New Year...time to post!

Hi there,

Well it's a New Year and I thought it high time to post again. Many of you know that I took a looong break---mainly due to the adjustment of our routine after I found out that we are expecting a precious little one.

Now that I am about 11 weeks away from my due date---I am in full nesting mode.

For me that means, a strong desire to clean and declutter--yay!

I thought I'd share some of our projects that we are working on here.

*completed: We recently converted our Formal Dining room into a Playroom. It is a great area now for the kids to spread out and play and also to keep their toys in one place vs. a little in every room. I am hoping to put pics up of what we did and how it is working so far. The big challenge is that we have an open floor plan in the living room and dining room and creating separate but cohesive zones were quite a challenge. Especially, because we did not want to spend a lot of money on this. In the end, I think we 'borrowed' items from other rooms in the house and I only wound up buying a few new baskets for toys and some clips and frames for our wall art project---I think the total room change cost us about $30 or $40. Which we plan to recoup by selling our old dining table on Clist.

*in progress: Hall closet home office. We are going to sell our lovely World Market desk/office set and thus move it out of our Master bedroom. It takes up a lovely nook and valuable real estate in our room. We plan on having our new arrival sleep there for the first 3 months. So before we bought or brought in the baby things...we are concentrating on setting up the new office spot. After deciding that, our hallway linen closet really was not essential (became a catch all) and had a electrical outlet already installed and a top and bottom shelf installed to work with.) My handyman hubby began drawing up plans of how to maximize that small space to house our office essentials. We are both excited about this and have already purchased a few items to finish this project up this weekend. Woo hoo! Thanks to a forgotten giftcard...I believe we will spend $30 on this project.

*coming soon: De-clutter overhaul....4 zones in our home need some attention: garage, kids rooms and pantry. During our wacky seasons or lack thereof (a few days warm, a few days cold) our clothing situation is in need of order---especially the kids rooms. (All of their summer and fall/winter clothes are still together and both kiddos are growing out of things) So this will be a big project to sell, store and remove out of season or outgrown clothes. Garage---needs work, lots of work and if I am feeling really brave I will go take pics and show you before and after pics. And finally the pantry--I love our pantry...but I keep noticing there are items in their that I never use and probably never will....so that needs some attention.

*coming soon: Freezer cooking...I did a bit of freezer cooking before my due date of both of my kids. This really, really, really helped me in meal preparation in the weeks/months after our new arrival comes. So, my goal is consign clothes and other items we are not using any longer and use that money to buy a freezer. The things that help me are: cooked ground hamburger meat or ground turkey and cooked/diced chicken and we will also add in pancakes and waffles to this list.


Quite a tall order to get done in 11 weeks...11 weeks or sooner I should say.


Stay tuned for pics and project status updates in the future.

Blessings,
K