Pantry Makeover

Let's face it... the kitchen is the central hub of the home. As the kitchen goes, so does the rest the home. When my kitchen is messy, I feel really overwhelmed. The pantry is a major extension of the kitchen. The family is in and out of it CONSTANTLY!! I have six kids and if they can't find some thing...enter my overwhelming feelings. I hear "Mmmaaawhhhm!....where is the (enter food item here)" Then I have to stop what I am doing and go help.

Things you will literally hear me say are:

     " If it was a snake, it would have bitten you..."

      "If I find it, you owe me a dollar..."

and my personal fave:

     "If I find it, can I hit you with it?" To which they start frantically looking again.... and I start belly laughing cause I am joking. And they tell me that it wasn't funny at all. But it is really.

What is my point?.... It is that my pantry needs to be organized. And not temporarily. I need a system that will be in place for a long time and can be kept up with minimal ease. To coin a phrase... it has to be something a child can do...

Remember this picture?

Absolutely horrid!

Luckily, Pinterest has become a valuable asset these days. I searched for ideas and concepts that would work for me, and our family, but also things that would reflect my personality. The pantry I loved the most I saw at The House of Smith's blog. She has my style and taste nailed. So, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Shelley should be flattered!

I love organization, but most searches pull up pictures of cans and boxes stacked perfectly.To me that is chaos waiting to happen! I wanted ideas that helped eliminated chaos. I also love pretty things. Tags and labels that are personal. So why not combine the 2 and get a Pretty, Organized Pantry? 

House of Smith's Pantry

This pic is from House of Smiths. My pantry is much smaller than hers so I have to pick and choose what I will use for my space. The ideas that  I have taken from House of Smith's blog are the crate, the pattern on the walls, and her recommendation to check the DI for random containers.

So, to match my kitchen I am going to go with the Dorset Gold from Benjamin Moore. The shelves and cleating will be a creme color.

As for the quarterfoil design overlaying the paint, I own a Silhouette so I am creating my own. But you can buy hers from her shop here.

I already have these 2 gallon jars, which I purchased from Walmart for $9.97. I have my flour and sugar in them and I also have the smaller size ones.

These little ditties are AMAZING! They run for about $3. The sticker labels come off clean. They have a wide mouth opening and hold A LOT of stuff. I have bought a lot of them to hold pasta, beans, crackers, pretzels, etc. And because of the squareness of their shape, I can stack them all side by side. In fact I can put 6 wide and 2 deep on the shelves!

I have my game plan, now to execute it. Pictures to come soon!

Laundry Room Makeover Part 2

Anyone who has ever undertaken a home improvement project knows things NEVER go according to plan. Having said that....

Houston, we have a problem! The site I ordered my wallpaper from was a bit misleading. Okay, a lot misleading. Long story short, I didn't order enough wall paper. Part of this misunderstanding was I thought the second roll of paper was coming in the mail. It wasn't.

I was bright enough to start my project without the second roll. Low and behold, no second roll, AND the pattern has been discontinued. So, I have to get creative. I am figuring out how to blend some things together without having to strip the wallpaper. So I bought paintable wallpaper that looks like bead board.

allen + roth Beadboard Wallpaper from Lowes

Hopefully you can see it, with it's white on white qualities. The original plan was to line the inside of the cabinets with the flowered black and white wallpaper as well as putting it on the wall. That isn't going to happen so this paper will have to do.

Over the weekend I was busy wallpapering and painting. I feel like I should have gotten way more accomplished, but this project has been a solo one. No help from anyone. Here are a few shots of the work coming along.

Now, back to work!

Flower Orb on a Glass Vase

What should we call this project? A Flower Orb On Top Of A Vase? Yeah, I don't know what to call it either. I made this for my laundry room. I am not finished with the laundry room make over, and I am thinking of what to put on this awesome shelf I will be hanging on the wall. 

This project was super easy. Yes I will be putting this in my laundry room, but I think this would be cute in a set of three, in an outdoor space, as a center piece. Staggering the height of each vase of course. I get really hesitant to post a craft tutorial. One of my gifts in this life is to see something I like, and be able to re-create it in my own way. Without instructions. So trying to do a tutorial in which instructions need to be there, I hope I am not going to leave people all confused.

This is what you will need for this project:

A Vase
Styrofoam ball bigger than vase opening
Flowers of your choice (flat flowers work best, like daisies etc)
Glue gun
Small nail
Ribbon- in a coordinating color
Optional:
Vase filler:
   Pebbles
   Spanish Moss
   Sand
   Etc.
Straight Decorative Pins
Fabric

This is what is required to complete the project. Of course you can add what you want to cutsie it up to your fashion. I purchased the vase at Walmart for $3, and bought the 3 bunches of flowers for $1 each. They also have a combo package of 6 smooth styrofoam balls (sold in the mailing area?) for $4. That worked for me  because I needed the rest of them for another project, and used the 4" ball for this.

