::Where have you been??::

I have been MIA! I got pregnant in April and was really sick until about 22 weeks, and haven't had the energy or the drive to do ANYTHING!!!

It has taken me longer to do projects, but I have finally got some stuff done!

Since I am having a baby in about 3 1/2 weeks, I decided I wanted to make a cute car seat tent.

I found  the perfect tutorial of one I wanted to make over at Sumo's Sweet Stuff. If you are wanting to try this car seat tent, please make sure to read through the entire tutorial and make sure you understand it before you start. I didn't, and made a lot of the same mistakes that Summer made when making hers. ;) It turned out beautiful and I love it. I added some rick rack around my edges, and put bows on my handles instead of having them tie like Summer did. What do you think?

I seriously love how it turned out! I got the fabric from Hobby Lobby. The pleats were really hard for me, I'd never done that before, but I was so proud of myself, I didn't have to call my Mom (the master sewer) once for help! Go me!

I have also been working on recovering some sweet lamps I got from my parents. They belonged to my Grandma, and I saw them at my parents house and fell in LOVE with them. I had this great plan to cover the lamp shade in burlap in that cute squiggly design that is all over blog land. Well, I didn't really think it through very well, cause it took a lot longer than I thought and it is still not done! I have before pics of the lamp, but not after yet, I don't know if it will ever get done!

I spray painted the base just a creamy white and they look fabulous, but that darn massive lamp shade is giving me so much grief, and my laziness and pregnant swollen feet kept getting in the way, so we'll see what the finished product looks like, maybe after the new year!

One more thing that we've been doing around the house, art projects. My little 4 year old has quite an imagination, she loves to draw pics and color! My oldest sister decided she wanted all the grandkids to do "art trading cards" for our parents for Christmas, so I got out the cards, all my art supplies that I never let my little girl play with, and let her go to town. She had so much fun gluing, glittering, buttoning, flowering, coloring and making her cards beautiful for grandma and grandpa! Here is the fun art day we had:

I love that I let her have free reign on this project because it really let her creativity come out and allowed her to see what she can do. She did want a little help with drawing a turkey body, a Christmas tree, and to do a glue flower so she could sprinkle some glitter on it, but other than that the rest is all her. I love that she wrote my name on one of her cards, she is really into writing names right now, hers, mine, and Daddy's! 

Well that is most of what I have been up too aside from working and then coming home to put my feet up! I have a few more projects for baby girl that i'm working on now and hope to have finsihed before she comes so i'll post those as soon as I have them done! Thanks for stopping by!

:: Giveaway @ Sumos' Sweet Stuff::

Sumo's Sweet Stuff is sponsoring a giveaway for Yards and Yards a super cute Etsy shop and blog of fabrics and patterns. She has some great stuff at her shop and I want all the fabric! Go over to Sumo's Sweet Stuff to enter the giveaway.

Here are some of the things that Yards and Yards offers:

LOVE these, want this pattern so bad!

This would be so fun in a little girls room!

Yummy! LOVE!

:: Bloggy Feature::

I have to give a shout out to my SIL who is totally awesome. She recently started a super fun blog called Let Kids Create. It's dedicated to kids projects, fun things to do around town, great things for kids to help make in the kitchen, and anything kid related you can think of. She is so creative and such a great Mom. I love all her ideas and they all seem so simple and easy. Here are a few projects that she has done:

Spin Art

Stick Puzzles

Rice Art

I love all the fun projects that they do and it inspires me to want to try some with my little rascal! We have tried the Stick Puzzle and she loved it! So go on over to Let Kids Create and get some fun summer boredom buster ideas today!

:: Silhouette Giveaway::

Go on over to A Bowl Full of Lemons to enter to win a Silhouette package. I'm super excited, I never win anything, so fingers crossed!!! Go here to enter. Good luck!

:: Give away time at The Shine Project::

If you have never read The Shine Project, you are missing out! Ashley is simply amazing! She has such a positive outlook on life and service. She is hosting 2 giveaways on her blog, one from Heidi Devlin Design and one for Simply Sweet Shoppe. So go on over to The Shine Project and enter to win either a $50 gift certificate to Simply Sweet Shoppe or a customized sweetheart pillow from Heidi Devlin Design. Good luck, hope you or I win!

