’ll bet it’s an area that needs attention."

Monday revealed the first hot spot in Project: Simplify to be the master bedroom's wardrobe and closet. "This week we are going to touch every. single. item of clothing in our wardrobe, and make a decision whether it stays or goes." This was actually a fairly easy project for me since last summer I took the time to majorly purge my clothing. I knew it would be awhile before I was back in most of my pre-preggo clothes, so they all got folded up and stuck in a box in the closet. Every so often I'll pull something out and see if it'll fit... unfortunately my body has changed quite a bit in the last year so it will be awhile (if ever) before I can hang up all those things again.

BUT. The closet still needed a good cleaning and organizing:

My stuff is on the right and Rocky's is on the left. I took all our t-shirts from the top shelf and re-folded and re-stacked them. Then I attacked the floor, hanging things up and moving shoes to the coat closet near the front door. I even vacuumed! And since we have so many spare hangers, I tossed the old "store" ones and wire ones and replaced them with uniform plastic ones.

Tada! It's amazing what I can accomplish while Abby naps. :) (I also worked through my socks & underwear drawers, but I didn't take pictures of that...) I'm hoping at some point (spring break? summer break??) I can get Rocky to go through his shirts too! This week was play week at school, and he's running lights for the high school play, so he didn't get home until 10 or later every night. So there was NO way he'd have been able to do this with me!

Easiest part of this hot spot: The fact that I'd already done the majority of it... Worst part of this hot spot: Being reminded once again of how few clothes I have that actually fit right now...

On a side note, I got really mad at our cat Ninja:

I know this is her doing. She chewed up some of my flip flops last summer. I had just bought these last fall. Grrr.... Oh well. I guess that will teach me to pick up my shoes!

Click here for more tips from Simple Mom to keep your closet free of clutter, and view other participants' results.

I'm excited to see what next week's hot spot will be!

Project Simplify: Pre-Project Activity

I just heard about a website called Simple Mom. The author describes it as "a productivity blog for home managers." It combines two things I love -- productivity and parenting! And today begins something called Project: Simplify. But apparently I missed the pre-project activity over the weekend, so I'm going to attempt to play a little catch-up... Because the idea of this project is right up my alley! "If you’ve always wanted to really declutter your home, but lose hope or steam after just a few hours, this will be the ticket. Nothing like knowing there are many families around the world working right alongside you!"

So the pre-project assignment is to tackle your home with a purpose. "As a family, you need to write a simple truth about who are as a family. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it needs to reflect what’s most important to you... When you make your home better suited to your family’s purpose, then it’s easier to care about where things go, what stays and goes, and how clean (or disheveled) it is. It’s easier to live there, because it feels like home... It makes organizing the means to an end, not the end itself."

Jeepers. We're working on a purpose statement at our church right now too. It's difficult to summarize what you're all about! But I understand the importance of it. So we'll give it a try, before tackling this week's "hotspot"...

Apparently the site's author has a book which dedicates a whole chapter to forming a family purpose statement, and includes 20 questions to help create that statement. I don't have the book, so I guess I'll just have to ask myself, What things are important to us? God/faith, family, friends, health, education/learning, music... I'll see if Rocky has anything to add.

Other thoughts (not sure if/how we'll use them, I'm just thinking "out loud"):

• the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control
• Proverbs 31
• stewardship - of our time, talents, bodies, money, the earth
• teamwork
• acronym? ROER?

• So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it." -Genesis 1:27-28 (NLT)
• Psalm 139
• "Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." -Colossians 3:12-17

We'll see what we can come up with! Does your family have a purpose statement?

I am a Penelope

I'm a dork. Let me just put that out there. I get excited about silly little stuff. Like the idea of organizing my week on an Excel spreadsheet. Yesterday as I was thinking about my resolution to do better at meal planning, did I simply pull out a piece of paper and write down what we would eat this week? No. I had to search online for "free meal planner" and came across a few templates that someone has already created to help people like me. Once I get my list completed of the meals I normally prepare (and the ones I'd like to try), this spreadsheet is going to be amazing...

You might have noticed the little picture on the right -------> that says I'm a Penelope. You should click on it (after you've finished reading this post of course). I don't remember how I came across the site, Penelope Loves Lists, but it was created by a girl after my own heart. Check out the "About" page. Those first couple of paragraphs are all about me (even though I didn't write them). I used to love back-to-school shopping -- not for new clothes, but for new notebooks, pens, etc... OfficeMax is still one of my favorite stores. Am I a little weird? Maybe. But at least I know there are other Penelopes out there who understand me. :)