First things first, decapitate your flowers. Pull all the flowers off their stems.

 Keep the little plastic center sticking through the back of the flower, like so.

Use the small nail to poke a shallow hole in the styrofoam ball. The first few flowers I tried to glue sat tipping because the plastic center of the flower needed to go into the ball to keep it vertical. Use the nail it will keep the frustration level low.

Put a small dot of hot glue over the nail hole and then press the flower to the ball inserting the plastic of the flower into the nail hole.

This is what it starts to look like when I was about a quarter of the way done. Keep going until you complete the sphere.

Next I tore a scrap of muslin fabric the length of a wrap around my vase. I folded it lengthwise into thirds to keep a nice top and bottom edge.

I trimmed the edge by the pin so it was straight. Here I used a plastic mesh I bought a long time ago at a scrapbooking store to overlay on the fabric. I pinned the edge with a pearlized black pin. I am looking for a really awesome one you know, like those old fashioned hat pins? Just haven't found it yet! Then I tied the ribbon over it all.

I had some small glass pebbles and some spanish moss that I put in the bottom of the vase to add some color.

Mine looks really simple. I didn't want it to compete with the wallpaper I am putting in the laundry room, but this could be really cute with a lot of other color combinations. 

Happy crafting. Post a link in the comments if you make your own. I would love to check it out!

B's Winter Clothes

I think we all have them. Photos taken by our mothers, when they let us choose what we wanted to wear. When I first saw these pictures, I remember saying, "Mom! How could you have let me out of the house in that?!" She would say something about a battle she didn't want to fight.

I now have 6 kids. I go through this every school day. Telling them what the weather forecast is, persuading my 3rd grader that by noon she won't need a jacket, or telling my 6th grader that he might need more than a hoodie sweatshirt when it is snowing outside.

I have to say though, I am highly entertained by the clothes first graders pick for themselves. I am a mother of a first grade boy. I try to let him pick his own clothes, develop his independence and self confidence.. but some days I have to veto his choices.

This is one of those days. We were running late for school and he comes walking up the stairs telling me e is ready. It was supposed to be like 80 degrees that day (thus the shorts) but he LOVES his boots. He is very Napoleon Dynomite. You may be wondering where on earth one might get a hat like that. You have to spend a winter in Russia... no really it was my Grandpa's hat, and winters in Vernal, UT can be cold.

We all have photos like this. Dig em out- have a good giggle. I KNOW you want to!

Bento Boxes

So I have a new product I am in love with! Bento Boxes!

This one is orange, and it is a 2 tiered container to hold goodies, kind of like Gladware, but better.

I was cruising through some blogs a few weeks ago and came across this gal Jill Dubien, she seems very talented from what I have seen. Then, I saw her posts on Bento Boxes. AMAZING! If you know me, this stuff is up my alley. I love to create in any form, and put food with it, and it is even better. Here is the link to her Flickr page that shows photos of all of her lunchbox ideas.

My boxes, and cutters came yesterday and the timing couldn't be more perfect! My daughters had an Activity Days Mother- Daughter Tea Party last night. Our assignment was to bring 30 tea party size ham sandwiches. Little sandwiches are a lot of fun as it is, but make them FLOWER sandwiches and we have pure awesomeness!

I used their cute cutters to make these sandwiches. They had ham, provolone cheese, and cucumbers on the inside. On top I used the smaller cutter to cut fruit leather into these flowers.

Jill's Blog referred me to the site where I can purchase these cool little "toys", it is All Things For Sale. Here are a few things that I was interested in:

Okay, so now you have the scoop. Let me know if you buy, cause I wanna see what you all create!

... Finished That!

Is anyone out there like me? You have projects (a lot, unfortunately) that are about 99% completed and for whatever reason they never get finished. My crafts and projects usually don't get finished because I start them, and they take longer than I think they will, and then my kids get home from school. That usually brings a lot of things to a halt.

And, to add insult to injury- I try to keep them out (usually on the counter) so I can finish them. After a week of wiping the counters around the projects, I get so tired of seeing them, so I put the offending project away. Then it is out of sight, out of mind!

Imagine this a couple times (maybe 10...) over, and then you have yourself a real problem.

So, today was a "Finish That!" day. I rounded up a lot of these little projects and finished them. Some of them were just cleaning tasks, and now that they are done.... HUGE load off my shoulders! Here'sis what I did:

*Picked Vinyl for 5 leftover projects

*Putaway 3 baskets of random objects

*Hot glued the rest of my styrofoam orbs

*Touched up the paint in the kitchen

*Put up decorations I have been meaning to

Now I can make room for the tasks that will pile up again. Now, go get your projects and finish them! You can thank me later. :)