::Spring Wreath::

I had so much fun making this wreath. I found the idea at NatSprat

She did such a great job, I used the tuts for flowers that she has posted in here post. I love how it turned out, thanks Nat for the fun idea!

I linked up at:

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

The Girl Creative

Making the World Cuter

Keeping it Simple

A Bowl Full of Lemons

Craftaholics Anonymous

::Bows, bows, and more bows::

When my little girl was born, almost 4 years ago now, I have LOVED making her bows. I have occasionally made some for friends and family too. I really love doing it, creating new bows and finding new ways to come up with cute fun bows. Here are some that I recently made for my cute cousin Codi who is having a baby girl in May.

This one I love, I crocheted the flowers (thanks for the help Mom) and stuck it on a band. So pretty and vintage looking!

This fun bow turned out to be one of my favs. I'm not a huge yellow fan but when I paired it with the green I love how it turned out! Some simple smaller bows. I love the lady bug and bumble bee. My little girl was so excited and thought they were for her. I guess I'd better make more! Traditional bows are always a fav in our house! We have tons! Smaller versions of the yellow one. I love how they turned out!

I linked up here:

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

The Girl Creative

Keeping it Simple

Miss Crafty Pants

Making the World Cuter

::Organization Day 17 & 21::

I'm finally done! Ok, almost. I need to purchase a few organizational items and then I will be completely done with my 21 day challenge!

Day 17 was to organize my desk drawers. I was dreading this because it was such a mess! But, I just decided I have to get this done with, and did it! I had junk and garbage in all the drawers, and no real organization at all. So, I designated a drawer to different things I needed. For example, in my church my calling is the primary chorister, so I have one drawer dedicated to all things primary music! This helps me to keep things that way and to know where everything is. I just need to get some desk organizers to help me keep everything in place. Here are the before and after pics:

Here is my main drawer, this is a problem!

This is after, better, but it would be so much better to have a nice desk organizer!

These are some of the drawers, I just threw stuff in wherever!

This is one of the drawers after. (my primary drawer) So much better and I can see everything that is in there!

Day 21 was the rest of my kitchen cabinets and drawers. I just took everything out, and wiped them down. Then put stuff back, only the stuff that I use. I got rid of some stuff, threw out some random stuff (I didn't even know what some of the things were!) and just need to purchase one big utensil tray!

And I'm done!!!!! Yeah!!!!! That took forever, but was so worth it! Now I'm ready to tackle some harder areas in my home like my craft room, my storage, my shed and garage! Then I can get started on my spring cleaning. Happy organizing everybody!

::Day 16 & 18::

Day 16 was the fridge. This one wasn't too bad, since as I said in my last post, I do this every few months. It's easy peasy, just take everything out, wipe down all surfaces, and then get rid of the food that is expired. I didn't have too much to get rid of so it was easy work. Here is the before pic:

And after: I organized my sauces and cooking stuff in an order that made sense to me. Day 18 was Keepsakes. I don't keep a lot of things as far as this goes, but when my daughter started preschool this last fall, I decided to keep her art work in a binder. I would write the date on the back of the paper and then put it in the binder after about a week. We'd display her latest work on the fridge. She is getting so much better at coloring, its fun to see the progress.

This is the binder I had, so I decided to make it cute like Toni did on A Bowl Full of Lemons This is what I ended up with, I think it turned out pretty cute.

I had some stickers leftover from another project, so I'm trying to use them up. The paper in the spine was so hard to shove in there. I had to cut the sides to help get it in!

I'm linking up at:

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

A Bowl Full of Lemons

::Organization Day 14::

Organization day 14 was under the bathroom sink. This one needed to be done, only because I neglect this space. There are 2 cabinets in my master bathroom and one big one in my little girls bathroom. So, it didn't take very long, but I'm loving how much nicer it looks. Here are the pics:

My curlers are in a flimsy bag, and I have shampoo and conditioner down there that I haven't used in 2 years!

I don't even know what that big box is down there, and looks like some random papers??

This is under my little girls bathroom sink, just not very organized.

After taking everything out of all the cabinets, I wiped them down good, added some cute contact paper, and only put back what we use. I found this great shoe box at Target for just over a dollar and it works PERFECT for my curlers. I also went and got another cute box from the dollar spot at Target for my feminine products. (I only paid 50 cents for that box because they only had a few left, so they were half off! Go to your Target now to see if they have any left!) I am loving how much better these spaces look, even though its only us who sees them.

