Linen closet organization

I'm back at it, trying to organize my house and my life one room...or closet at a time. For MONTHS I've been wanting to clean up my child's/guest bathroom linen closet. Everytime I'd walk in and shove towels away I'd shudder at how disorganized it was. Then I'd shut the door and run away. "If I don't look at it long, it doesn't exist"....

I'd find myself using the same 2 towels, washing them and using them again because the closet was so disorganized I could not even see the other 5 kids towels I had in there. Subconsciously I kept telling myself "must buy more towels" because I didn't know what I had. A thing I learned about organizing my possessions is I actually spend less because i know what I have, and I use what I have.

 I went to my favorite store ever...the dollar tree. I actually laughed out loud because a sweet little old lady at the register next to me stated "dollar tree is my favorite store ever!" I picked up 9 baskets/buckets for a whopping total of $9.48 and was on my way.

I whipped out my trusty old Cricket and started labeling away. I wanted to differentiate my daughters sheets, from my sons, from the guest room sheets. I guess it's odd I labeled one teeth care instead of oral care, but my daughter knows the word teeth/tooth and I wanted to be able to show her how things are organized in the closet.

I think it turned out pretty good. It was a nap time project, which is the only hour and a half I get to do anything uninterrupted sometimes. Here's to getting things crossed off my to do list!

Before....

After.......

Home Renovations: Part 2

So 9/15 is a big deadline in tax world, so I've been a little behind in posting anything, but I think I'll be getting back on track!

We're in the home stretch for our bathroom renovations, and it looks like another week and everything should be complete!
Flash back to my first post about the bathroom finishing: Home Renovations: Bathroom Makeover

After a small tile mishap (the tile company had a portion of our tile on back order until November) I had to re order all NEW tile so that our bathroom could be done by the end of September. It all worked out for the best, because I think the bathroom tile looks awesome, and things are still on track!

See below for some updates.

One of my key necessities was the make the small space look big. We put some recessed drawers towards the back into the wall, which gives us more floor space, which is great!

We decided to go with a Roman Shower (I think that's what they call it) so no doors, but the water should stay inside the walls of the shower. This means no more Squeegeeing (I don't think that's a word) any glass doors, or worrying about glass streaks! (yes, less cleaning for me, makes me a happy camper).

Those 6x6 tiles on the top was the tile I wanted that was delayed from the other tile shop, so I had to go to another tile place to find NEW tile that had 12x12s and 6x6's in the same style. I lucked out, because this turned out pretty nice! Another feature I wanted was dark floor with dark brown grout. For some reason the water in our area turns shower floor grout reddish, and reddish rings in the sink and the toilet. It's a pain to clean, and so I wanted dark grout. I also splurged and upgraded the grout to a higher quality, so it's easier to clean, and harder to break down, or something. (I don't know if it's going to make a difference, but I guess we will see!)

I can't wait to get some final things done, and the fixtures installed, the final plumbing and drywall, and then I'll post the final pictures.

Stay Tuned!

The Nursery

I've always dreamed of what my baby's nursery would look like. Therefore I spent many hours trying to figure out the exact color combination, the perfect bedding, and decorations for my little girl.

Well, after months of research I found the perfect bedding. After hundreds of saved pages and shops on my bookmarks tab on my computer, and endless trips to the baby store to take a look at what they had displayed, I had chosen a set!

I've always wanted to do pink for a girl, and I've always wanted to paint the room two colors with chair rail in between. Lucky for me Ian agreed to put up the chair rail, under one condition, I couldn't do dark pink and light pink as my two colors for the walls. (Apparently that would be too much pink for him).So, after go back and forth, I decided on brown and pink. I thought the colors would really compliment the bedding and furniture.

The furniture was something I had picked out over a year ago. Yes, I was one of those girls that frequented the baby shops without having a child or being pregnant, but I was so excited to eventually have a child, I figured there was no harm in looking. There is (was) a cute baby furniture shop in town, and when I was out running errands I would stop and "browse." I decided on the babydream brand since they had the crib gate, which would allow me to bend over and pick up baby easier (and this type of gate was not recalled with the latest recall back in June). This gate only partially dropped down, which allows short people like me the ability to reach in with ease, safely.

The other big decision was the closet. I told Ian last Christmas, that all I wanted him to get me was a baby closet. (This was before we even knew we were expecting). So he built one! I chose green and white as the color combination since I figured I could reuse the closet accessories if we were having a boy or a girl. I think it turned out perfect.

SO, without any further ado...here are some pictures of our finished nursery. Now, I just need to courage to move baby Sophia from our room to the nursery....

PS. Don't forget to give your 5 daily votes to Sophia http://lifewiththemillikans.blogspot.com/2011/09/top-10-finalist.html