The Playroom Projects

This room has undergone many changes. From a nursery to a home office, to a nursery AGAIN :) and then to a play room/classroom. I have recently started following Jen at iheartorganizing and am COMPLETELY addicted to all of her awesome organizing ideas. I don't know how she does it all. Literally for the first week after finding her blog I was hooked. Up all night just taking it all in and seeing how much she could do. I found inspiration. I realized I have a lot to learn! She is amazing and is so sweet. She and so many others have given me inspiration and SO many ideas on how to manage the clutter and make it pretty.

I cleaned the closets out and installed a snap-together wire shelf like this with 6 cubbies inside to wrangle most of the "odds and end" toys, completed art projects, paints/crayons, puzzles, blocks and much more. Having this shelf stowed away in the closet freed up a lot of space. I decided to buy another kit for our closet. I really got on this craze of just going through my whole house and purging. It was awesome. When I finished going through the cupboards, our master closet, the play room and the boys room I had a car load full of items that I just dropped off in the donation box at a local thrift store. I will tell you this made my day. My husband thought this was hilarious and thought I was nuts. What can I say. I get a little nuts about streamlining areas of our home.

As I was organizing and rearranging our playroom I realized I needed my desk in there. It has 9 drawers, which being in our room at the time, was hardly being used to its full potential. Meanwhile the play room was busting at the seams. There were so many things that needed a "home". A light bulb went off. My husband and I moved the desk into the play room. Voila! I had 5 extra drawers to stow glitter, small legos, small board books, scrap paper, bubbles, beans, not to mention stamps, envelops, electronic components and much more. I was ecstatic that I had discovered so much space!!

Lately I have been saving every soup can, yogurt cup and lid and plan on covering them in this cute paper I found from . It is the cutest paper in the world! I plan on making my own tags for the kids supplies and our familiies and to cover every last soup can in our house!

I found a used bulletin board and still need to finish painting it, but it is a huge help with having a theme every month for our daycare and enables us to imagine wonderful things and post them every month. The changing table serves its purpose as a diaper changing station but I also use the shelves to hold puzzles, books, extra diapers/wipes and clothes for other children. Under my desk I tuck a small curtain into the middle drawer and let the kids crawl inside and read books, play with a flashlight and have some alone time in this "hiding place". Its so cute and fills a purpose for when I'm not using it while sitting at the desk. This would definately qualify as using "every nook and cranny"!

I guess the main thing about organizing my life is that its one step at a time. Sometimes it can be overwhelming but I've started to really get that its always a work in progress and that there is joy and fun in the process. Its always fun to see ideas, plans and rooms or aspects of daily life work smoothly and efficiently!

Catching up with us

I can't believe its been a year since I created this blog. SO much has happened in that time. Little baby Peyton (not a baby anymore!) will be two in May and Gage will be four in June! James and I have been doing well and there were so many times this last year I wanted to sit down and write a boatload about what's been going on.. but what can I say! This year has been SO busy. For a while we had a very hectic schedule, (still do pretty much). It's basically me at home with the kids until 7 or 8 pm. Depending on the weather and work load that James has while commuting to work every day. The last and ONLY time I wrote it was a pretty tough stage in my life. I am convinced I was and still have those days of confinement. Being at home so much with the kids can be tough and monotonous, but around September last year I started using Mother Goose Curriculum with my children and daycare kids. That really helped to break up the day and get our schedule smoothed out. Plus I knew what to expect and had such an easier time planning my day. Peyton was 4 months old in my last entry. I know that at that time Peyton was not sleeping through the night and I was suffering most likely from Post Partum Depression. Since then our boys have grown so much and so have we. I will tell you, we have more reward charts, potty charts and routine charts than I ever imagined to keep our day organized and consistant, but hey it works! During this time, I have spent a lot of time gleaning from other's blogs, getting an idea of what I would like mine to be like, and learning more and more about efficient ways to run my household in a more organized manner now with a growing family and growing business.

The Christmas before last, my husband found his dream job and was exactly what we needed for our family.  Everything he had been working towards led him to this moment. All the long nights of work and cutting a path of our own proved to be worth it. This year and a 1/2 has been one of trememdous growth and stretching!!! I could go on and on right now but I think at the moment I'll share some photos of our family and what we've been up to!