Up next is the fridge. This one shouldn't be too bad, because I do it every couple months anyway. Then I only have my desk drawers, keepsakes, and the rest of my kitchen cabinets and drawers! I'm almost done with my 21 day challenge, and it's only taken my like 2 months! ha ha. I'm so not looking forward to doing my desk, that is the one area that has not stayed organized. After I'm done with it though, I hope to keep it nice and tidy!

::Giveaway time::

Head on over to Bowl Full of Lemons, Toni is hosting a Silhoutte giveaway. If you don't know what this machine is, read up! It is awesome, and I totally want one. I have a cricut, but after seeing this machine, and that it can cut FABRIC, I'm totally in love. So head over to Toni's blog and get yourself entered! Good Luck!

::Organization Days 10, 11, 13 & 20::

Yesterday, I finally found some time to get back to my organizing list. Again, I know I went out of order a little, but it was easier to get 20 done while I was doing the other ones. So without further ado, here we go.

Organization day # 10 was the Laundry Room. Now, my laundry room is in my unfinished part of my basement, so it is nothing pretty to look at. Believe me, one day I will have a super cute laundry room to post on here and be proud of! But, until that day I'm stuck with the unsightly one I have. There isn't much in my laundry room besides my washer, dryer, a extra fridge that is in use and my water heater, heater, water softener, etc...

So, when we cleaned it up a year ago, we laid down some vinyl on the cement. I just took out a few things that didn't belong (some hand weights ended up in there somehow?) and swept the floor. Then I scrubbed my washer and dryer because they can get pretty dirty. Sorry I didn't have my camera for a before pic, but here is the after:

(please don't take notice of the cardboard boxes my hubs so nicely nailed on the 2x4's?? I know, super white trash huh!)

Organization day #11 was The Freezer. I was really not wanting to do this one only because we have 3 different freezers! (I know, excessive). But, once I got to it, it really only took about 15 minutes. So, all I did was take out all the food, threw out what was REALLY old, and wiped down the freezer. Then I put it back in an order that made sense to me. Again, sorry no before pic, but here are the after pics:

Organization day #13 was my medicine cabinet. I don't have an actual medicine cabinet in my house, we kept our meds in our master bathroom in the closet. I've never liked it there for safety reasons, so when I started this process, I cleared out the cabinets above the microwave for my meds to go in. And I have to say I'm loving the containers I put them in. They are from Dollar Tree. I just printed some address labels from my computer to put on them. Here are the before and after pics:

I used to have my mugs up here

After: so much better


Organization day #20 was my bathroom closet and drawers. This one I was actually excited for because it has gotten so bad in there. I must admit I've let it get worse since I knew I was going to get around to organizing it so I wasn't as careful with keeping it neat and clean. As you can see from these before pics, I needed to get these spaces done pronto! The closet was a mess, with too much stuff in it. The drawers were piled with crap and stuff that just needed to be organized.


Closet, I know its crazy!

My drawer, seriously, what the heck??
Hubs drawer, mostly just junk!
Once I decided what I was keeping in the closet and what I was keeping in the drawers, it was easy to get going. I took out everything and wiped down the shelves (they really needed it) and then I wiped out the drawers too. Since I freed up a shelf from the meds, I was able to move my Hubs stuff down one, which is probably easier to see all the stuff. The bottom shelf is for extra things that we have, soap, contact solution, etc... I love how it looks now:

I got these great little boxes at Target in their dollar spot a couple weeks ago, and I love how the keep like items together. I had a lot of random stuff that I wanted to corral together, and these little guys were perfect.


Now onto the drawers. I found these little white baskets at Wal-mart, I think the were 3 for just over a dollar. The little glass bowl I already had in my drawer, so that was convenient. I think I need one more basket though. This form of organization is so much better than what I did before. I had my makeup in a travel bag and it just didn't work very good. Now I can see all my makeup easily. I also put sticky backed Velcro dots on the bottom of my baskets to keep them from sliding around. I saw the idea on Tater Tots and Jello

Now the Hubs drawer is empty and sad :(

Well, 2 full trash bags later, I'm all done. I love dejunking my house. It is very therapeutic. Now I just have to finish off the bathroom by doing under the sink and I'm getting to that TODAY. Happy Organizing!